THE THREE MONKS
With each class, my understanding
of some basic concepts about management and organization gets enhanced because
of the practical examples discussed in class by Prof Mandi. This week, after
the discussion on goal setting and the smart approach, it was time to watch a
movie – The Three Monks. This is a very famous 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 an animation film with
no dialogues but speaks a lot about team effort and cooperation.
The Movie:
There was a small temple on a
mountain and a little monk in the temple. His daily routine was shouldering
water, chanting sutras, knocking the wooden fish, adding water to the holy
water bottle on the table honoring the Goddess of Mercy, and watching over the
mice from stealing food at night. His life was smooth and comfortable. Soon
after, a tall monk came. He drank half of the jar’s water as soon as he arrived
at the temple, so the little monk asked him to fetch water. The tall one
thought it was unfair for him to fetch water alone, so he asked the young one
to do it together. They could only carry one bucket a time, and they would only
feel content when the bucket was placed in the middle of the shoulder pole.
Anyway, they still had water to drink in this way. Then, a fat monk came. He
wanted to drink, but there was no water in the jar. The short monk and the tall
one asked him to fetch water by himself. He carried a bucket of water, and
drank it up immediately. From then on, nobody would fetch water, so they had no
water. Everyone chanted his own sutras and knocked his own wooden fish. As
nobody would add water to the holy water bottle, the plant in the bottle
withered soon. At night, a mouse came out stealing, but everyone pretended not
to see it. As a result, the mouse was so rampant that it knocked over the
candleholder and caused a fire. Only thus did the three monks make a concerted
effort to put out the fire, and finally awaken. After that, they started
hanging together and the temple never lacked water again.
Management Lessons Learnt From The Movie:
1) A
task can be performed more efficiently when one person has entire control of
activities – In the beginning, there was a single monk in the monastery who was
free to do all the things the way he liked. So he planned for himself and
carried out all the activities without any interference from anyone else. As a
result, there was water readily available at all times.
2) Necessity
of Team Work – Team work is absolutely necessary in order to come out of a
problematic situation. It can be seen from the movie that only when the three
monks came together and put all out efforts that the fire could be
extinguished. Had they not been working as a team it would not have been
possible for them to save the temple from the fire.
3) Undefined Responsibility Relations lead to chaos – Each member of the team needs to be explained his/her responsibilities in the task. Without this, there will not be proper understanding about one’s roles in the team. This may lead to missing out on certain activities and eventually ineffective completion of the task. In the movie, there was no clear cut role assigned to each of the monks. As a result, none of the monks worked and that lead to shortage of water in the monastery.
4) Unnecessary
ego should be avoided among team members –
The three monks in the movie
developed unnecessarily large egos and consequently nobody bothered to discuss
the problem with each other and find a suitable solution. It is in the team’s
interests that ego be avoided and cooperation be given its due credit.
 |
| Bring About Innovation |
.jpg) |
| Avoid Ego Clashes |
5) Initiative
– None of the monks in the movie took the initiative to divide the work among
themselves. They let things happen
without any effort to control them and the this resulted in the fire at the
temple. It is necessary in any team to take initiative towards resolving any
issues and working as a team.
6) Innovation
– After the fire had been put off, the monks amicably worked together and
designed an innovative pulley system where every monk had a well defined job
and their efforts also got reduced. This shows that innovation can lead to
unique and helpful solutions for any situation and organization.
7) Resolving
Conflict – Conflict of interest can arise in any workplace and any organization
but it is imperative to resolve them amicably and work in alignment towards the
goal of the organization. The three monks also finally resolved their conflicts
and then lived happily together in the monastery.
8)
Productivity – the methods applied by the monks
included bringing 2 buckets by one monk and bringing 1 bucket by 2 monks. This brings
in the debate of individual vs team productivity. As per productivity analysis
method 2 is more productive than method 1. This is shown in the table given
below. Assuming one 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
|
 |
| 1 Man - 2 Buckets |
 |
| 2 Men - 1 Bucket |
No comments:
Post a Comment