Water water everywhere, but not a single drop for the "Three Monks"

Three Monks (or Three Monks no water or Three Buddhist Priest, whatever suits you), is a Chinese animation feature film that released in 1980.

Three Monks no water!

The film is based on the 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.

You would be wondering why am I talking about an animation film (hello, not kids anymore), but read on to know more.

Here we are back on the discussion of Principles of Organization and Management. This time, Professor Mandi had a slight twist in store for us. The session started with a discussion on "Three Monks" (yes, the film). I think a little glimpse of the movie plot would be good for the understanding.

A young monk lives a simple life in a monastery on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle, 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.

So what do we learn from this? Or rather, what management lesson could one perceive from the film?

The story of the three monks tells us about the basic human nature and the requirement of having a proper coordination amongst the team. People mostly try to lay off their work on to others instead of making a collective effort and divide the work properly. Also, for any activity to be done successfully, the coordination between the team members is very vital. And for proper coordination the team members must feel friendly towards each other. As in the video when the three monks become friends towards the end they were able to come up with the innovative idea to procure water for the monastery.

Let's have consider the methods employed by the monks to fetch the water up to the monastery:

1.                  One monk carries 2 buckets of water at a time and takes it to the monastery.

2.                  Two monks share the load of a single bucket of water.

3.                  The use of pulley system to fetch the water in which all 3 monks are involved.

To compare these methods with each other, take a look at the table below:

Methods:	1	2	3
1	-----	Compared to method 2, method 1 proves to be more efficient as the amount of work done in the particular time is more in 1. Also, in terms of productivity, 1 is better.	Compared to 1, 3 appear to be a better option plainly because of the work being quantified. Effective division of work would lead to better productivity.
2	Method 2 is better than method 1 in terms of load sharing, but the shear difficulty that the monks faced because of each of them being of a different height, made the task a lot more demanding.	-----	Compared to 2, 3 had a mix of both: better productivity and efficiency. Also to be kept in mind, physical fatigue in method 3 is much less than compared to the 1 and 2.
3	Method 3 has a good mix of both increased productivity and increased efficiency. Moreover, decreasing human labour and physical fatigue. Where method 1 could easily be related to craftsmanship, 3 was all about an organization	Method 2 involves the effort being divided but on round to fetch water, only one bucket (half the work) could be procured. In terms of productivity, method 2 is least productive. Method 3 on the other hand is the most effective to achieve the aim, that is fetch water with minimum effort and maximum output (example of a perfect organization).	-----

From the comparison, it is evident that method 3 is the best, but that didn't happen all of a sudden. The three monks had to go through a lot of hardships to achieve this. Similar things could be achieved in an organization. The daily on-goings of an organization should be innovation-based, in view of increasing the productivity and decreasing manual labor.

Various examples could be taken from the current corporate. Toyota, for example, follows the just-in-time model, which is a result of innovative ideas put to work. Dell Computer’s supply chain was a result of innovation. DHL Courier Service changed its international parcel delivery system in view to achieve better productivity.

With that, another informative session came to an end.
Watch this space out for more informative discussion related to Principles of Organization and Management.