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. 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. 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 plot is as follows: A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.
However, beneath this simple story lies some of the very interesting concepts of management : Division and Multiplication of work. In my previous blog, I had explained about the concept of organization and how it evolves from craftsmanship by dividing the work to a level that it eventually doesn't need a craftsman or a highly skilled niche person to do it, rather an automated machine or a layman could do it. But then in this blog, I intend to highlight on multiplying the work and contrast how a mere increase in the number of people doing the job divides the work but it doesn't add to the productivity. Multiplication of work force without an equivalent increase in work done would result in decline of productiveness as we can see in this film.
If one monk needs one bucket of water, then two of them would need two; but if they bring only one, then they would have to go and fetch it again. And we can see clearly this shortage problem when the third monk brings two buckets of water but the other monks don't get to drink any.
Humans have a natural tendency to reduce the work done by them and get the same output. This is good when the reduced workforce is put to some other good use. But if they choose to sit idle then the problem starts. And that's what we see when all the three monks feel thirsty but none of them go to fetch water.
A real manager is like the mouse in the film. He/She sets a fire of motivation amongst the employees so that they use their resources whether it be physical or intellectual for greater productivity. Seeing the fire, the monks forget about their differences and join up together to fetch more buckets of water than they could have imagined in normal circumstances. This helps them to realize that with synergy and efficient process they could multiply the work. And finally they succeed in it. They set up a pulley system with each monk doing a certain task enabling them to fetch not just 3 buckets of water but as much water as they need.
(Source : Wikipedia)
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 plot is as follows: A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.
However, beneath this simple story lies some of the very interesting concepts of management : Division and Multiplication of work. In my previous blog, I had explained about the concept of organization and how it evolves from craftsmanship by dividing the work to a level that it eventually doesn't need a craftsman or a highly skilled niche person to do it, rather an automated machine or a layman could do it. But then in this blog, I intend to highlight on multiplying the work and contrast how a mere increase in the number of people doing the job divides the work but it doesn't add to the productivity. Multiplication of work force without an equivalent increase in work done would result in decline of productiveness as we can see in this film.
Humans have a natural tendency to reduce the work done by them and get the same output. This is good when the reduced workforce is put to some other good use. But if they choose to sit idle then the problem starts. And that's what we see when all the three monks feel thirsty but none of them go to fetch water.
A real manager is like the mouse in the film. He/She sets a fire of motivation amongst the employees so that they use their resources whether it be physical or intellectual for greater productivity. Seeing the fire, the monks forget about their differences and join up together to fetch more buckets of water than they could have imagined in normal circumstances. This helps them to realize that with synergy and efficient process they could multiply the work. And finally they succeed in it. They set up a pulley system with each monk doing a certain task enabling them to fetch not just 3 buckets of water but as much water as they need.
This is the core learning from this story also:
Without Cooperation, 1 monk can fetch 2 buckets of water, 2 monks can fetch 1 bucket of water and 3 monks will fetch no water at all.
With cooperation,
3 monks can increase the efficiency of the process to a level
previously unattainable. (Innovation, creativity etc plays an important
part).
Thus
every manager who profess the importance of team work should also look
at the flip side and the negative effects by having an imbalanced team.
Pick two top class Singles tennis players, put them in a team and
contest against the number one seeded doubles team. Even though
individually the latter is weaker, they can beat the superior opposition
thanks to coordination and team work.
I miss MBA jargon like - productivity calculations, participative management, roles, alternate methods of work.. try to incorporate them..
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