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Home » Business And Finance Articles » Monkey Management 3 Simple Solutions To Reclaim Your Time Focus And Sanity

Monkey Management: 3 Simple Solutions to Reclaim Your Time, Focus, and Sanity

Do you ever feel like you are carrying the weight of a thousand people on your back? Somehow no matter how good you think you are at delegating it still feels like you have a thousand things to do. It's a feeling many entrepreneurs, managers and business owners have. William Oncken, author of Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey, calls it "the monkey on your back."

Here is how it happens.

With all good intentions, you have a conversation with your webmaster. You lay out all the steps necessary to get the website up. You identify when it needs to be done by. The next thing you know, the date comes and goes and the website project isn't done. What happened?

As you discuss with your webmaster why it wasn't done, he tells you he is waiting on the auto-responders for your website opt-in page. In your mind, you never heard that you were going to have to create these auto-responders. Now you have another urgent, unplanned task on your desk.

Bahm! A monkey just got planted on your back.

Then you have a meeting with your marketing consultant. You receive a list of issues that must be handled before she can move forward with your marketing plans. You truly thought that these were things she had committed to taking care of but now she says they are your responsibilities.

Wham! Another monkey landed on your back. No wonder you feel so weighted down.

If you find that tasks, projects and deliverables that you delegate to other people don't get accomplished and somehow end up back in your lap to complete, then you have a monkey management challenge.

A monkey is any idea, opportunity or task that when you try to delegate it lands on your back. Typically it happens when a project gets stalled because the other person doesn't have the authority or knowledge to solve the problem.

You probably have a Monkey Management problem if you find yourself trying to delegate but say things like:

* Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it (or I'll handle it.)

* If you have problems, just give me a call.

* If you can't do it I'll figure out how to get it done.

* You don't have time? OK, well I can knock it out pretty fast.

* I'll find someone to do it for you.

Monkey Management is by far one of the great reasons entrepreneurs get overwhelmed! And with good reason too. Here you think that you've successfully delegated but somehow that monkey ends up on your back.How do you solve the Monkey Management challenge? As a recovering Monkey Manager, I've got three simple solutions for you.

1. Make sure that the person you are delegating to understands how much authority and autonomy they have in completing the task. Do they need to check with you or can they use discretion to complete on their own?

2. Determine a specific date to get a check in on the status of the project. If there is no "deadline" to communicate progress, other projects will somehow become more important.

3. Never hand off a task without a complete and thorough plan of how the project or task will be accomplished. Be sure to check for knowledge, resources and time availability by the person assigned to the project.

Now imagine what your life and business will be like when you hand off a project to someone and can feel confident that the monkey won't land on your back again. Now you can really get on the fast-track!

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Accounting Principles & Standards: Avoid Them At Your Peril

Accounting principles are the basic assumptions, rules of operation, and essential characteristics that make up the framework for the construction of accounting financial statements.

Long ago, I was perplexed to discover that there was no "set" of accounting principles that was presented in one form such as you might find in the Bill of Rights. This is not to say that the principles are incomplete or vague, it only means that the definitions of accounting principles can be presented in various formats, which may lead to confusion for some people, especially beginners.

Be that as it may, accounting principles are absolutely necessary when preparing financial statements, just as the rules of a particular card game make the card game possible in the first place. Accounting principles are like the glue that holds the accounting process together. For example, financial statements have an overall objective, which is to provide the user of the statements a useful tool for making business decisions.

In order to be useful, the accounting information must have certain characteristics, such as being dependable and practical. To be dependable, the accounting information must be unbiased, accurate, and verifiable. To be practical, accounting information must be predictable, prepared in a timely fashion, and be able to provide meaningful feedback. Additional characteristics are that the accounting information must be consistent, comparable, serve a utilitarian need (such as cost/benefit), and make a material difference.

Besides characteristics, certain operational rules are established as to when revenue and expenses are reported; how expenses are matched to revenue; what to do when a choice can be made that might overstate or understate figures; and, what information should be disclosed so that the reader will fully understand the circumstances under which the information is being presented.

There are also basic assumptions that the reader can count on, such as: the information is related to the business entity only and doesn't have any unrelated information mixed in; the business is a going concern and won't cease operations soon; the financial information presented is measured in specific time intervals such as a month, quarter or year; the financial information is using a certain unit of measure such as dollars, not board feet, etc.; the information is presented at historical cost, i.e., when received, paid, or incurred; and, the method of accounting being used is double-entry and not some other method.

These are accounting principles as opposed to accounting standards. An accounting standard is an agreement as to how an accounting issue will be treated. For instance, a standard might state what type of inventory system is appropriate to use for a certain type of business; how capital leases should be recorded; how many years intangible assets should be amortized; what methods of depreciation should be used, and so on. There are literally thousands of accounting standards that have been issued over the years. These standards are constantly being revised or discarded as they become outdated.

If you want to play the accounting "game of cards", you must become familiar with the "rules of the game", which are accounting principles and standards. If you choose to not play by the rules, you do so at your own peril, as we have seen recently in the U.S. corporate accounting scandals.