Three monks - A movie to teach productivity and team work

Three monks - A movie which teaches productivity and team work

In the next class, Dr. Mandi taught us a management lesson by showing a Chinese animated short film. Three monks is a famous 20 minute animated short film by famous director in 1980. Movie is based on a 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". This short film has won many awards as listed below.

·         Won the outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture.

·         Won the Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.

·         Won four international awards including a Silver Bear for Short Film at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival in 1982.

Here I am narrating the story briefly.

Monk 1

Story starts in a monastery on top of a hill. There is only water source(Lake) in the bottom of the hill. He fetches two buckets of water daily from the lake. He uses a stick to balance the buckets in his shoulder by fastening them in two ends of stick. He performs his routine work of bringing water from the lake to the hilltop and fills the water in a bottle with a small plant near god. He chants mantras daily and a rat comes in the night to steal food and disturbs him.’

Monk 2

Second monk came to monastery, first monk offers him water. The second monk consumes the whole water. Now he realised that it’s his duty to bring the water again and continued it for some days. Second monk now realised that first monk has taken advantage of him and didn’t fetch the water. Now they both felt the work should be equally divided. Hence they decided to bring single bucket of water by single stick. As the second monk is tall, the weight of the bucket is not balanced. They both suggested methods which are favour to themselves but both didn’t agree. They come up with a standard solution of measuring the centre of the stick to tie the rope of bucket which allowed the equal distribution of load to both of them.

Monk 3

The third monk has come to monastery and drank all the water. Other two insisted him to bring the water from lake. After bringing water from lake to hilltop, third monk drinks the whole water again. All three monks starts telling the others to bring and fill the water but nobody fetch water. Hence they had no water. They chanted mantras and slept.

That night a rat came out and hit the candle which resulted in fire in monastery. In chaos, they started bringing water randomly and confused about how to reduce the fire. Finally they come up with an innovative idea of using the pulley in hilltop to bring the water down from the lake directly. One monk stands near the lake to fill water in bucket. Other pulls up the bucket to the hilltop. Third one takes the water from pulley to monastery.

Management lessons learnt from three monk story.

Productivity = output / input

Single monk carried two buckets of water with much energy than two monks carrying single bucket. This implies that if the team work increase the productivity of work will increase. Following table brings out the  productivity measurement of team work by three monks.

Practical thinking

When two monks carried a single bucket of water, weight distribution to them was not correct because of height of monks. Tall monk came with a solution to measure the distance of rope by palm. But short monk didn’t agree because it’s a subjective solution. Finally they agreed to find the centre of stick by an object. Practical and pragmatic thinking is necessary to achieve solution for any problem.

Innovation

When the third monk entered, there was a chaos of fetching the water by monks. After the fire in monastery , monks find out the importance of team work and came up with an innovative idea to use the pulley to bring the water in hilltop. All three monks had respective roles to them in fetching water. Their satisfaction was achieved by teamwork and innovation. Efforts needed was brought down drastically by this idea.

Dr. Mandi has made us to realise the importance of teamwork, innovation, pragmatic thinking in an organisation with his unique teaching skills.