Take Monkeys Off Their Shoulders

One of the primary duty of leaders is to develop their people, that includes sharpen their competence in problem solving and decision making. So you have to realize that the danger from load of tasks that will occur if you take over their works. But what if you are being held on a deadline and somebody ask you to handle ‘one or more monkeys’ – problems that should be dealt by sub-ordinates, popular terminology that was introduced by William Oncken Jr. and Donald L. Wass in their article “Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey?” from Harvard Business Review 1974.

Here are few tips that you can possibly do.

1. Let Them Work

To many people, the pathway to effective delegation starts with studying two basic assumption of their roles. First, a lot of managers believe that handling their people’s problems is a faster and more effective than teach them to handle it themselves. Second, they also believe that they know more from their people.

These assumptions, will only raise the need of managers to break the problem and make decisions, instead of delegating and empowering their men. To deal with this problem, you have to position yourself as a leader, not a manager. Managers deal with details, while leaders, on the contrary, raise sense of belonging and responsibilities in their people.

2. Ask, Don’t Tell

Professional delegator choose to ask their men, rather than dictate the solution to them.

The question “What is it that you think should be done?” stimulates people to come with solutions when they approach you. Another additional questions like “What is the effect of this action?” or “What is it that we need to pay attention to if we are to go your way?” could also reveal how far have they think about the solution to the problem.

3. Match Person With The Job

Avoid adding your current jobs with handling your people’s problem. This can only happen if managers delegate the right job to the right people, according to each competence and potential.

Steven R. Covey stressed about delegation based on interest. “Find out the best outcome and the most preferred job of your people” he said “Then combine their unique talents and interests with job needs. When people work with interest and desire, they don’t need guidance. They will eventually create creative solutions independently.”

4. Cultivate Independent Thinking

If someone manages to think independently and feel that he own his job, then he will definitely bring less problem to his boss.

Shane Pliska, Business Development Director of Planterra, a landscape interior company, uses “monkey rating”, a method extracted from Oncken and Wass’ article. “We ask the workers to self assess their problems with numbers,” she said. “One means your manager solved it for you. Two means your manager told you the solution and you follow the solution, three means you proposed a solution and seek approval from your manager, while four means you took action, solve the problem, and let you manager know afterwards.”

When people came to their boss’s chamber, managers will ask “what number is on your current problem?” To raise the sense of belonging, Planterra managers encourages their people to have number four on every problem as much as possible.

5. Connect Them With Resources

Connecting your people with resources will also help you reduce your load. Think about the term “resource” in wider perspective, like human, tools, information, and opportunities that can help your men to work independently. Being the matchmaker between your people to the resources is actually not hard at all, like “You can talk to Mr X in marketing division.”

 

So, take that monkey of their shoulders immediately, let them deal with their own monkeys, because you already have your own, right?

The Art Of Letting Go

What I’m about to share to you is a case that happens in Gucci, one of the most high-end apparel label in the world originated from Italy. This happens about a decade ago when Gucci was faced with financial problem, family feud, and counterfeiting issues. The company was in a downward spiral at that moment because of a poor management.

Then they hired Tom Ford, a top notch designer from America to handle everything from design to product launch. Suddenly, there were signs of life. Tom worked very hard to get the company going and has done a great job according to the original shareholder, the Gucci family.

Then the shareholder changed, which means that the Gucci family is no longer in control. And the current shareholder was not amused at the “already much better” performance of the company because they think that the company was too “Tom-centric” that decision was so centralized even a mid manager could not or dare not decide for small things. This is also worsen by the celebrity status that Tom possess.

Then they changed the company CEO. They summoned Robert Polet, a Frenchman from Unilever, a huge company in consumer goods industry. Polet was handling ice cream business before he was asked to lead Gucci.

The media and fashion world was somewhat shocked by the shareholder’s decision to sack Tom and have Polet at the helm. How come an “ice cream guy” which strategy was a mass marketing and mass production can run a very delicate business of ultra niche market like Gucci had? There were jeers and boos heard from everywhere, yet the show went on.

Surprisingly, Gucci now has managed to perform much much better even compared to the moment when Tom left the company. In an interview with Polet, he revealed the secret that made him succeed. He knew that he is not a fashion guy and he will never be, so instead of doing designs, he managed to hire people to do it for him and for your information, Gucci has many brands under it’s belt that it is just almost impossible to undertake the task centrally. Polet called it “the art of letting go” that he gave full authority and responsibilty for each business unit to perform their activities and decide everything that’s necessary to achieve the goals that they had agreed before.

Now, there are three positive insights in this business case:

1. Always get the right people to do the job.

Before you have the right people on your bus and before you let the wrong people off the bus, never set the bus direction. In every business, it is not the hardware, or the system, product, appearance, or even quality that’s the most important. You will never have those if you have the wrong people working with you.

2. Give Them Direction and Watch Them Grow.

Jack Welch of GE has illustrated that managing people is like planting seeds in the right soil, then all we have to do is water them then sit back and watch them grow. Of course, occasionally, we have to pull out some weeds, but basically, it is like planting.

3. Be adaptive to changes.

Don’t be trapped in complacency. It is every leader’s biggest pitfall and unfortunately happens only on successful ones. Current condition work only for now. Yesterday might not be relevant anymore. And things have to improve for tomorrow. Set new objectives, challenge yourself and the team for better target. If the water is too still, it’s not alright. If you get all the brains moving, your company will move forward also.