This past week, I had the pleasure of hosting my friend Admiral Brian Hurley in my graduate Salesforce CRM Solutions class at the University of Texas at Dallas. During our round table discussion, Admiral Hurley referenced an article I had not thought about in years. It happens to be one of the best-selling Harvard Business Review publications of all time: “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey.”
The three types of management time.
The HBR essay identifies three types of management time that compete for a leader’s attention every day.
The central tension the article captures is one most managers recognize immediately. There is never enough time in the day, yet the team seems to be running out of work. The reason is the monkey: the problem that keeps getting handed upward instead of solved at the level where it belongs.
“In accepting the monkey, the manager has voluntarily assumed a position subordinate to his subordinate.”
The moment a team member successfully transfers their problem to their manager, the dynamic inverts. The manager is now working for the team member. And the cycle repeats until the manager’s day is consumed entirely by problems that were never theirs to own.
The goal is not to be unavailable. It is to return ownership to the person who should be carrying it.
Four takeaways I apply every day.
Does it take a five-second search to answer, or will it take a few hours to work through properly? Quick answers can and should be redirected to team members. Harder problems may be the exact learning opportunity worth investing in together. Not every question needs to land on the manager’s desk.
This is not about tolerating bad work. It is about valuing initiative over inaction. A wrong solution presented with effort is far more useful than silence. Students remember the questions they got wrong far longer than the ones they answered correctly. That same principle applies in a professional context. A mistake made with genuine effort becomes a lesson that sticks.
People often do not know what they do not know. And many are afraid to ask questions for fear of appearing unintelligent. That fear feeds the exact cycle we are trying to break. Creating a culture where questions are welcomed and mistakes are not penalized is essential. It is our turn as leaders to share what we know.
There is a meaningful difference between someone who tries, fails, and learns and someone who simply does not try. Demand excellent effort. Hold the standard for the attempt, not just the outcome.
Still relevant, decades later.
The original article references mail as a communication medium, which dates it immediately. But the underlying principles have not aged at all. Managers across every industry still describe the same frustration: days consumed by problems that should never have reached their desk, while team members wait for direction they should be generating themselves.
In my graduate class, I push hard for leadership at every level. Nothing is more powerful than a team member who takes initiative, owns a problem, and brings back a solution. That culture does not happen by accident. It is built deliberately, one redirected monkey at a time.
Read the original Harvard Business Review essay: Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey
At TDigital, we help organizations build the systems, processes, and team structures that empower people to lead at every level. If your managers are carrying problems that belong to their teams, we can help you design a better way forward.
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