A lesson by three monks...

Another big management gyan by our favourite Professor Dr Mandi by his own peculiar methods.

This time it was a film which is based on 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".

History of this film:

The story of the three Monks is an animated film directed by A Da. The film has got many recognition including:

i)        outstanding film award at China's  Ministry of Culture.   

ii)       Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.

iii)     four international awards including a Silver Bear for Short Film 

         at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival in 1982.

Story Highlight:

A monk lives in a monastery on top of a hill. His daily routine was to worship, do his rituals and bring two buckets of water from a water body down the hill. One day another monk joins him and he tries to share the job with the monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. After some days they are joined by another monk. Now none of them fetches water and they expect others to do it. 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 monastery   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 monastery never lacks water again.

Lets discuss and analyze the various situations that arises in the film and also relate to real life situation.

Pursuit of Excellence

Excellence leads to the increase in effective productivity. Excellence can be defined as the product of efficiency and effectiveness. In the two cases when two monks carried water and then the three monks did the job there was increase in excellence. In the story there is no dearth of talent as all three monks are equally capable, but still as a team they struggled initially.

 Innovation

After the fire incident in the monastery there are some innovations. They come to the conclusion that it is better to think in terms of team goals rather than individualistic goals. The monk at the bottom fills the buckets, the middle monk works on pulley system and the third monk at the top douses the fire with water in the bucket. This shows difficult situation inspires ingenious solutions. 

 Responsibility

This story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. 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’ve been and work together to save the temple.

 Productivity

Productivity is important.

Productivity determines how well an organization converts its resources into results.

 Workplace productivity is all about how firm can utilize its labours and skills, innovation, technology and organizational structure to improve the quantity and quality of their products.

Basically, it is all about exploring the ways that can make working environment much efficient.

We know that productivity = output/ input

We can see that when one monk was carrying two bucket the productivity (output/input) is 1 but when 1 bucket is carried by two monk then the energy per unit share by each monk is 1/2 (as they a equally sharing the load of bucket) due to which the productivity increases to 2. 

it overall means that when we are working in a team than total productivity increases.