Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey?William, Jr. Oncken and Donald L Wass. (Harvard Business Review, Jan 2008)Reviewed by admin Mon 24 Nov 08 Bob's Rating: Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey? Has been one of the most popular articles ever published in HBR – and one of the most useful.Oncken and Wass suggest that there are three types of management-imposed time pressure – Boss, System, and Self. Each has its own imperatives and if not managed, consequences. Boss-imposed time pressure are activities, which must be accomplished, or we’ll suffer the consequences! System-imposed time pressures are 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 are those activities we ourselves initiate or agree to do – particularly those things which have been upwardly delegated from people who report to us. These activities impact heavily on our discretionary time, and the penalty for not doing these is stress. Oncken and Wass use the monkey analogy to make their point. 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. They suggest the way to deal with this is to develop the initiative of team members to take action. At the heart of their article is deciding which of five “levels of initiative” your people are at. It’s then a matter of helping each person progress through the five levels. I’ve used this process helping managers improve their time management and delegation skills for over ten years. If you want to improve your productivity as a manager, this publication is highly recommended. |
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