By Cassie Solomon, RACI Solutions
A few years into my consulting career, I stumbled on an ancient Harvard Business Review article called “Who’s Got the Monkey” by William Oncken, Jr and Donald L. Wass.[1] Originally published in 1974 (and oh boy it shows) it eventually became a book called “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey” by Ken Blanchard in 1999. (Still dated.)
In spite of the fact that these two resources read as incredibly old-fashioned – let’s retire the monkey metaphor okay? – both are still filled with true gems about holding people accountable. My goal is to bring forward some of these gems, updated for the modern workplace. One upgrade is calling these “gremlins” instead of “monkeys”.
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