Three Monks - Nothing Spiritual. It's all Managerial.

 

This post is aimed at understanding the concepts of management from a short animated film namely - “Three Monks”

About the film - 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 film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk.

It was released in 1980 and was 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.

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

It is a beautiful movie with a wonderful message. A must watch for all the managers and trainers.

Here is the YouTube link for the film. Watch the film and then continue reading. I am sure every minute of these 18:52 minutes will teach you a management lesson.

My learnings from the film – 

1)      Increase in members of team does not necessarily lead to increase in productivity – In the movie we see that a single monk was able to fetch two buckets of water. However when two monks were there, they were fetching just one bucket. In case of three monks absolutely no bucket was fetched. Hence emerges the concept that in order to have productive teams a manager should focus on building teams that have no internal conflicts and a balanced team should be chosen with every person recognizing his/her roles and taking responsibility.

2)      Recognizing strengths and weakness of team members- A manager should be able to recognize the core competencies and skills of team members and accordingly assign tasks. As we saw in the film that the second monk was a fast runner so when monastery was on fire he was doing all the running and fetching water from the river. The third monk who was strong but not agile took up the job of throwing water to put out the fire. The first monk however kept falling while running in this exercise so when finally the thee monks came up with a innovative solution he was given the task of standing at one place and pulling buckets of water.

3)      Innovation – We saw in the film as the number of monks increased form one to two, the productivity decreased from two buckets to one bucket. There lies the concept of effective job design and optimum utilization of resources to maximize productivity. In the film after the crisis the monks realized their potential and suitably innovated a pulley system which helped them to bring out their true potential and capitalize their potential.

4)      Participative Management – This concept was shown briefly in the film when the two monks were unable to fix a position for the bucket on the rod. It was then when the first monk came up with the idea of using a measuring scale. The first monk measured the length on rod and the second marked the point. This is known as participative management.

Special mentioned to be made of the rat in the monastery which, just like an able manager actually motivated the monks to fetch water when no one was ready to, by starting the fire in the monastery. Seeing the crisis situation the monks performed in synergy and were able to manage the crisis. Post this situation the monks were able to develop mutual trust for one another, this resulted in a fruitful environment hence.

Above were my learnings from the video. Kindly watch the video and give your insights on the same. Feedbacks and/ or suggestions on this post more than welcome. Until next week.

Cheers!!
Ankush