This week I saw a small animated film "Three Monks" also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests, a Chinese Animated Feature Film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1980. The movie is so much entertaining and educating that I saw it 3 times, though my course requires it to seen only once. Basic Idea is to learn Principles of Organization and Management.
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." When the movie starts a note appears in which first column states "one monk fetches water to drink", the second column reads "two monks carry water to drink" and the third one just states, "three monks". The video link is given below:
Although the movie gives some important lessons but more interesting is "How we can relate it to and learn to apply these lessons in Today's Organizational Structure?".
Let me first tell the story in brief:
A monk arrives in a temple on top of a hill and upon finding a dry plant goes down the hill to get water. Then he starts to perform this task daily for his own needs and temple needs. Then one day another monk joins him. 1st monk tries to offload his work on 2nd monk but it continued only for one day. So they both share the load. On the arrival of a third monk the same process got repeated. 2nd day everyone sxpected that someone else will take on this task. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty and the plant dries again. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a united effort to put out the fire. They understand the old saying "unity is strength" and device a method which leads to equal load sharing between the three of them and they begin to live a harmonious life.
Important things to be learned from this movie:
4. Creating a System
Important lesson for a manager is to take care when creating a new system in organization. A system should never be created according to the size of people as it will suffer as the number of people engaged in the system changes. A system must be created in a way that a normal variation in number of people should not affect it.
5. How to achieve Excellence?
For achieving higher excellence two factors are most important. Highly effective people and machines, and highly efficient processes.
Excellence = Efficiency x Effectiveness
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." When the movie starts a note appears in which first column states "one monk fetches water to drink", the second column reads "two monks carry water to drink" and the third one just states, "three monks". The video link is given below:
Although the movie gives some important lessons but more interesting is "How we can relate it to and learn to apply these lessons in Today's Organizational Structure?".
Let me first tell the story in brief:
A monk arrives in a temple on top of a hill and upon finding a dry plant goes down the hill to get water. Then he starts to perform this task daily for his own needs and temple needs. Then one day another monk joins him. 1st monk tries to offload his work on 2nd monk but it continued only for one day. So they both share the load. On the arrival of a third monk the same process got repeated. 2nd day everyone sxpected that someone else will take on this task. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty and the plant dries again. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a united effort to put out the fire. They understand the old saying "unity is strength" and device a method which leads to equal load sharing between the three of them and they begin to live a harmonious life.
Important things to be learned from this movie:
1. Disputes often arise when more than one person is involved
When there were two monks they tried to put more weight on one another while carrying water. When there were three monks they were even fighting to let each other drink water and later on for who will get the water.
But more important is how can we resolve these disputes in an organization. The movie showed that in the time of crises they got together and distributed the work.
Division of Labor can be the solution to this problem. the separation of a work
process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate
person or group of persons. It is most often applied to systems of mass production and is one of the basic organizing principles of the assembly line.
Breaking down work into simple, repetitive tasks eliminates unnecessary
motion and limits the handling of different tools and parts. The
consequent reduction in production time and the ability to replace
craftsmen with lower-paid, unskilled workers result in lower production
costs and a less expensive final product. Contrary to popular belief,
however, division of labor does not necessarily lead to a decrease in
skills—known as proletarianization—among the working population. The
Scottish economist ADAM SMITH saw this splitting of tasks as a key to economic progress by providing a cheaper and more efficient means of producing goods.
2. Productivity
The question here is whether the two monks
should get 2 buckets on alternate days or a bucket shared by both of
them, I thought "Alternate Days" and after lecture 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
|
2
|
1
|
2 Men
|
1
|
0.5
|
2
|
3. Process Improvement and Innovation
The single monk was lifting two water buckets manually on a rod. Two monks were lifting one bucket on a rod. But after the crises 3 monks developed a new mechanized process for lifting buckets. They used a pulley at the edge of hill to tow the bucket. The work got distributed and the output of the process increased and at the same time effort was drastically reduced. In the same way by achieving process improvement and streamlining the process, we can get better co-ordination and better output.
Another process improvement was done when two monks used scale to set the place on rod to hang the bucket to distribute the weight properly between the two.
4. Creating a System
Important lesson for a manager is to take care when creating a new system in organization. A system should never be created according to the size of people as it will suffer as the number of people engaged in the system changes. A system must be created in a way that a normal variation in number of people should not affect it.
5. How to achieve Excellence?
For achieving higher excellence two factors are most important. Highly effective people and machines, and highly efficient processes.
Excellence = Efficiency x Effectiveness
From the above video analysis, important Lessons in Bullet points:
- The productivity increases with the increase in the number of persons
- There is more than 100% increase in the production with 100% increase in resources with good co-ordination
- One monk carrying water every day will become boring after a while but two monks carrying water will not be boring and productivity will not be hampered
- Disputes and conflicts are bound to arise but they need to be minimized so as to make the most out of the available resources
- Team work and coordination is the key to success
- Synergy is very important.
