Happy’s Essential Skills: Understanding the Concept of Managing Management Time

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Managing Performance

Managing monkeys is at the heart of managing and reviewing performance, which involves three parts:

1. Performance planning
2. Day-to-day coaching
3. Performance evaluation

Performance Planning

Make it clear what you are asking people to do and what good behavior looks like. In many ways, Oncken's four rules of monkey management are a beautiful step-by-step process of performance planning. Depending on your level of confidence in the person's ability to handle the task, you would either provide close supervision (Insurance Level 1), or allow the person to take initiative and then report back (Insurance Level 2). In either case you then schedule a check-up appointment which sets up on-going supervision.

One Minute Goal Setting, the first secret of Blanchard and Johnson’s, The One Minute Manager, comes into play when you make sure (before you part company) who has the next move, who owns it, how much authority the person has and when you are going to check up on him. In effect, you say to the person, "Since we've done our performance planning, why don't you do what we've agreed you're going to do." What you're really setting up with the check-up appointment is an on-going coaching process where you can obtain information, check on monkeys, monitor performance and prevent problems.

Day-to-Day Coaching

Through effective coaching, you help your people to care for and feed their own monkeys. In day-to-day coaching, you'll want to use the other two secrets of The One Minute Manager: praising and reprimanding.

Praising

During a check-up appointment, you must determine how well somebody has cared for and fed a monkey and decide what you can praise about the performance. Praising progress reinforces the desired behavior and helps people to develop the skills to handle an entire project and be in charge of a series of next moves. Remember the three rules of One Minute Praising:

First, praise people as soon as possible after observing the desired behavior. Don't save praise for a holiday. If the person is inexperienced, schedule a check-up appointment soon after giving the assignment so you can praise progress.

Second, be specific. Tell the person what you liked. Don't wait for the perfect performances; remember, if you punish a learner, you will immobilize him and cause him to avoid your check-ups. Always accent the positive, especially with new performers.

Third, share how you feel about what the person did. That is, describe your emotions to add evidence to your message. After you have praised progress, redirect the person by saying, "Okay, here's what you did. Now let's take a look at that in terms of what you might do next time." Redirect the next move, making sure the person knows who owns the problem, and set up your insurance policy and your check-up appointment again.

Oncken's four rules of monkey management are also a way to monitor performance. As people get better and better, and take more responsibility, you can loosen up your insurance policy and have fewer and fewer check-up appointments. Praising progress and redirecting really go together until you feel that the person you are supervising is to the point where he or she can handle more responsibility. Now, if you find yourself constantly monitoring, checking behavior and redirecting a person who is making little progress, you might have to do some career planning with him because he might be in the wrong job.

Reprimanding

What do you do if you feel one of your people is not performing up to her potential because of a poor attitude? Are you going to praise progress or redirect? Neither. If this person is doing sloppy work and you know the person can do better, then you move to the third secret of the One Minute Manager: “The One Minute Reprimand.”

Figure 3: The goal is to get the monkeys all marching in the same direction, to give managers maximum leverage.

The One Minute Reprimand

Reprimands are for people who have the skills to do the job. You don't reprimand people who don't have the skills. When reprimanding someone, remember these four rules:

1) Do it as soon as possible—don't save reprimands in a gunnysack and dump them on your employee six months later

2) Be as specific as possible—tell the person exactly what she did wrong

3) Tell the person why you are disappointed and how you feel

4) Reaffirm the person. You might say: "The real reason I am upset is because you are better than this. I want to see you back here tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., and I want to see the kind of work that I know you can do." You're saying, "You're okay as a person, but the way you handled this monkey is inappropriate." In managing the monkey this way, you improve the person's behavior while maintaining her self-esteem.

Performance Evaluation

If you use Oncken's four rules of monkey management, your performance evaluations will fall in line because performance will be done well. Often, managers spend all their time on setting up evaluations and little time on performance planning and day-to-day coaching. Oncken's rules of monkey management overcome that.

Summary

You can get the most value out of monkey management and one-minute management by using these principles together. Who knows? With these techniques, maybe you'll have a chance to take care of your own work instead of everyone else's!

Attend a Course Near You

Figure 4 is a copy of my course certificate (Figure 4). I had the pleasure of attending the MMT course taught by Bill Oncken himself, but had the unfortunate luck to sit on the aisle. During the class, Oncken would walk up and down the aisle and talk to you about six inches from your face. This was at an HP auditorium, as HP scheduled the class every other month. Bill died in 1988, so the courses are taught by his son or other licensed instructors.

References

1. Oncken, William Jr., “Management Time: Who’s got the monkey?” Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec, 1974.
2. Oncken, W., “Managing Management Time: Who’s got the monkey?” Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980.
3. Blanchard, K., and Johnson, S., “The One Minute Manager,” William Morrow (2003).

• < Previous Page