I keep coming back to this article in the context of agents -essentially we are bottlenecked by agents passing the next actions (the 'monkeys') back to us. This prevents us from actually delegating tasks effectively to agents.
The article outlines the following process:
1. Describe the monkey. The dialogue between a manager and a staff member must not end until appropriate next moves have been identified and clearly specified.
2. Assign the monkey. All monkeys shall be owned and handled at the lowest organizational level possible.
3. Insure the monkey. Every monkey leaving you on the back of one of your people must be covered by one of two insurance policies: (1) recommend, then act, or (2) act, then advise.
4. Check on the monkey. Proper follow-up means healthier monkeys. Every monkey should have a checkup appointment.
When combined with Karpathy's verifiability criteria to assess whether a task actually is a good candidate to hand off (perhaps step 0), this process becomes very suggestive in the context of (Claude code) agents.
"WHY IS IT THAT MANAGERS ARE
typically running out of time
while their subordinates are typically running out of work?"
This was written in 1974 and times have surely changed because I never wonder this.
Instead I wonder why subordinates are typically running out of time whilst the managers seem to be typically running out of any useful work to do and instead are found doing something else.
Well, that actually happens a lot, with many causes.
For example: manager is perfectionist (at some level), it takes more time to delegate than doing it yourself, there's some attitude from the subordinate to undermine the manager, there's lot of work in a specific season and manager prefer to do it himself than risking his job due to a bad work form a subordinate
In an ideal world, of course the manager would replace the subordinate. But in real life, sometimes you can't find someone in the adequate time and is better to have him doing 75% of the work instead of 0%...
I'd heard of the "monkey" metaphor from my friend before, but I never really used it in my day-to-day work. When a report came my way with a technical problem they couldn't solve, my first reaction was always, "Okay, I'll take a look," instead of guiding them to take ownership and figure it out on their own.
Looking back, I wish I hadn't let those monkeys jump back onto my back so often. It ended up causing a growing backlog and a lot of pressure for me. It also made it hard for team growth.
This piece really speaks to me, and I'm curious how others here have experienced this in work.
I'm a people pleaser and am involved in too many things at work. Friday afternoon mid-sentence I realised I was putting like 5 monkeys on my back for something I'd get done before we start the sprint Monday morning...
Good article to reflect on. Tone is a bit crass maybe but a good read. Need to get better at helping (if I can) and then delegating, instead of defaulting to "let me look into it".
Gonna spend the morning giving this a read. I'd also like to also recommend, in case any one is dreading the "ugh boss talk", the book "The Fred Factor" by Mark Sanborn [1].
I keep coming back to this article in the context of agents -essentially we are bottlenecked by agents passing the next actions (the 'monkeys') back to us. This prevents us from actually delegating tasks effectively to agents.
The article outlines the following process: 1. Describe the monkey. The dialogue between a manager and a staff member must not end until appropriate next moves have been identified and clearly specified.
2. Assign the monkey. All monkeys shall be owned and handled at the lowest organizational level possible.
3. Insure the monkey. Every monkey leaving you on the back of one of your people must be covered by one of two insurance policies: (1) recommend, then act, or (2) act, then advise.
4. Check on the monkey. Proper follow-up means healthier monkeys. Every monkey should have a checkup appointment.
When combined with Karpathy's verifiability criteria to assess whether a task actually is a good candidate to hand off (perhaps step 0), this process becomes very suggestive in the context of (Claude code) agents.
"WHY IS IT THAT MANAGERS ARE typically running out of time while their subordinates are typically running out of work?"
This was written in 1974 and times have surely changed because I never wonder this.
Instead I wonder why subordinates are typically running out of time whilst the managers seem to be typically running out of any useful work to do and instead are found doing something else.
Well, that actually happens a lot, with many causes.
For example: manager is perfectionist (at some level), it takes more time to delegate than doing it yourself, there's some attitude from the subordinate to undermine the manager, there's lot of work in a specific season and manager prefer to do it himself than risking his job due to a bad work form a subordinate
In an ideal world, of course the manager would replace the subordinate. But in real life, sometimes you can't find someone in the adequate time and is better to have him doing 75% of the work instead of 0%...
But where I am, managers don't delegate work, they assign work.
I always enjoy rereading this every few years.
Similar, and even older, is the Doctrine of Completed Staff Work. It runs along the same lines, and it's advice that I've valued for many years.
https://govleaders.org//completed-staff-work.php
I'd heard of the "monkey" metaphor from my friend before, but I never really used it in my day-to-day work. When a report came my way with a technical problem they couldn't solve, my first reaction was always, "Okay, I'll take a look," instead of guiding them to take ownership and figure it out on their own.
Looking back, I wish I hadn't let those monkeys jump back onto my back so often. It ended up causing a growing backlog and a lot of pressure for me. It also made it hard for team growth.
This piece really speaks to me, and I'm curious how others here have experienced this in work.
I'm a people pleaser and am involved in too many things at work. Friday afternoon mid-sentence I realised I was putting like 5 monkeys on my back for something I'd get done before we start the sprint Monday morning...
Good article to reflect on. Tone is a bit crass maybe but a good read. Need to get better at helping (if I can) and then delegating, instead of defaulting to "let me look into it".
Gonna spend the morning giving this a read. I'd also like to also recommend, in case any one is dreading the "ugh boss talk", the book "The Fred Factor" by Mark Sanborn [1].
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fred-Factor-Passion-Ordinary-Extraord...
Managers that can't do the work aren't managers, they're supervisors.