The Three Monks out to teach us Management ! Here is the video -
The story of the three Buddhist Monks is an anime film directed by A Da. The film has got many recognitions including:
- 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.
It is a short and beautiful movie with a wonderful message. A must watch for managers and practitioners who try to implement working-teams in an organization without looking at the other side of the picture.
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 Story is about 3 monks living in a temple on the top of a hill. Due to the efforts involved in fetching the water- none of the monks fetches the water- though they are thirsty. They keep on expecting from one another.One night suddenly a fire breaks out, Here is when the three unite and work as a team, to put out the fire. Since then they remain unitedly and the temple never lacks water again
Lessons Learnt :
1) Optimizing the efforts: A manager is responsible for optimizing the efforts put in to complete the task. This can be done with devising a proper strategy to complete the task.
During the fire, though all the monks were into the task, the efficiency could have been magnanimously increased had they had given some thought to the process.
2) Team Work : This video serves the perfect example of team work. Till the monks were egoistic and not willing to come together as team, they all suffered by being thirsty themselves. But during the fire breakdown time, when they came together the issues got resolved. In every organization, we need to keep our personal ego aside, and work for the betterment of the organization firstly. Coming up together also distributes the work load, helping each individual to perform better at his assigned task,
3) Live in the future - This is a very important lesson learnt out here. If the Monks wouldn't have had their egos, and had been regularly fetching and hence storing water, the damage caused out of fire would have been less. We need "Innovative method" and "before the time" approach in any organization for getting success. There should always be a back-up plan ready in-case anything goes wrong and not take decision impulsively.
4) Productivity : Productivity = output/ input.
Out here - till it was a single person carrying out the task of carrying bucket one-by-one to the temple - he got exhausted after few rounds. But when , the sharing of buckets idea between 2 monks came in, the productivity increased drastically, since they were not much exhausted. Hence a manager should always know how to delegate the tasks- to increase productivity.
5 ) Bureaucracy : In case of lawlessness- Anarchy subsidizes. The panicky situation could have ben avoided, had there been rules put down properly beforehand. Hence the instructions should be properly conveyed to each employee in an organisation so that- later on in terms of crisis, no confusion exits !
