The Story of Three Monks

This blog is about the famous Chinese animated feature film that has won many accolades. The film provides many insights for managers. Please watch this short film below before proceeding to the analysis and learnings part.

Short Description of story-

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. Then one day another monk joins him. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket.So they both share the load. 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 candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. 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 device a method which leads to equal load sharing between the three of them and they begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

The movie is based on an old 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 teaches us various aspects that impact the performance, productivity of employees in an organization in turn impacting on the growth of an organization. These aspects can be broadly classified into Human and Technical factors. Let's look at both these aspects that are the part of our daily life in a company.

Although, as a manager, one should focus on Technical factors as they are the important ones and make an organization stand out from its competitors.

  

"Human Factors"

1. Sharing Responsibility: The story tells us that each monk is capable to fetch 2 buckets of water when working alone. But, while working together each one tries to avoid work and expects the other monk to do it. In organizations as well employees might develop prejudice towards certain type of work and face the similar problem. Hence, the important point is to understand the importance of working as a team and sharing the responsibilities fairly.  

2. Cooperation: It is an important factor and is seen lacking in the story of 3 monks until the fire breaks up. But disasters are not a everyday thing and hence it is expected that cooperation should exist in normal conditions also.

"Technical Factors"

	One Person	Two Persons	Three Persons
How?
Tools	A stick and 2 buckets	A stick and a bucket	A Pulley, 2 buckets and a rope
Efforts	Maximum	Lesser	Least
Efficieny	Least	More	Maximum

1. Scale/Tools: As seen in the movie, a scale was used to evenly divide the load among the two persons.

It shows how the use of standardized tools helps to avoid controversies and incorporate fair practices.

2. Productivity: It is necessary to gauge the productivity of employees in order to analyse the performance of an organization. Hence, it becomes an important parameter and the system should be designed to maximize productivity.

3. Participative Management: It involves all the stakeholders in the decision making process. As in case of a movie, while dividing the load of the bucket one monk did the scaling and the other did marking. It involves both the parties and avoids any conflicts that may arise at some later point of time. 

   

And the core learning is that a manager must strive to build an ergonomic, efficient system using technical knowledge  that accommodates various kinds of people and aims to develop high level of productivity and cooperation.