Who’s Got The Monkey Now? 

How to find out how well you manage your time

 

Copyright © 2006  The National Learning Institute

This article may be freely published electronically.  It may be reprinted for individual use in hard copy but may not be reprinted in hard copy for commercial purposes.

 

Are you a manager?  Would you like more available time?  Yes, then read on . . .

 

How come you’ve worked hard all day but haven’t started the one task that was most important to you?  As a manager, how come your daily work schedule often falls in a heap by mid-morning?

 

Who’s got the monkey?  The answer is, you have - probably several!

 

“Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey” has been the second most popular management article ever published by the Harvard Business Review (“Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey”, by William Oncken and Donald Wass, first published by Harvard Business Review, 1974) and has been reprinted several times.  Thirty odd years later, the message Oncken and Wass sent us on management, still holds true today.

 

They suggested that there are three types of management-imposed time pressure – Boss, System, and Self.

 

· Boss-imposed time pressure

Activities, which must be accomplished, or we’ll suffer the consequences!

· System-imposed time pressure

Those activities/requests which come from peers and colleagues. The penalties are not so severe or as swift, but we may still suffer if these things are not done.

· Self-imposed time pressure

Those activities we ourselves initiate or agree to do – particularly those things which have been upwardly delegated from people who report to us.  As managers, these activities impact heavily on our discretionary time, and the penalty for not doing these is stress.

 

Oncken and Wass used the monkey analogy to make their point.  As the manager, when someone in our team talks about a “problem” they want to “run past us”, the monkey (in other words, the problem) is very clearly on their back.  But when we respond with something like “Well, I haven’t got time right now, but leave it with me”, the monkey immediately leaps from their shoulders to ours.  We have just been on the receiving end of an excellent piece of upward delegation!

 

If this happens to you every day (or at least more often than it should), you’ll soon be carrying a cagefull of monkeys on your back. Not only have you reduced your discretionary time, you also must feed and care for the monkeys you’ve acquired.  For example, your people are probably pretty good at keeping track of their delegated task, when they say things like “Hey boss, how’s that issue going that I told you about the other day?”

 

The secret is to reduce the pressure of self-imposed activities to give us more discretionary time.  You can then use this time to become more productive with your boss and the system and in the process, a better manager.

 

How do you avoid catching monkeys and give yourself more discretionary time?  The first step is to recognise that the monkeys are jumping onto your back!

 

Use the following checklist to see whether as a manager you are a collector of monkeys.  Answer each with “Always”, “Often” or “Rarely”.

 

How often do I say . . .

· “Leave it with me”

· “Can I think about that?”

· “I’ll get back to you on that”

· “I’ve seen something like that a thousand times.  I’ll look after it for you”

· “I’ll get Bob to look after that”

· “Send me an e-mail on that will you?”

· “Don’t you worry about it”

 

If you found yourself answering “Always” or “Often” for most of these, then it’s probably too late.  The monkey has just jumped!  There’s a very good chance that you are taking on the problems of your people, rather than helping them solve the problems themselves and in the process, further developing their own skills and knowledge.  In thirty years of running and designing management training programs, managers tell me that the one thing they would like to do better or more of, is delegate!

 

Want to try again?  Use the same “Always”, “Often” or “Never” on the following questions.

 

How often do I say . . .

· “Let me know if you have trouble”

· “You know you don’t have to do it that way”

· “That’s interesting.  I’ve never seen anything quite like that before”

· “I remember when that happened to . . . ”

· “I think my last boss had something like that happen to him/her”

 

If you found yourself answering “Always” or “Often”, then the result is not as bad as the first list.  However, beware!  The monkey is about to jump!  While the responses sound very supportive and helpful (which they are), starting out like this invariably ends up with you, the manager, taking on the problem to solve.

 

How did you score on both lists of questions?  Do you use similar phrases to some of the ones in the checklists? If you found yourself ticking a number of “always” or “often” columns, or you use similar phrases regularly, then chances are you need to be careful about taking on too many monkeys.  Think about what:

· you should and can do,

· then, what others could do for you. 

 

What you “should do” is all about setting your priorities and sticking with them.  What are the two or three things that you must achieve today, “come what may”.  Do not be swayed from these!

 

What you “can do” has nothing to do with your ability, rather it is about the amount of time you have available and how you use that time – in other words, effective time management.  As the manager, you are the “expert” – your people know that there are lots of things that you can do.  Do not be trapped into doing things just because you know how.  While it may take a little bit of your time to teach or coach someone else, in the long run doing so will save you heaps of time.

 

What “others can do for you” is about your willingness and ability to delegate.  Remember, developing your people to take responsibility will provide you with more discretionary time to devote to other activities.

 

Who’s Got The Monkey Now?  Part 2: 

How To Make Delegation Work For You

 

Copyright © 2006  The National Learning Institute

This article may be freely published electronically.  It may be reprinted for individual use in hard copy but may not be reprinted in hard copy for commercial purposes.

 

In my earlier article “Who’s Got The Monkey Now?  How To Find Out How Well You Manage Your Time” (http://www.nationallearning.com.au/index_files/HowToMakePeopleFeelBetterAtWork.htm) , I suggested that you may be caring for a cageful of monkeys (other people’s problems) unless you are managing your time effectively, and in particular delegating.

 

For managers, there are two key aspects to successful delegation:

· Having people to whom one can delegate, and

· Selecting the most appropriate tasks to delegate

 

If you are not a manager, or do not have anyone to delegate to, then I suggest the excellent article by Beth Schneider (http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Delegate-When-There-is-No-One-to-Delegate-To&id=141500).

 

The key to delegation is to develop within your people, the "initiative to take action" so that they learn to develop their skills and knowledge to their full potential.

 

Managers who are successful are always good at delegating.  Less successful managers, when asked why they don't delegate more, often reply:

"If only my staff were more experienced" or,

"I don't have enough faith in my staff to do the job properly" or,

"Delegation.  Sounds great in theory, but I need to have fully trained staff and I don't have the time to train them". 

 

If some of these comments sound familiar to you, then the following steps will show you how to:

Identify the current "level of initiative" of each of your team members.

Use the “level of initiative” ranking with your team to further develop their skills and knowledge.

 

When delegating, it is important to fit the task to the person and to ensure the reason for delegating is appropriate. 

 

Firstly, let's look at the person.  Is it possible to delegate to all your team members? 

For delegation purposes, team members may be classified as those who:

 

· Wait until he or she is told what to do.

· Do what is necessary, but refer to their manager or supervisor all problems or slightly unusual issues for a decision.

· Refer all problems or unusual occurrences for a decision, but when doing so recommend appropriate action.

· Take action on problems as they occur and then immediately report on the action taken.

· Take action on all issues and problems on his her own initiative and then report periodically on progress.

 

Less successful managers keep their team members at the second level, i.e.

“Do what is necessary, but refer to their supervisor all problems or slightly unusual issues for a decision”

by not encouraging them to make recommendations on problems or issues the encounter.  As a consequence, their people rarely develop the knowledge or skills they need to become fully competent. 

 

Successful managers quickly move all their people through to at least level three i.e.

“Refer all problems or unusual occurrences for a decision, but when doing so recommend appropriate action.”

 

When people are at level three, they are always looking for solutions rather than just stating the problem.  Not only do they look for solutions, but when they do bring a problem to you, they bring their recommended solution.  Wouldn’t your life as a manager be so much easier if all your people did this?

 

Successful managers then move individual staff from level three through levels four and five depending on the particular team member’s skill and how quickly they can gain the necessary experience. 

 

Many successful managers take this one step further by involving their team members in the process of "developing initiative".  For instance, they explain the five-step “level of initiative” process to them and then ask:

· What level do you believe you are at now on each of your major job responsibilities?

· How can you move to the next level?

 

Using this approach, managers can then be very clear about which aspects of a person’s job the team member can take initiative on, and how much initiative they may take.  It is also a great opportunity to talk about training and development strategies to help move people to the next level on particular job responsibilities.  In this way, you know exactly who within your team, you can delegate certain tasks to and most importantly, how they will respond.

 

I have developed a Delegation Matrix of the five Levels of Initiative which I have been using with practising managers for many years.  If you would like a free copy, please contact me via learn@nationallearning.com.au 

 

Let’s now look at the second aspect of delegation – tasks that may be delegated.

 

Tasks suitable for delegation include:

· Minor and repetitive decisions.

· Tasks you are expert in and that others should learn.

· Tasks for which you are least qualified, but that others could learn.

· Tasks you dislike, provided someone else likes them (delegation should not be an excuse to dump unpleasant tasks).

· Tasks that add variety and interest to another person’s role.

· Tasks that will increase the number of people who can perform critical assignments.

 

Which tasks could you delegate?  Remember these remain part of your job and while you can delegate responsibility for them, you remain accountable for each.

 

One of the questions I am often asked by managers is

"How do I keep track of what’s been delegated?”

 

If you use the Levels of Initiative protocol by discussing and agreeing each person’s permitted level of initiative, you will note that levels 3,4 & 5 all have built in reporting mechanisms.  Make sure you agree how these will operate with your people.

 

Following the guidelines outlined here, will allow you to release some of your monkeys back to where they can be cared for and fed by others – your team!

 

How To Select The Right Person For The Job

- the three essentials

Have you ever recruited someone who looked good at interview only to find out when they started that they “Were not up to it” or, “They just didn’t seem to fit in”.  Most of us have made these mistakes (if you haven’t, then you are probably new to management).  Why?

· We often rely too much on the interview as the main selection process, or

· We place too much emphasis on professional credentials at the expense of ability to do the job and values fit, or

· We recruit too often “in our own likeness”.

What’s the best way of finding out whether someone can do the job?  Try them out.  Not all of us have the resources to be able to “give someone a go”, unless we are recruiting for a position such as “air traffic controller”.  As a regular flyer, I know that I would be worried if the recruitment process for air traffic controllers relied principally on the interview!  Having worked with a number of air traffic controllers, I now rest easy knowing that a major part of the selection process is simulations of actual flight control.  So, if you have the resources, go for simulation.

Without simulations, we must still rely on the interview.  Unfortunately, numerous studies suggest that the interview (by itself) is an ineffective selection method.  Why?  Let me pose the question – “How similar is an interview to the type of work the person is expected to do?”  If interviewing is not a major part of the normal day to day activities of the position for which you are recruiting, then the selection interview is not replicating the work, but is merely a discussion on what the person has done or might be able to do.  Take for example the following questions, often asked:

· Tell me about your duties in your last position.

· What did you like most about the job?

· What did you like least about the job?

· Why do you want this job?

· Where do you want to be five years from now?

· How do you feel about working for a demanding boss?

· What is your management [or marketing etc] philosophy?

· What would you do if you were working for a manager who refuses to set priorities for you?

· Tell me what you would do in your first few weeks in this role.

Before you reach for your pen to jot down a “new one” you liked, let me make a point.  Not one of these questions works!  None of them helps predict future behaviour in the job for which you are recruiting.

So, how can you improve the interview?  A technique known as “Behaviour Description (or Event) Interviewing (BDI) has been shown to improve interview effectiveness by as much as four times.  Mind you, you should still use more than the interview, but more of that later.

Read the following question asked of a candidate in relation to a job requirement of “managing poor performance” and see how it differs from the previous list of questions:

· Tell me about the last time you faced the situation of an employee who wasn’t performing.

· What was the situation?

· How did you deal with it?

· What did you do?

· What did you say?

· What did he/she say?

· How did you respond?

· What was the outcome?

By comparison to our previous questions, BDI asks for examples of past behaviour that the candidate has experienced, that are likely to indicate how the candidate might perform in similar situations in the current position.

It specifically calls for the descriptions of events, not thoughts, feelings or hypotheses.  Additionally, it prevents the candidate from lying or exaggerating as the following parts of the question will soon catch them out.

 

So, the BDI interviewing process becomes:

1. Describe an event.

2. Describe the behaviour (what happened).

3. Describe the outcomes.<