LEADERSHIP

Who’s Got the Monkey?

How an old management concept is just as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.

Photo by Aaron Baw on Unsplash

A classic article with new implications — Who’s Got the Monkey?

I recently re-read one of Harvard Business Review’s most bought articles, Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey? It appears in several of my HBR books — a great way to recycle content. I always enjoy reading it though, because even though it was written in 1974 and updated in 1999, it’s still as relevant today. The language is dated, and the problems have moved on, but the critical point is valid today — who’s got the monkey?

In this case, the ‘monkey’ is the next move or action that somebody needs to care for and feed or let go into the wild and out of our lives. As a leader, these issues come to you every day and risk taking over your working day if you’re not careful.

As inexperienced PMs often tell me, “I have no time to do my job because I have too many meetings”. When we talk about what’s in those meetings, they are essentially monkey-feeding. Once they understand this, they suddenly see meetings as being the work, not getting in the way of it.

When the article was originally written, these monkeys came to you through distinct channels — chance encounters, formal meetings, written memos and phone calls. Today there are many more ways to receive monkeys from your team, and the method for receiving monkeys are more subtle, but they are monkeys all the same and still either need to be fed or let go.

Let’s revisit the article and bring it up to date for the 2020s.

Monkeys are everywhere

As leaders, we divide our day as follows:

• Boss imposed time — this is the work that our leaders give us, which we can deal with proactively or reactively. If we’re not careful, monkeys come to us that we can’t control, and they begin to take over our working day. We can’t say ‘no’, but we can certainly control how and when they come to us and how we deal with them when they do.
• Organisation imposed time — this is the work we need to do because of our position in an organisation — running meetings, supporting peers, attending town hall…