You can have your monkey back
In 1974, William Oncken Jr and Donald Wass wrote a now-classic Harvard Business Review article called Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? Harvard Business Review Store
The basic story goes like this:
An employee comes to their manager with a problem.
The manager says something perfectly innocent and repeatable like:
“Leave it with me. I’ll have a think.”
And at that moment, the monkey has jumped back.
The problem used to belong to the employee. Now the manager owns it.
Do that 10 or 20 times and suddenly the manager is frantic and carrying everybody’s monkeys. The team is bottlenecked and waiting for the manager to come back with answers, while the manager starts wondering why they have to do every bl**dy thing.
The original article was about delegation and initiative. Stephen Covey later made an important qualification: you can’t simply chuck the monkey back. People need the capability, authority and trust to actually deal with it. Harvard Business Review Store
“My people won’t step up” and “I keep taking the work back” can both be true at the same time
If you keep answering, deciding, fixing and rescuing, don’t be surprised when everybody keeps bringing you things to answer, decide, fix and rescue.
In the 7 years since developing The Leadership Lift programme, this image has been the biggest reckoning for managers and leaders looking to deliver more, lead more, and get out of the weeds. Understanding where you are spending your time and energy, and why can be game changing.
It’s the antidote against monkey business.
What changes when you stop being an automatic answer machine
Rather than that banal bleating, I’d rather ask you what you want to happen? For example if you want your team to take more responsibility for decision making, then it will happen best if you’re intentional about handing that monkey back and helping them develop that capability. Meaningful change in behaviours comes when these 3 conditions exist:
You being willing to lean into leadership and challenge your own impact
A lift in capability, and perhaps capacity in your team, supported by you and owned by them
And giving the monkey a decent shove, handing ownership back rather than talking about empowerment while still ultimately holding the decision yourself.
Miss one, and the old pattern has a pretty good chance of coming roaring back.
Regardless of whether you are the CEO or leading a team, the question I have for you is, are you ready to give the monkey back?
