Manage it Monk’s way

Monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of other monks. Normally we won’t think of learning management mantras from them instead we would prefer to learn religious scriptures from them. Well shall I say it’s time to change one more notion of your's.

In order to make sense to you, I request the readers of this blog to go through the video below, don’t worry it wont take much of you precious time. It has a running time of under 20 minutes. Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1980.

The link of the video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY

This film was recommended by visionary Prof. Mandi. The beauty of the film is that it not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk. 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."

In Hindi speaking region there is similar saying “teen tigada kaam biagada” meaning 3 people can’t work together to achieve a goal.

This films shows us the same thing in different and lighthearted manner.

I assume that you have watched the movie. Let me begin with the analysis of each character:

  

The first monk was visibly the youngest of the three monks. He is depicted to be having a kind heart, offering his prayers and conducting his chores with due consistence and adherence. However, he is still boyish and is immature at times.

Initially, being the only monk in the monastery on the top of the hill, he brings water daily  walking down and up the hill to the lake at the bottom of the hill.

When the second monk arrives, he feels happy at the idea of the second monk bringing water and laughs at his own luck. But soon when he needs to share work with the second monk, he starts feeling bitterness.

He comes up with the idea of a common scale of measurement for distribution of work with the second monk while bringing water uphill.

This conveys, on a managerial note that, in an organization, there is a need for the uniform distribution of work or the ones who work hard will be victimized.

When the fire starts in the monastery, he is the first person to realize and react. Towards the end of the story, he reconciles with other monks understanding that unity is strength. This applies for organizations also. He appears to come live in harmony with others in the monastery.

The second monk is visibly oldest of the three monks and appears comparatively mature. Though initially he volunteers to bring water for the monastery, he finds it a burden the second time, and calls the first monk to share it. He prefers two people carrying a single bucket of water to one person carrying two buckets, effectively reducing the productivity by half.

A similar attitude is most commonly found in corporate sectors. Bureaucratic prolongation of tasks that can be easily completed with little effort is something I had observed during my work experience.

The task of a good manager is to avoid such negative bureaucracy and encourage effective sharing and effort minimization.

However curiously, when the monastery catches fire, he stops the first monk and hurries himself to bring water to stop the fire. He plays an effective role in putting off the fire and plays a key role in promoting harmony in the end.

The arrival of the third monk disturbs the hard reached balance of task sharing where in all the three monks refuse to take over the burden of bringing water.

The third monk, though of good nature and always thirsty, refuses to bring water and prefers to be thirsty. This is also a very curious and common mindset of people in corporate industry wherein they would rather lose something instead of working for the common good. However, towards the end, he too plays a crucial role in putting off the fire. He is later seen working harmoniously with the team.

  

The learning:

In the movie there fire shows the disaster that the monks face and in order to save the monastery they have to give up their differences and start working as a team to douse the fire.

In my corporate life I have learnt similar thing, people will be pulling each other’s leg and would also indulge in finger pointing but the moment the task becomes mammoth and unachievable also endangering them in some or other way, they unite and start working towards a common goal.

While I was working for a client, in the initial stage of the project we were under tremendous pressure to achieve targets. The team was routinely reprimanded by the management for the shortcomings, this lead to a rift in the team because everyone started to blame each other. But then came a moment when we were pushed against the wall, the client has given us a deadline to prove ourselves or to lose the project. It was that time when all of a sudden everyone transformed and started to work as a team, covering for each other’s shortcomings. I still remember we started to fill in for our colleagues and ensured that productivity never takes a hit even if some of our colleagues are on break or ill or not present because of any reason. The result was incredibly frabjous within one month we produced a historic result. We over achieved the targets set by the client.

Also, the movie shows us about the division on labor. As you must have noticed in the movie the monks make use of variety of methods to fetch water from reservoir (pond/Lake/River) but all of the methods had some short comings. In the end in their desperation they devise an ingenious method wherein each monk does his share of important work in way that none of them feels overburdened. I am referring to the part where the monks install a pulley to fetch water. To me this is an analogy of Assembly Line omnipresent in every manufacturing industry.

The beauty of assembly line is that every one does his share of work and so with time becomes an expert in that job and this leads to increased efficiency  The same was evident in the movie, the monks were able to douse the ravaging fire with much ease once they employed this technique.

On a whole, the movie conveys the human behavior in an organisation, some key managerial insights, importance of task sharing and effective planning, use of technology to reduce effort and need for increasing efficiency as well as effectiveness.