Management Lessons from Short Movie "Three Monks"

Objective: The Objective of this Blog is to analyse the Management Lessons learnt from the short movie "Three Monks".

Overview: In my last blog, we discussed in detail the exercise of "Tower building and Learning Goal setting and Performance". In this blog, we will learn the management concepts from the Short movie "Three Monks".

Three Monks, is a Chinese animated movie which points out the basic conflicts which are faced by an organisation as it increases in size and number. It also points out how the behaviour of individuals changes in crisis situation.This 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 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".

To understand the concepts better, let's watch the movie first :

Here's the summary of the movie:

"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. One night, a rat comes to scrounge and 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."

I am sure you must have got a good flavour of what the movie is about.Lets discuss the management  lessons from the Movie:

1. Teamwork improves the efficiency of task in hand.

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.  As the size of the Team/Organisation increase, the chances of internal conflict increases.

3.  Use of technology eases the job in hand, thus leading to increased efficiency.

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. 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).

7. It's the attitude of each team member that determines the final outcome of task in hand.

When the two monks were trying to divide the load of the bucket equally, the taller monk used his bigger hands to show that the bucket should be hung closer to the first monk, but the presence of a measuring instrument helped them get the exact center and resolved the problem. Hence it is important for a team and a manger to have the right attitude.

8. Synergistic roles:   Individual sums become bigger than what was there individually.

To put out the fire each monk panicked and tried his best to run down to the river and bring the bucket full of water. But this process was long and tiring, and also had too many glitches on the road. So it proved to be ineffective.

Coordinated effort dosed of fire very easily and without being tired.

Productivity is Important. Productivity is about how well an organization converts resource inputs into goods or services. Workplace productivity is about how firms can utilize labour and skills, innovation, technology and organizational structure to improve the quantity and quality of their output.

Basically it's about exploring all the ways that can make a working environment more efficient.

Why is productivity important?

• Basis for improvements in real incomes and economic well-being.

• Monetary policy (inflationary pressures)

• Fiscal policy (financing of health, education, welfare)

• Slow productivity growth = conflicting demands for distribution of income more likely.