Page 16 - Mini-Module 1

Monkey Managment

Imagine one day that you are walking down the school hallway, and a
Panel Chair approaches you with a problem about one of the maths
teachers in his Department:

"I cannot believe how Jane is acting toward our students. She is
abrupt, offhand, and sometimes she is a terrible bully. She yells
at the students and they are all scared of her. I have told her
several times that her teaching style is just not acceptable in
our school, but it doesn't seem to help. Can you visit with her
and see if she will listen to you?"

As a principal, you have a number of choices. Which is the right choice
for you, for the Panel Chair, and for Jane?

Departing from the ‘new’ theory of Complexity, let us now turn to an
‘old’ classic article, one which first appeared in the Harvard Business
Review in 1974. The authors William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass
(1999) offered a theoretical framework for seeing such situations in
their true light and for avoiding the right decision.

In the article "Who's Got the Monkey?" the authors tell the tale of an
overburdened manager who allows his employees to delegate upward.
When a manager takes an unsolved problem from his staff, he/she is
allowing a figurative monkey to leap from the employee's back to
his/her own back.

A leader who has too many monkeys is overburdened, ineffective and
worst of all, starts to hate his or her job. Such a leader has not figured
out how to ‘get out of the engine room’, and has not made it to the
‘bridge’ as a leader.

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