The Three Monks Story!!!!!

This blog is about the learning from a great Chinese animation movie - “The Three Monks”. I don't know about everyone, but I found it interesting. It was a nice departure from the normal text-book study method, and that's true about the whole POM course here in NITIE. In fact, that's what an MBA education should be because a picture is worth a thousand words. Coming back to the movie - It is about three Chinese monks who live in a monastery on the top of the mountain. It's really fun to watch.

The principles of management can be understood by a movie on three monks. Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the Cultural Revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water; two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water." The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk. The film tells the story from the aspect of the Buddhist bhikkhu.

Lets split the movie into three parts. We move on to a part from the other when a monk joins in.

The Lone Runner:

The first monk comes in, sees that the monastery is in bad health. A newbie, filled with enthusiasm, the monk takes all the burden on himself, for there is no one to fall back upon. He fetches two cans of water at a time and does it with glee. Chin runs a self sufficient system. But soon, fatigue sets in. The initial enthusiasm is lost but still life goes on!

This model of overburdening a useful resource, might give very good returns in the initial stage. But as time passes by the returns will be diminishing and the motivation to work will be long gone.

So, the lone man standing model for Human resources is a disaster. Any company should make sure that none of its employees are overburdened.

 

Dream Team:

Now comes the second monk. He is extended a very warm welcome by the Chin who is more than happy that there is some one to run the show along with him now. Once the real work starts, differences set in. Chin wants to establish his superiority and Chu does not cave in.

There is an instant cold war.

Analyzing the root cause for their difference of opinion, we can understand that it is because no 'standards' are set to run the company. There is no higher authority nor is there a rule book for the Chin and Chu to follow. This is later sorted out when Chin draws a scale and makes a fair ruChi.

This is again a lesson for any company. There should be rules and not rulers.!

 

Awesome threesome:

After a while comes Chi, our third monk. He is plump and drains all of the water. When the time comes to refill the water, he relents. Now the other two monks who have been doing their work religiously start fighting too and everything comes to a standstill. Harmony is lost, once and forever.

Such teams are quite common in organizations. It is upto the managers to sense this enmity in the air and weed it at the budding stages.

 

However, in the story, the "hand of god" does it for the monks. The monastery is set of fire by a mischievous rat and the monks are left running from pillar to post. In the spurt of the moment, they throw away all their differences and put an "emergency system into place". Somehow they tune the fire down and sit back to think on devising a sustainable system and the rest is understood.

We can relate a few management lessons from the story: 

1. Teamwork does enhances the efficiency in the working of task

The Three monks allow personal pride to interfere with the performance of daily tasks, each believing that the other two should be the ones to go downhill to fetch water. When a fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they have been and work together to save the temple. So, from this we learn that in an organization and in a team, its important to take personal vanity out of the equation and to perform the duty at hand so that there is no regret later. A Manager has to take a note of this and check for any signs of work-delegation to others in his team.

2.  Disputes tend to arise when there is more than one person involved

When the third monk went downhill to fetch water for the first time, he came back and drank water all by himself, exhibiting a selfish tendency not aligned to the goals of the team ie. To have water stored at all times. This led to further animosity among the 3 monks and the task never got completed. Hence even in an organization, selfish motives should be discouraged. A team working towards a common goal is the best direction to be heading to!

3. Scientific and objectives measurements and instruments should be used to resolve the conflict

Complex Problems, Simple Solutions - This is the motto of decision making for any manager or team member in an organization. When the first two monks were trying to push the weight of the bucket towards each other, we in the class were asked to give a possible solution to the problem. And well, a simple solution was suggested by Pulkit Goenka (Roll No 115) that they should mark the middle of the stick so that they do not fight.

There were a lot of other possible alternates given by others too like:

• One person getting water one day
• Two persons more bucket
• Two sticks, four buckets
• Divide the work in half
• Get a motor and connect a pipe
• Attitude problem - Brain wash

But in an organization, the above mentioned alternates cannot be applied. We have to think rationally and not in a bounded territory.

4. The most efficient method to solve a problem evolves over a period of time

When posed with a question from our professor, that whether the two monks should get 2 buckets on alternate days or a bucket shared by both of them, most of us answered "Alternate Days" and by now it's easy to guess that it was the wrong answer because it was driven by common sense and not Productivity analysis according to which getting 1 bucket shared by the two monks is a much better proposition. Just to make it clearer, here is a table illustrating the productivity statistics in either case. Assuming 1 Man uses 1 unit of energy to lift 1 bucket.

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2

5. Teamwork and team interest should take precedence over the personal interest

Teamwork can lead to better decisions, products, or services. The quality of teamwork may be measured by analyzing the following six components of collaboration among team members: communication, coordination, balance of member contributions, mutual support, effort, and cohesion. Teamwork quality as measured in this manner correlated with team performance in the areas of effectiveness (i.e., producing high quality work) and efficiency (i.e., meeting schedules and budgets).