Learning's from the three monks

Three monks is a Chinese animated short, released in 1980 and directed by A Da. It is one of the most famous and beloved of Shanghai Animation Film Studio's productions, and has won many awards at film festivals throughout the world.

Dr Mandi introduced us to the film during his lecture. He obviously had something on his mind! 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. Through this film he explained us the intricacies of how a team dynamics is build. He also used it to show us how easily we complicate a very simple situation and come out with a complex solution.

Let’s get started then.

The film starts with backdrop of a monastery on top of a hill. A monk comes to live there. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill in order to fetch water. After some time a 2 arrives and starts living with the first monk. They incurred a problem when none of them are unable to decide how to divide this work amongst them as no one wanted to do any extra work. Finally they came up with a solution and placed the bucket in the middle of the bamboo stick. The load was evenly distributed. So far so good right? Then comes the third monk and my favorite. The first two monks are exhausted with this activity and want the third one to do the work. The third one however did nothing to ease the situation. Each one of them showed selfishness and tried to satisfy their own thirst.

The fire incident sets all the three monks to a common goal of dousing the flame and toiled hard together to save their monastery. They were successful! The fire made them realize their dubious behavior and they installed a pulley system to fetch water from the river. Technically no one ever filled water again. This Unit of three monks provided the monastery with water all the time.

What I understood from this film is that for a successful completion of work, there are two important variants
• People satisfaction
• Efficient process

Both these entities are to be met for a desired output. Well then how to go about it?
Setting of a common and clear goal is important. A team needs to know what they have to achieve. Once a target has been set, it’s easier for an individual to see how their action and discipline is helping the process.

Divergent Thinking: There can be many ways to view a singular problem. You have to be creative in your
approach.

Co-ordination and team work:  Needless to say that a good work environment, drastically increases work productivity. It’s interesting to note how people from diverse background working together can attain outputs that are unimaginable.

Thank you Dr. Mandi for coming up with a yet another different way of making us learn some very important aspects of Management!