Three Monks - A sea of Management Lessons

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film  produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests. When the movie starts a note appears in which first column states "one monk fetches water to drink", the second column reads "two monks carry water to drink" and the third one just states, "three monks". To get a better understanding first let us watch the movie.

The movie can be divided into 3 parts:

1. When only one monk is there - We can see that when the monk was alone he used to do the work alone i.e. bringing the water from the river to the monastery happily. He had no qualms with the way things were moving. In other words he was content with the life he was living or the work he was doing.

2. When another monk joins the first one - The attitude of the first monk changes drastically when the second monk joins him in the monastery. Initially he intimidated him into bringing water from the river but after some time the new monk demand equal distribution of work. This altercation resulted in loss of man hours as well as gloomy atmosphere in the monastery. After lot of deliberation, they decide to share the responsibility and once they started sharing the job, their productivity also increased. We can see that the method adopted in this case is much better then used in the previous one.

 

3. When the third monk joins the other two - Initially the same thing happened wherein the veterans forced the newcomer into work. After sometime it was total chaos in the monastery with none of the monks willing to go to the river to get the water. One fine day when fire breaks in the monastery then all the three monks work together in tandem thereby giving fruitful results. After this, all the 3 monks learned a lesson and then devised an efficient and productive method to get water using the pulley. The method in this case is superior to the methods used in case 1 and case 2 as it involves proper utilization of all the resources.

Learning

The movie teaches us a lot of managerial lessons. Here are a few of them that I could comprehend:

1. Team work - The work which could have been done very easily had they worked as team took a toll on them. As we have seen in case of emergency (monastery catching fire), they worked as a team and got the desired results very easily. The manager has to ensure that the employees are working in a team, individuality hinders the progress of a firm. Team work can do wonders.

2. Job distribution - The situation can be compared to an organisation which has all the resources in the world but is not able to utilise them properly. In the movie even with three monks (resources), water (end result)  was scarce in the monastery. It is responsibility of the manager to utilise the resources provided to him optimally. As we can see in the end the monks divide the job and get the desired result very effectively and easily. 
Like in a football team, to win a match, the job is divided and every player is assigned his specific role.

3. Innovation - There are two ways of completing a job, one is monotonous conventional method which every body follows and the other one being innovative method. In the movie the monks could have very well adopted conventional approach (three monks standing at regular intervals) to get the water, but it would have been very tiresome as well as time consuming. Thus they went for innovative idea of placing a pulley thereby reducing the mechanical effort one has to put which in turn increased their productivity. In a company the manager should be a Theory Y manager, always pushing the employees for new ideas, always having faith in the man power assigned to him. If the manager backs the employee then only employee can come out with a new and innovative idea. Innovation can be continuous (over a period of time), can be drastic (out of the exigency). The one which we had seen in the movie is drastic. But we should always aim for continuous innovation. If the innovation is continuous then it will be flawless because sufficient amount of time and thought process would have invested in that idea, whereas drastic innovations arises out of the emergency situation. 

4. Crisis management - In the movie when the temple catches fire all the three monks work together as a team and get out of the crisis situation. There are times when people lose their cool during emergencies. A manager must always keep a clam composure no matter what the situation is. In case of emergency, the manager should adopt a rationale thinking in getting the team of the emergency situation. He should be in a position to assign different employees in different roles so as to counter the exigencies.

An organisation can flourish only if it has cordial atmosphere as well as convivial employees. If the manager is able to bind the team together jovially, there is no stopping the company. In the movie the same set of people were fighting against each other but circumstances changed them and the same set of people started working together and with increased productivity. The manager in a company must ensure that the employees are not dependent on emergency situation to come together and work as a team, they should work in coordination from the moment they join the team.

5. Productivity - The film clearly depicts how productivity increases when the work load is shared effectively by more people. When the 2nd monk joins in, and the two monks together get 1 bucket of water, the productivity increases. Further, when the 3 monks together devise a method to get water using the pulley, the productivity increases manifolds.