Who's Got the Monkey? Who's Responsible for This Todo?

This article discusses task management based on a Harvard Business Review article from 1974.

##Scenario:

A manager is in a hurry and needs to leave the office. An employee approaches them with a problem, and the manager replies, “I’ll think about it later.”

In that moment, the “monkey” or task and responsibility jumps from the employee’s shoulder to the manager’s.

If the manager gets busy and forgets about the decision, the problem (monkey) may escalate and cause damage. However, the employee can say, “I told you about it.”

The article concludes that at all times, we should know who is holding the “monkey.”

Work is about managing the “monkeys” on our own shoulders and passing them on to the appropriate people to handle until the problems are resolved.

Modern tools can make this process much easier:

• Employees should create a Todo and assign it to their manager with a deadline.
• If the employee is skilled, they can add options to research the issue and provide their recommendations.
• Managers should schedule time to clear Todos (monkeys) by making decisions and assigning them back to the relevant people with deadlines.
• If there are problems, they should go back and forth until the problems are resolved and the Todo is complete.

Effective Todos should have a single person responsible.

If multiple people are involved, the Todo should be split into separate tasks.

Tasks that require multiple people to be responsible tend to have no one taking ownership.

Resources that belong to everyone tend to be taken care of by no one.

It’s like wanting to care about everyone, which may mean not actually caring about anyone.