The Monkeys On Your Back
How to Get Those Time Consuming Tasks Off Your List
A client who was feeling a bit overwhelmed with team requests shared this famous management article written in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 1974 : Management Time – Who’s Got the Monkey? It is an amazing read just to understand how things got done in the days before email and texting, but is still super relevant to managing your time as a practice owner.
The first area that the article defines are the three types of management time:
Boss-imposed time - For you as the practicing dentist, this is your patient time. This time is your primary focus and ignoring this time will have swift and direct penalties.
System-imposed time - For you as an entrepreneur, this is the time dedicated to managing the business and replying to peer requests. This looks like meeting with your marketing provider, electing a practice health care policy and discussing goals with your practice advisor.
Self-imposed time - For you as the practice leader, this is the time dedicated to those items required to keep the practice running and is made up of two types to time:
Subordinate time - Your time taken up by team member’s requests for approval, direction or consultation.
Discretionary time - Your time taken up with the tasks that you want to accomplish, like a three day CE course.
The goal is to limit the amount of subordinate time so you can focus on discretionary time and family time. Here is where managing the monkeys becomes relevant.
First, the monkeys are NOT your team members, but the problems and requests that they bring to you. You may not consider each request time-consuming in the moment, but over time they will start to weigh you down. These metaphorical creatures will take up residence in your head, dancing all over, making your life busier and more chaotic than ever.
To confront this zoo of monkeys and understand that your back only has space for a certain number of monkeys, here is a variation of the HBR article’s four rules of monkey management that can be used in your dental practice:
Acknowledging the monkey: Begin by acknowledging the presence of these monkeys on my shoulders. It may be a humbling moment of self-awareness, when you admit to yourself that these issues were not going away on their own and you are struggling to find the time to deal with all of them appropriately.
Analyzing the monkey: You need to ask yourself what type of monkey this is and why it got stuck on your back. There are two underlying reasons why a monkey might be stuck on your back:
The Why? Is it stuck there because you want to avoid conflict; is it stuck there because you need more information; or is it stuck because you believe only you are capable of resolving? Finding the reason is the first step in moving the monkey.
The Who? Does this monkey really belong to me or does it belongs to someone else? Nobody wins when you take care of other people’s monkeys.
Feeding the monkey: Next, you must decide to feed these monkeys with the information. Instead of suffering from “Paralysis by Analysis”, gather the information available and consult with trusted advisors to make the best decision in the moment.
Finding a new owner and delegating: There is a tendency to deal with all the monkeys due to a self-imposed perfection standard or lack of trust in your team. You need to decide which monkeys to move from your back to another’s back by entrusting and empowering the right person and giving them all the information that they need. As the leader, you should give that monkey an occasional checkup appointment, but don’t put it back on your back.
Killing the monkey: You and your team have limited time so you need to make a conscious effort to decide which monkeys get fed and which get killed. If a monkey does not contribute to the overall goals and culture of your practice, is it really worth putting on anybody’s back?
In short, monkey management means that you care for and feed the monkeys that belong to you and you strategically place the responsibilities for the other people’s monkeys on their backs. This second step is the most challenging if your practice does not encourage initiative (See the chart below to determine the level of initiative shown in your team).
INITIATIVE DEVELOPMENT
The authors of the HBR article developed “The Anatomy of Managerial Initiative” that starts to explain why a monkey might get stuck. The suggested goal of any manager is to encourage an environment for Level 3 initiative while always striving for Level 5.
To lead an organized and balanced life, try thinking about this before and after each request you receive: