I received a leave application request on a Saturday from one of my staff. It reminded me that we had missed our weekly meeting. In fact, now that I think about it, we have missed quite a few of them, because of various scheduling conflicts. My busyness has been a factor. This made me recall that fantastic Bill Oncken and Don Wass article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) back in 1974 titled, “Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey”. In fact, HBR notes that this article is one of two of their best selling reprints ever. If you haven’t read it, then take a look, it is gold.
In this article, a classic, they are talking about staff accountability and boss delegation. The boss always has more interest in keeping abreast of what staff are doing than the staff have any interest in their accountability. Missing sessions with the boss is a plus from their point of view, because they are not having to provide any answers about their results or lack thereof. With a bit of deft scheduling change, they can go for long periods with no actual supervision.
I know that I am packing my schedule, that I am taking 100% accountability for the company’s results and this is the problem. I haven’t factored in enough slack to deal with people who prefer to keep no profile or a low profile with the boss. It is very hard for the boss to turn the switch down from “full bore ahead” to “I am going to do less”. What often makes us the boss in the first place is our drive, determination, pain threshold, commitment and ambition. All sterling stuff, but sometimes we have to remember that the monkey is kept firmly on our back in these types of situations.
When we delegate and staff don’t match our expectations with the speed or quality of the work they are doing as part of the delegation, there is an overwhelming boss urge about to kick in. That urge is called “buying back the delegation”. We start having extremely dangerous thoughts such as, “it will be faster if I do it myself”. Before you know it, your schedule is packed and you have no slack for checking up on slackers. We are moving too quickly sometimes and that momentum just keeps carrying us forward. As I mentioned, these life-long habits are what have spring boarded us to the boss position and they are hard to shake.
McGregor in his Theory X boss and Theory Y boss declaratory study said that, in simple terms, the X boss sees the bad side of people and the Y bosses see the good side of people and treat them accordingly. I have to keep reminding myself of this when I gets thoughts like, “I wonder if this staff member is being clever about manipulating the boss’s busyness to escape from any accountability”. I have to replace that thought with a more Y boss contribution like, “Everyone wants to do a good job and this person is just busy too. Our schedules are just not matching well enough and I need to cut myself some slack here to be more available”.
I am always amazed when people own up to the fact they don’t plan their day, based around the priorities they have set themselves for their work. Actually, I was teaching a leadership class recently and roughly half of the class said they didn’t set daily priorities for their job. I don’t understand that and of course I am religious about planning my day. Naturally priorities can change but that is okay because I can get back to what I should be doing after the diversion. Certainly those days when I am not able to do that classic Time Management Quadrant Two – not urgent and important – planning function are never as productive or as satisfying as when I can do it. Being able to tick that a task has started and then being able to add that additional tick to note it has been completed is an absolute dopamine rush. This may be part of the problem though. I am too tightly bound in that scheduling to leave any slack for myself. My super efficiency may not actually be enabling me to be as effective as I need to be.
As the boss I need to keep that monkey of delegated tasks off my back and I need to be leavening the day with little blank spaces to make sure I can spend the time with the team where it is needed. When I am in my super commander mode, I start barking out orders like a pirate captain and I am missing important leadership aspects like asking questions instead of telling people what to do. Command mode also means that any coaching is out the window and a rain of orders are flowing forth from me to everyone.
Bill Oncken’s article is always a good reminder of what I should be doing as opposed to what I am actually doing. When I got that leave request it triggered the thought that “oh yeah, we have been missing meetings and these are my opportunity to coach this staff member and to make sure all relevant monkeys are sitting firmly on their back and not on mine”. How about you? How are you going building some slack into your day to be less efficient and maybe more effective. For me it is a constant struggle, and while I am far from perfect, at least I know I am operating with some awareness of the issue. That awareness is the first step to finding the balance and solution I need. How would you calibrate your own awareness of this issue?
