Three Monks and Management Lessons

Here comes one more innovative way of learning management lessons. By watching a movie!!

One of the chinese saying says that-

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 can be explained in a animated feature film "Three Monks"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY

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. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

Process redesigning

• When single monk was hauling water up the hill, he used to get tired and couldn't concentrate on prayers.

                                                    

• When second monk arrived, both monks shared the work of carrying water and could concentrate on their prayers. Although there was a conflict between them regarding sharing of a load, they settled it down using techniques like scale etc.

                                                  

• When third monk arrived, everyone started expecting that others will do the work. Hence there was no water to drink for all of them. When fire occurs in a temple, all three monks unite and work together to put out the fire. This lead to the team building and the monks redesign the process of fetching water using pulley and rope. 

                                    

When three monks started working, process became easier and more cheerful. Their skill sets were utilized effectively. Thus, the excellence in activity was also achieved easily. As,

Excellence = Efficiency * Effectiveness

Productivity measurement

Table depicts a comparative study of number of monks and the buckets of water they carry.

This shows that improving technical factors will lead to improvement in productivity.

As three monks incorporated flat organisation structure at the end, everyone was at same level and everyone had same share of work leading to participative and democratic organization.