Fermat's Library | Who’s Got the Monkey? annotated/explained version.

The paper’s practical insight: **Never let a problem become yours u...

#### TL;DR Who's Got the Monkey? argues that managers lose lever...

Every job is a bundle of **"monkeys": next actions, decisions, appr...

Today we need a new category: **agent-imposed time**. This is the t...

The **monkey moves when the next move moves.** The manager does not...

> ***Most managers spend much more time dealing with subordinates’ ...

Modern equivalents include Slack threads, Jira tickets, pull reques...

When a monkey sits on two backs, it tends to fall onto the person w...

This predicts a major risk of AI-agent work. The danger is that hum...

This system is very similar to an AI-agent autonomy scale.

In the AI economy workers gain leverage when they control the flow ...

by William Oncken, Jr., and

Donald L. Wass

Management Time:

Who’s Got

the

Monkey?

Commentary by Stephen R.Covey

HBR CLASSIC

The burdens of subordinates

always seem to end up on

the manager’s

back. Here’s

how to get

rid of them.

HY IS IT THAT MANAGERS ARE

typically running out of time

while their subordinates are typically

running out of work? Here we shall ex-

plore the meaning of management time

as it relates to the interaction between

managers and their bosses, their peers,

and their subordinates.

Speciﬁcally, we shall deal with three

kinds of management time:

Boss-imposed time –used to accom-

plish those activities that the boss re-

quires and that the manager cannot dis-

regard without direct and swift penalty.

System-imposed time–used to accom-

modate requests from peers for active

support. Neglecting these requests will

also result in penalties, though not al-

ways as direct or swift.

Self-imposed time –used to do those

things that the manager originates or

agrees to do. A certain portion of this

HBR CLASSIC

•

Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

kind of time, however, will be taken

by subordinates and is called subor-

dinate-imposed time. The remain-

ing portion will be the manager’s

own and is called discretionary time.

Self-imposed time is not subject to

penalty since neither the boss nor

the system can discipline the man-

ager for not doing what they didn’t

know he had intended to do in the

ﬁrst place.

To accommodate those demands,

managers need to control the timing

and the content of what they do.

Since what their bosses and the sys-

tem impose on them are subject to

penalty, managers cannot tamper

with those requirements. Thus their

self-imposed time becomes their ma-

jor area of concern.

Managers should try to increase

the discretionary component of

their self-imposed time by minimiz-

ing or doing away with the subordi-

nate component. They will then use

the added increment to get better

control over their boss-imposed and

system-imposed activities. Most

managers spend much more time

dealing with subordinates’ problems

than they even faintly realize. Hence

we shall use the monkey-on-the-

back metaphor to examine how sub-

ordinate-imposed time comes into

being and what the superior can do

about it.

Where Is the Monkey?

Let us imagine that a manager is

walking down the hall and that he

notices one of his subordinates,

Jones, coming his way. When the

two meet, Jones greets the manager

with, “Good morning. By the way,

we’ve got a problem. You see….” As

Jones continues, the manager recog-

nizes in this problem the two char-

acteristics common to all the prob-

lems his subordinates gratuitously

bring to his attention. Namely, the

manager knows (a) enough to get in-

volved, but (b) not enough to make

the on-the-spot decision expected of

him. Eventually, the manager says,

“So glad you brought this up. I’m in

a rush right now. Meanwhile, let me

think about it, and I’ll let you know.”

Then he and Jones part company.

Let us analyze what just happened.

Before the two of them met, on

whose back was the “monkey”? The

subordinate’s. After they parted, on

whose back was it? The manager’s.

Subordinate-imposed time begins

the moment a monkey successfully

leaps from the back of a subordinate

to the back of his or her superior and

does not end until the monkey is re-

turned to its proper owner for care

and feeding. In accepting the mon-

key, the manager has voluntarily as-

sumed a position subordinate to his

subordinate. That is, he has allowed

Jones to make him her subordinate

by doing two things a subordinate is

generally expected to do for a boss –

the manager has accepted a responsi-

bility from his subordinate, and the

manager has promised her a progress

report.

The subordinate, to make sure the

manager does not miss this point,

will later stick her head in the man-

ager’s office and cheerily query,

“How’s it coming?” (This is called

supervision.)

Or let us imagine in concluding a

conference with Johnson, another

subordinate, the manager’s parting

words are, “Fine. Send me a memo

on that.”

Let us analyze this one. The mon-

key is now on the subordinate’s back

because the next move is his, but it

is poised for a leap. Watch that mon-

key. Johnson dutifully writes the re-

quested memo and drops it in his

out-basket. Shortly thereafter, the

manager plucks it from his in-basket

and reads it. Whose move is it now?

The manager’s. If he does not make

that move soon, he will get a follow-

up memo from the subordinate.

(This is another form of supervi-

sion.) The longer the manager de-

lays, the more frustrated the subor-

dinate will become (he’ll be spinning

his wheels) and the more guilty the

manager will feel (his backlog of

subordinate-imposed time will be

mounting).

Or suppose once again that at a

meeting with a third subordinate,

Smith, the manager agrees to provide

all the necessary backing for a public

relations proposal he has just asked

Smith to develop. The manager’s

parting words to her are, “Just let me

know how I can help.”

Now let us analyze this. Again the

monkey is initially on the subordi-

nate’s back. But for how long? Smith

realizes that she cannot let the man-

ager “know” until her proposal has

the manager’s approval. And from

experience, she also realizes that her

proposal will likely be sitting in the

manager’s briefcase for weeks before

he eventually gets to it. Who’s really

got the monkey? Who will be check-

ing up on whom? Wheel spinning

and bottlenecking are well on their

way again.

A fourth subordinate, Reed, has

just been transferred from another

part of the company so that he can

launch and eventually manage a

newly created business venture. The

manager has said they should get to-

gether soon to hammer out a set of

objectives for the new job, adding, “I

will draw up an initial draft for dis-

cussion with you.”

Let us analyze this one, too. The

subordinate has the new job (by for-

mal assignment) and the full respon-

sibility (by formal delegation), but

the manager has the next move. Un-

til he makes it, he will have the mon-

key, and the subordinate will be im-

mobilized.

Why does all of this happen? Be-

cause in each instance the manager

and the subordinate assume at the

outset, wittingly or unwittingly, that

the matter under consideration is a

William Oncken, Jr., was chairman

of the William Oncken Corporation

until his death in 1988. His son,

William Oncken III, now heads the

company.

Donald L. Wass was president of the

William Oncken Company of Texas

when the article ﬁrst appeared. He

now heads the Dallas–Fort Worth

region of The Executive Committee

(TEC), an international organiza-

tion for presidents and CEOs.

This article was originally pub-

lished in the November–December

1974 issue of HBR and has been one

of the publication’s two best-selling

reprints ever.

For its reissue as a Classic, the Har-

vard Business Review asked Stephen

R. Covey to provide a commentary.

harvard business review

November–December 1999

joint problem. The monkey in each

case begins its career astride both

their backs. All it has to do is move

the wrong leg, and –presto! –the sub-

ordinate deftly disappears. The man-

ager is thus left with another acqui-

sition for his menagerie. Of course,

monkeys can be trained not to move

the wrong leg. But it is easier to pre-

vent them from straddling backs in

the ﬁrst place.

Who Is Working for Whom?

Let us suppose that these same four

subordinates are so thoughtful and

considerate of their superior’s time

that they take pains to allow no more

than three monkeys to leap from

each of their backs to his in any one

day. In a ﬁve-day week, the manager

will have picked up 60 screaming

monkeys – far too many to do any-

thing about them individually. So

he spends his subordinate-imposed

time juggling his “priorities.”

Late Friday afternoon, the manager

is in his office with the door closed

for privacy so he can contemplate

the situation, while his subordinates

are waiting outside to get their last

chance before the weekend to re-

mind him that he will have to “ﬁsh

or cut bait.” Imagine what they are

saying to one another about the man-

ager as they wait: “What a bottle-

neck. He just can’t make up his

mind. How anyone ever got that high

up in our company without being

able to make a decision we’ll never

know.”

Worst of all, the reason the man-

ager cannot make any of these “next

moves” is that his time is almost en-

tirely eaten up by meeting his own

boss-imposed and system-imposed

requirements. To control those tasks,

he needs discretionary time that is

in turn denied him when he is pre-

occupied with all these monkeys. The

manager is caught in a vicious circle.

But time is a-wasting (an understate-

ment). The manager calls his secre-

tary on the intercom and instructs

her to tell his subordinates that he

won’t be able to see them until Mon-

day morning. At 7pm, he drives

home, intending with ﬁrm resolve

to return to the office tomorrow to

get caught up over the weekend. He

returns bright and early the next day

only to see, on the nearest green of

the golf course across from his office

window, a foursome. Guess who?

That does it. He now knows who

is really working for whom. More-

over, he now sees that if he actually

accomplishes during this weekend

what he came to accomplish, his

subordinates’ morale will go up so

sharply that they will each raise the

limit on the number of monkeys

they will let jump from their backs

to his. In short, he now sees, with

the clarity of a revelation on a moun-

taintop, that the more he gets caught

up, the more he will fall behind.

He leaves the office with the speed

of a person running away from a

plague. His plan? To get caught up

on something else he hasn’t had

time for in years: a weekend with his

family. (This is one of the many vari-

eties of discretionary time.)

Sunday night he enjoys ten hours

of sweet, untroubled slumber, be-

cause he has clear-cut plans for Mon-

day. He is going to get rid of his sub-

ordinate-imposed time. In exchange,

he will get an equal amount of dis-

cretionary time, part of which he

will spend with his subordinates to

make sure that they learn the diffi-

cult but rewarding managerial art

called “The Care and Feeding of

Monkeys.”

The manager will also have plenty

of discretionary time left over for

getting control of the timing and the

content not only of his boss-imposed

time but also of his system-imposed

time. It may take months, but com-

pared with the way things have

been, the rewards will be enormous.

His ultimate objective is to manage

his time.

Getting Rid of the Monkeys

The manager returns to the office

Monday morning just late enough so

that his four subordinates have col-

lected outside his office waiting to

see him about their monkeys. He

calls them in one by one. The pur-

pose of each interview is to take a

monkey, place it on the desk be-

tween them, and ﬁgure out together

how the next move might conceiv-

ably be the subordinate’s. For certain

monkeys, that will take some doing.

The subordinate’s next move may be

so elusive that the manager may de-

cide – just for now – merely to let

the monkey sleep on the subordi-

nate’s back overnight and have him

or her return with it at an appointed

time the next morning to continue

the joint quest for a more substan-

tive move by the subordinate. (Mon-

keys sleep just as soundly overnight

on subordinates’ backs as they do on

superiors’.)

As each subordinate leaves the of-

ﬁce, the manager is rewarded by the

sight of a monkey leaving his office

on the subordinate’s back. For the

next 24 hours, the subordinate will

not be waiting for the manager; in-

stead, the manager will be waiting

for the subordinate.

Later, as if to remind himself that

there is no law against his engaging

in a constructive exercise in the in-

terim, the manager strolls by the

subordinate’s office, sticks his head

in the door, and cheerily asks,

“How’s it coming?” (The time con-

sumed in doing this is discretionary

for the manager and boss imposed

for the subordinate.)

When the subordinate (with the

monkey on his or her back) and the

manager meet at the appointed hour

the next day, the manager explains

the ground rules in words to this

effect:

“At no time while I am helping you

with this or any other problem will

your problem become my problem.

The instant your problem becomes

mine, you no longer have a problem. I

cannot help a person who hasn’t got

a problem.

“When this meeting is over, the

problem will leave this office exactly

the way it came in –on your back. You

may ask my help at any appointed

time, and we will make a joint deter-

mination of what the next move will

harvard business review

November–December 1999

Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? •

HBR CLASSIC

In accepting the

monkey, the manager

has voluntarily assumed

a position subordinate

to his subordinate.

When Bill Oncken wrote this article

in 1974, managers were in a terrible

bind. They were desperate for a way to

free up their time, but command and

control was the status quo. Managers

felt they weren’t allowed to empower

their subordinates to make decisions.

Too dangerous. Too risky. That’s why

Oncken’s message – give the monkey

back to its rightful owner – involved a

critically important paradigm shift.

Many managers working today owe

him a debt of gratitude.

It is something of an understate-

ment, however, to observe that much

has changed since Oncken’s radical

recommendation. Command and con-

trol as a management philosophy is all

but dead, and “empowerment” is the

word of the day in most organizations

trying to thrive in global, intensely

competitive markets. But command

and control stubbornly remains a com-

mon practice. Management thinkers

and executives have discovered in the

last decade that bosses cannot just give

a monkey back to their subordinates

and then merrily get on with their own

business. Empowering subordinates is

hard and complicated work.

The reason: when you give problems

back to subordinates to solve them-

selves, you have to be sure that they

have both the desire and the ability to

do so. As every executive knows, that

isn’t always the case. Enter a whole

new set of problems. Empowerment

often means you have to develop peo-

ple, which is initially much more time

consuming than solving the problem

on your own.

Just as important, empowerment

can only thrive when the whole orga-

nization buys into it – when formal

systems and the informal culture sup-

port it. Managers need to be rewarded

for delegating decisions and develop-

ing people. Otherwise, the degree of

real empowerment in an organization

will vary according to the beliefs and

practices of individual managers.

But perhaps the most important les-

son about empowerment is that effec-

tive delegation – the kind Oncken

advocated – depends on a trusting rela-

tionship between a manager and his

subordinate. Oncken’s message may

have been ahead of his time, but what

he suggested was still a fairly dictato-

rial solution. He basically told bosses,

“Give the problem back!” Today, we

know that this approach by itself is too

authoritarian. To delegate effectively,

executives need to establish a running

dialogue with subordinates. They need

to establish a partnership. After all, if

subordinates are afraid of failing in

front of their boss, they’ll keep coming

back for help rather than truly take

initiative.

Oncken’s article also doesn’t address

an aspect of delegation that has greatly

interested me during the past two

decades – that many managers are ac-

tually eager to take on their subordi-

nates’ monkeys. Nearly all the man-

agers I talk with agree that their people

are underutilized in their present jobs.

But even some of the most successful,

seemingly self-assured executives

have talked about how hard it is to give

up control to their subordinates.

I’ve come to attribute that eagerness

for control to a common, deep-seated

belief that rewards in life are scarce

and fragile. Whether they learn it from

their family, school, or athletics, many

people establish an identity by com-

paring themselves with others. When

they see others gain power, informa-

tion, money, or recognition, for in-

stance, they experience what the psy-

chologist Abraham Maslow called “a

feeling of deficiency” – a sense that

something is being taken from them.

That makes it hard for them to be gen-

uinely happy about the success of oth-

ers – even of their loved ones. Oncken

implies that managers can easily give

back or refuse monkeys, but many

managers may subconsciously fear

that a subordinate taking the initiative

will make them appear a little less

strong and a little more vulnerable.

How, then, do managers develop the

inward security, the mentality of

“abundance,” that would enable them

to relinquish control and seek the

growth and development of those

around them? The work I’ve done with

numerous organizations suggests that

managers who live with integrity ac-

cording to a principle-based value sys-

tem are most likely to sustain an em-

powering style of leadership.

Given the times in which he wrote,

it was no wonder that Oncken’s mes-

sage resonated with managers. But it

was reinforced by Oncken’s wonderful

gift for storytelling. I got to know On-

cken on the speaker’s circuit in the

1970s, and I was always impressed by

how he dramatized his ideas in color-

ful detail. Like the Dilbert comic strip,

Oncken had a tongue-in-cheek style

that got to the core of managers’ frus-

trations and made them want to take

back control of their time. And the

monkey on your back wasn’t just a

metaphor for Oncken – it was his per-

sonal symbol. I saw him several times

walking through airports with a

stuffed monkey on his shoulder.

I’m not surprised that his article is

one of the two best-selling HBR arti-

cles ever. Even with all we know about

empowerment, its vivid message is

even more important and relevant

now than it was 25 years ago. Indeed,

Oncken’s insight is a basis for my own

work on time management, in which I

have people categorize their activities

according to urgency and importance.

I’ve heard from executives again and

again that half or more of their time is

spent on matters that are urgent but

not important. They’re trapped in an

endless cycle of dealing with other

people’s monkeys, yet they’re reluc-

tant to help those people take their

own initiative. As a result, they’re of-

ten too busy to spend the time they

need on the real gorillas in their orga-

nization. Oncken’s article remains a

powerful wake-up call for managers

who need to delegate effectively.

Stephen R. Covey is vice chairman

of the Franklin Covey Company, a

global provider of leadership devel-

opment and productivity services

and products. He is the author of

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective

People (Simon & Schuster, 1989)

and First Things First (Simon &

Schuster, 1994).

by Stephen R. Covey

Gor i llas

for

Making

Time

HBR CLASSIC

•

Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

harvard business review

November–December 1999

be and which of us will make it.

“In those rare instances where the

next move turns out to be mine, you

and I will determine it together. I

will not make any move alone.”

The manager follows this same

line of thought with each subordi-

nate until about 11am, when he real-

izes that he doesn’t have to close his

door. His monkeys are gone. They

will return – but by appointment

only. His calendar will assure this.

Transferring the Initiative

What we have been driving at in this

monkey-on-the-back analogy is that

managers can transfer initiative back

to their subordinates and keep it

there. We have tried to highlight a

truism as obvious as it is subtle:

namely, before developing initiative

in subordinates, the manager must

see to it that they have the initiative.

Once the manager takes it back, he

will no longer have it and he can kiss

his discretionary time good-bye. It

will all revert to subordinate-im-

posed time.

Nor can the manager and the sub-

ordinate effectively have the same

initiative at the same time. The

opener, “Boss, we’ve got a problem,”

implies this duality and represents,

as noted earlier, a monkey astride

two backs, which is a very bad way to

start a monkey on its career. Let us,

therefore, take a few moments to ex-

amine what we call “The Anatomy

of Managerial Initiative.”

There are ﬁve degrees of initiative

that the manager can exercise in re-

lation to the boss and to the system:

1. wait until told

(lowest initiative);

2. ask what to do;

3. recommend, then take

resulting action;

4. act, but advise at once;

5. and act on own, then routinely

report (highest initiative).

Clearly, the manager should be pro-

fessional enough not to indulge in

initiatives 1 and 2 in relation either

to the boss or to the system. A man-

ager who uses initiative 1 has no

control over either the timing or the

content of boss-imposed or system-

imposed time and thereby forfeits

any right to complain about what he

or she is told to do or when. The

manager who uses initiative 2 has

control over the timing but not over

the content. Initiatives 3, 4, and 5

leave the manager in control of both,

with the greatest amount of control

being exercised at level 5.

In relation to subordinates, the

manager’s job is twofold. First, to

outlaw the use of initiatives 1 and 2,

thus giving subordinates no choice

but to learn and master “Completed

Staff Work.” Second, to see that for

each problem leaving his or her office

there is an agreed-upon level of ini-

tiative assigned to it, in addition to

an agreed-upon time and place for

the next manager-subordinate con-

ference. The latter should be duly

noted on the manager’s calendar.

The Care and Feeding

of Monkeys

To further clarify our analogy be-

tween the monkey on the back and

the processes of assigning and con-

trolling, we shall refer brieﬂy to the

manager’s appointment schedule,

which calls for five hard-and-fast

rules governing the “Care and Feed-

ing of Monkeys.” (Violation of these

rules will cost discretionary time.)

Rule 1. Monkeys should be fed or

shot. Otherwise, they will starve to

death, and the manager will waste

valuable time on postmortems or

attempted resurrections.

Rule 2. The monkey population

should be kept below the maximum

number the manager has time to

feed. Subordinates will ﬁnd time to

work as many monkeys as he or she

ﬁnds time to feed, but no more. It

shouldn’t take more than ﬁve to 15

minutes to feed a properly main-

tained monkey.

Rule 3. Monkeys should be fed by

appointment only. The manager

should not have to hunt down starv-

ing monkeys and feed them on a

catch-as-catch-can basis.

Rule 4. Monkeys should be fed

face-to-face or by telephone, but

never by mail. (Remember – with

mail, the next move will be the man-

ager’s.) Documentation may add to

the feeding process, but it cannot

take the place of feeding.

Rule 5. Every monkey should have

an assigned next feeding time and

degree of initiative. These may be re-

vised at any time by mutual consent

but never allowed to become vague

or indeﬁnite. Otherwise, the mon-

key will either starve to death or

wind up on the manager’s back.

“Get control over the timing and

content of what you do” is appropri-

ate advice for managing time. The

ﬁrst order of business is for the man-

ager to enlarge his or her discre-

tionary time by eliminating subordi-

nate-imposed time. The second is

for the manager to use a portion of

this newfound discretionary time to

see to it that each subordinate actu-

ally has the initiative and applies it.

The third is for the manager to use

another portion of the increased dis-

cretionary time to get and keep con-

trol 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 man-

aging management time to multiply

without theoretical limit.

Reprint 99609

To place an order, call 1-800-988-0886.

harvard business review

November–December 1999

Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? •

HBR CLASSIC

The manager can

now see, with the

clarity of a revelation

on a mountaintop,

that the more he gets

caught up, the more

he will fall behind.

Discussion

This system is very similar to an AI-agent autonomy scale. Today we need a new category: **agent-imposed time**. This is the time humans spend reviewing AI drafts, approving minor steps, fixing tool failures, correcting hallucinations, handling exceptions, or answering repeated clarification questions. AI does not eliminate monkeys; it creates new ones. The paper’s practical insight: **Never let a problem become yours unless it truly belongs to you.** In the age of AI agents, the labor market will increasingly reward people who can manage initiative rather than merely perform tasks. The valuable worker is not the one who keeps every monkey, but the one who knows which monkeys to delegate to agents, which to escalate, which to kill, and which must remain human. The **monkey moves when the next move moves.** The manager does not need to take formal ownership of the entire project; it is enough to say something like "let me think about it." At that moment the manager has become the bottleneck. > ***Most managers spend much more time dealing with subordinates’ problems than they even faintly realize.*** This predicts a major risk of AI-agent work. The danger is that humans become full-time supervisors of fragile automations: watching dashboards, approving small steps, debugging failures, and chasing stuck or inefficient processes. The worker becomes the servant of the agentic workflow. When a monkey sits on two backs, it tends to fall onto the person with more authority. In the AI economy workers gain leverage when they control the flow of initiative among themselves, agents, tools, and organizations. **A relevant question: as AI agents become capable of taking more next actions, what remains valuable for humans to own?** Every job is a bundle of **"monkeys": next actions, decisions, approvals, exceptions, and accountabilities.** AI agents will take over more executable monkeys while humans will remain valuable when they can define, delegate, supervise, evaluate, and own the right ones. Modern equivalents include Slack threads, Jira tickets, pull requests, customer escalations, AI-generated briefs, and automated status reports. **In human-agent teams the system must preserve state: who owns the next action, what decision is needed, and when the next checkpoint occurs?** #### TL;DR Who's Got the Monkey? argues that managers lose leverage when they take ownership of their subordinates' unresolved next actions. A "monkey" is not the whole task; it is the next move attached to a responsibility. When a subordinate brings a problem and the manager says "Let me think about it" the monkey jumps to the manager. The subordinate waits, the manager becomes the bottleneck, and the direction of supervision quietly reverses The solution is to keep ownership clear. A manager should help define the next action, assign the right level of initiative, and schedule a follow-up. The paper's five levels of initiative, from "wait until told" to "act independently and report," are an autonomy ladder. In the age of AI agents this lesson becomes especially relevant. Every job is a bundle of monkeys: next actions, decisions, approvals, exceptions, and accountabilities. AI agents increasingly take over the executable monkeys - drafting, searching, summarizing, coding, scheduling, reporting - but humans will remain valuable when they can define goals, delegate work, supervise agents, judge outputs, handle exceptions, and own consequences. The future worker is not just someone who does tasks manually. The future worker is someone who knows which monkeys to keep, which to give to agents, which to escalate, and which to eliminate.

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