Monkeys, Management, and Chaos

I remember reading the book, The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey, years ago. The book was a revisit to the Harvard Business Review article titled “Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey.” The premise of the lesson was that each of us is faced with making decisions about the next move in any decision. When we take away those decisions from our people, we then become beholden to the monkey we just placed on our back.

I see far too many managers trying to control every decision made in a business or requiring everyone to run their decisions through them. This creates a bottleneck in the decision process and teaches people not to think. This lack of thinking then creates more bottlenecks and chaos. At the core of the challenge is a simple lack of understanding on achieving lasting outcomes.

When a manager or top leader keeps taking away the next step in the decision process, they position themselves to be the only thing holding the team together. They also pile up the next moves, referred to as monkeys on your back in the article and book, and end up killing their own ability to control their time. When we have too many decisions to make, we then start working more and more and eventually bog ourselves down with overload. I think we all know what a room full of monkeys end up doing… causing messy chaos.

One of the best things a manager can do is learn how to set expectations and then coach for performance. Expectations outline the what, when, and measure for an employee. Coaching is a model that helps teach critical thinking and empowers employees through decision frameworks to keep things moving forward. Each of us can handle a certain number of decisions on a daily basis. To be truly effective, you have to teach your people to make great decisions. To achieve lasting outcomes, you have to develop the potential of your people to the highest levels.

The sign that a leader was far too controlling on decisions is the crumble after the exit. If the leader was controlling all the decisions, you will see their empire begin to crumble because their team was never allowed to lead themselves. If you find yourself in that position right now, it’s time to build the leadership skills of setting expectations and coaching for performance!