Three Monks, No water : A Management lesson

Background

 Three Monks (Chinese: 三个和尚, San ge he shang) is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the cultural revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests

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.

Movie link:
Three Monks, No Water: Chinese short film  

 Plot

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. 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 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 begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again

Management Lesson

At first, the movie might bring the following inferences.

• People by their very human nature, shirk responsibilities.
• People do not cooperate with other members.
• People try to cooperate when unfortunate situations arise.
• Too many cooks spoil the broth, so more people should not come together.
• Design organization systems for the people at hand.

  These inferences however, represent the Old School mindset as discussed in an earlier post.

According to the new approach, the film has to offer the following:

Managerial Excellence

This includes:

1. Displaying command over competencies
2. Demonstrating good leadership skills
3. Getting the best out of each and every member
4. Taking employees along with, especially at the time of success.
5. Attempting to improvise on the way the job is done
6. Being involved with subordinates and colleagues.

Appropriate, efficient and Safe work methods.

The results should be driven by the formula:

EFFECIENCY * EFFECTIVENESS = RESULTS

Both of these are extremely useful for setting goals, analyzing one's work carefully, determining priorities and focusing on the 'Highest-value' use of time. This would lead to a higher individual productivity through a minimum individual effort.

Innovation

Innovation will further improve Efficiency and Effectiveness in an organization. Organizations need more than good products, processes and services to survive that can drive down costs and improve productivity.

Thus, if we count on human values alone for running an organization, we are in for doom as human values are most easily corrupted. This was also evident in the story where the monks forgot their actual job and kept their selfish interests above it.