Indiana State University professor Todd Whitaker takes a humorous and insightful approach to handling slackers in the workplace using the old metaphor of "monkey on the back". Essentially, when poor performing employees force their peers or managers to take up their slack, or provide poor customer service, they are essentially "shifting the monkey" of responsibility off themselves.

Whitaker condenses his message down to three principles:

Where is the monkey?
Where should the monkey be?
How do I shift the monkey to its proper place?

The book details specific examples and tactics that managers can use to deal with bad employees ranging from criers and liars to complainers, from those that always have a ready excuse for their failures to those who are simply apathetic. The workplace is replete with "monkeys" of all types and some, such as Guilt Monkeys, Fear Monkeys, Worry Monkeys, and Punishment Monkeys, are not the best management approaches for dealing with bad employees.

Whitaker's scenarios reach beyond the office environment, however. It extends to service organizations, department stores, restaurants and any business that employs a staff large enough to contain a few miscreants. Shifting the Monkey details methods for putting the responsibility and accountability back where it belongs onto the bad employees, thereby allowing them to either improve their performance or continue on the path to eventual termination.

Poor management decisions and blanket policies intended to address problem customers and employees can also place unnecessary "monkeys on the backs" of valuable customers and solid employees, the results of which could easily inflict even more damage to the company through loss of business and heavy turnover.

While some of the examples cited in the book may seem simplistic, they can be adapted to just about any given business situation and further, into your personal life. How many family members or friends are constant liars, criers, complainers, or slackers? We all know them and Whitaker provides a set of transformative tools for dealing with them. ( )