By Andreas Pettersson, Founder, Leaders ADAPT
Who's Got the Monkey is the most reprinted article Harvard Business Review has published, and nearly every manager who has read it still has forty monkeys by Friday. The idea is perfect. The habit it requires is the hard part, and the article, written in 1974, does not give you the sentence to say in the hallway.
This page gives you the idea in plain terms, the five rules as Oncken and Wass wrote them, and the five minute version I use so the monkey stays where it belongs.
I run Leaders ADAPT and wrote the 5-Minute Leader. The Delegation Protocol in it is, in large part, Who's Got the Monkey rewritten as something you can do between meetings. The article explains why the work boomerangs. The protocol is the sentence that stops it.
Quick answer: Who's Got the Monkey is a 1974 Harvard Business Review article by William Oncken Jr. and Donald L. Wass. The monkey is the next move on any problem. When an employee says "we have a problem" and the manager says "let me think about it", the monkey jumps to the manager. The fix is to never let one leave a conversation on your back unless you chose it.
The idea in two paragraphs
Who's Got the Monkey is the question a manager asks after every conversation with an employee, meaning who now holds the next move on the problem that was discussed. The article, reprinted by HBR in 1999, describes a manager walking down a hall when an employee stops him with a problem. The manager says he will look into it and walks on. The monkey has changed backs.
By Friday the manager has a dozen such monkeys, the employees are waiting on him, and he spends his weekend doing their work while they wait in the car park to ask how it is going. Oncken and Wass call this subordinate imposed time, and their point is that most of a manager's overload is not imposed by the boss or the system. It is imposed by the people below, one hallway sentence at a time.
The five rules of monkey care
Oncken and Wass gave five rules. Here they are, with what each one means in a week that has chat messages in it.
| Rule | What it means today |
|---|---|
| Monkeys are fed or shot, never left to starve | Every open problem either gets a decision or gets killed. "Let me think about it" is a starving monkey |
| Keep the monkey population below the number you can feed | If you cannot check on it this week, you should not own it |
| Feed by appointment only | Problems come to the 1:1 or the stand up, not to your inbox at 11pm |
| Feed face to face or by phone, never by mail | A written reply to a problem is you taking the next move. A conversation puts the move back |
| Every monkey gets a next feeding time and a degree of initiative | Set the time you will hear about it and how much they can decide before then |
The fifth rule is the one that matters most, and it is the one managers skip because it takes a sentence they do not have ready.
Boomerang check: does your work stay delegated, or does it come back?
Three questions, scored to the protocol that fixes the leak. The 5-Minute Leader is the four protocols, Delegation, 1:1, Accountability and Rhythm, written down so a manager can run them in about five minutes a day, so tasks stop boomeranging back half done.
Get the 5-Minute Leader or see what is inside the 5-Minute Leader.
The degrees of initiative, and the two that are banned
The article lists five degrees of initiative an employee can take. Wait until told. Ask what to do. Recommend, then act. Act, then advise at once. Act, then report routinely.
Oncken and Wass ban the first two for anyone who reports to you. Both hand the next move to the manager. Any employee operating at degree one or two is, by definition, sending monkeys.
I compress the remaining three into the authority levels I state out loud at every handover, because five degrees is too many to remember in a hallway.
| Level | Said out loud | Maps to |
|---|---|---|
| 1, Full | "Decide and do it. Tell me after" | Act, then report |
| 2, Recommend | "Bring me your recommendation, I decide" | Recommend, then act |
| 3, Instruct | "Do exactly this, then check in" | Act, then advise |
The level is the line most managers never say, and it is why the monkey comes back. Without it, the employee does not know whether they are allowed to make the next move, so they ask, and the asking is the monkey.
The hallway sentence the article does not give you
Here is what to say when someone stops you with "do you have a minute, we have a problem." It takes under three minutes and the monkey leaves on the back it arrived on.
First, ask what they recommend. Not "what is the problem", which invites the full story and ends with you owning it. "What do you recommend?" If they have nothing, the answer is "come back with two options and we will pick one at Thursday's 1:1." Monkey stays.
Second, agree the next move and who owns it, out loud. "So the next move is you calling the carrier. Yes?"
Third, state the authority level. "Level one, decide and tell me." Or "level two, bring me the two quotes and I will choose."
Fourth, set the feeding time. "I will hear about it Thursday." Feeding by appointment, as the rule says.
That is the same shape as the 3-Minute Delegation Conversation in the Delegation Protocol: outcome, authority level, repeat back, check in time. The protocol is for handing work out. The hallway version is for refusing to take it back, and it is the same four lines run in reverse.
Why the monkey comes back anyway
Three reasons, and the article names one of them.
The manager enjoys it. Oncken and Wass are honest about this. Being needed feels like being important, and a manager with forty monkeys feels busy in a way that looks like leadership. The question to ask is whether the people below you are waiting on you, because if they are, you are the bottleneck and the busyness is the symptom.
The 70 percent problem. The employee's version will not be your version, and the first time you see it at 70 percent of how you would have done it, you take it back to fix it. That is a monkey jumping with your help. If 70 percent of your way gets the outcome, it stays with them, and the reverse delegation page covers the moment the work tries to come home.
There is no board. If nobody can see which monkeys are out, with whom, at which level, due when, the monkeys drift back silently. I keep a Delegation Board, one line per handed over task, and a glance at it on Friday shows which ones have quietly returned. The how to delegate page has the board and the handover together, and the delegation assessment will tell you in a few minutes how many monkeys you are currently feeding that you did not choose.
Who's Got the Monkey, as a daily habit
Oncken and Wass explained the problem in 1974 and it has not been improved on. What they did not write was the version a manager runs at 9am on a Tuesday. The Delegation Protocol in The 5-Minute Leader is that version. I wrote it after scaling a company to more than 150 people and finding that every one of my managers knew the monkey idea and was feeding thirty of them. Four protocols, Delegation, 1:1, Accountability and Rhythm, each about five minutes a day, so the work that leaves your desk stays gone.
The Delegation Protocol holds the 70% Test for deciding what to hand over, the 3-Minute Delegation Conversation with the three authority levels, the 25% Rule for how much of your week should be delegation, and the Delegation Board that makes returning monkeys visible.
There is one red flag in the protocol, a sentence employees say that means the monkey is about to jump, and once you hear it you cannot stop hearing it.
Who's Got the Monkey FAQ
What does who's got the monkey mean?
It is the question from a 1974 Harvard Business Review article by William Oncken Jr. and Donald L. Wass. The monkey is the next move on a problem. Every time an employee brings a problem to a manager and leaves with the manager saying "let me think about it", the monkey has jumped from the employee's back to the manager's, and the manager now works for the employee.
What are the five rules of monkey management?
As Oncken and Wass set them out: monkeys are fed or shot, never left to starve. The monkey population stays below the number the manager has time to feed. Monkeys are fed by appointment only. Monkeys are fed face to face or by phone, never by mail. And every monkey has a next feeding time and a stated degree of initiative assigned.
What is reverse delegation?
Reverse delegation is when work that was handed to an employee comes back to the manager, usually through a question such as "what do you think I should do?" that the manager answers by taking the next step. The employee did not do it on purpose and the manager did not notice. Who's Got the Monkey is the original description of it.
How do you stop taking the monkey?
Never leave a conversation with the next move on your side unless you chose it. When a problem arrives, ask what they recommend, agree the next move and who owns it, state how much they can decide alone, and set the time you will hear about it. The exchange takes under three minutes and the monkey walks out on the back it came in on.
Is Who''s Got the Monkey still relevant?
Yes, and more so. The 1974 version had monkeys arriving in hallways and memos. In 2026 they arrive in chat messages at a rate the article never imagined, and a manager who replies "let me look" to each one collects forty monkeys by lunch. The rules are unchanged. The volume is what makes them urgent.
What are the degrees of initiative in Who''s Got the Monkey?
Oncken and Wass list five: wait until told, ask what to do, recommend and then act, act and advise at once, act and report routinely. The first two are banned for anyone who works for you, because both hand the manager the next move. The practical version is three authority levels on every delegated task, stated out loud when it is handed over.
Count the monkeys tonight
Write down every open problem you are currently holding the next move on. Next to each one, write whose problem it was before it was yours. Who's got the monkey is a question with a number as the answer, and for most managers the number is the reason the weekend is gone. Tomorrow, when the first one arrives in the hallway, ask what they recommend and say the level.
How many of the monkeys on your list did you choose?
