From the course: Leadership: Practical Skills
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Don't take the monkey
- Now when you're delegating, there's one more thing you need to know about, which is the concept of taking the monkey. This first came from a book called The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. It's a good book; I'd recommend reading it. And the idea is that when someone comes to see you, and they say, boss, I've got this problem; what do you think? Or, boss, I've been talking to this supplier, and they're not being very helpful. If you say, okay, leave it with me, there's an imaginary monkey that jumps from their back onto yours. And that's okay. Sometimes, maybe you should take that monkey. But the problem is, if you've got five people who work for you, and they give you two monkeys a day, you're taking ten monkeys a day; you're taking 50 monkeys a week. And you probably can't deal with that many. You might go into the red by 30 monkeys a week, 'cause you've only dealt with 20 of them. So after a month, you've got, what is that, 120 monkeys on your back (chuckles), and what will…
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