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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to manage time and delegate effectively, January 7, 2002
This review is from: Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) (Digital)
William Oncken Jr. was chairman of the William Oncken Corporation until his death in 1988; Donald L. Wass was president of the William Oncken Corporation Company of Texas when the article first appeared. He now heads the Dallas-Fort Worth region of The Executive Committee (TEC), an international organization for presidents and CEOs. This Harvard Business Review Classic article was originally published in the November-December 1974 issue. This On-Point version was reissued in November-December 1999 and contains a retrospective commentary from Stephen R. Covey, author of 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' (1989). The authors explore the meaning of management time as it relates to the interaction between managers and their bosses, their peers, and their subordinates. According to the authors most managers spend much more time dealing with subordinates' problems than they realize. Hence, the authors use the monkey-on-the-shoulder metaphor to examine how subordinate-imposed time comes into being and what the superior can do about it. "Get control over timing and content of what you do" is appropriate advice for managing time. First, the manager should enlarge his/her discretionary time by eliminating subordinate-imposed time. Second, the manager should use a portion of this newfound discretionary time to see to it that each subordinate actually has the initiative and applies it. Third, the manager should use another portion of the increased discretionary time to get and keep control of the timing and content of both boss-imposed and system-imposed time. All these steps will increase the manager's leverage and enable the value of each hour spent in managing management time. Stephen R. Covey comments: "Its vivid message is even more important and relevant now than it was 25 years ago. I've heard from executives time and time again that they're trapped in an endless cycle of dealing with other people's monkeys, yet they're reluctant to help those people take their own initiative. As a result, they're often too busy to spend the time they need on the real gorillas in their organization." This truly great article still remains a powerful wake-up call for managers who need to delegate effectively. It should be read by everybody interested in management, and particularly people moving into management. It explains how you can avoid becoming snowed under by others' work and delegate effectively. The authors use simple US-English. Highly recommended!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to truely empower your people, December 6, 2007
This review is from: Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) (Digital)
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. Ignore the Covey reflection as it adds nothing to the great original article.
Bob Selden, author of What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Article: Phenomenal Book, April 26, 2007
This review is from: Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) (Digital)
The article is quite good and is definitely worth reading on its own merits. However, it pales in comparison to Oncken's full length book, Managing Management Time, the best management book I've ever read. I gave the article only 4 stars because of Covey's addendum at the end of the article. Covey clearly has not read Oncken's book, in which Oncken develops the monkey metaphor in much more detail. Otherwise, Covey would not have made the critiques he did in his piece. In addition, the monkey metaphor is only one part of the book, which is a superlative guide to managing within a complex organization.
In summary, read the article, but definitely get the book if you care about becoming a highly effective manager without working 60-70 hours a week.
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