The Three Monks - Observations & Learning

The Story with a Lesson

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film that highlights the importance of teamwork. It was screened in the POM class to make us students understand how people react in real life situations where there are conflicts. Thus, it aimed at bringing home the value of team work and co-operation. This was yet another example of the off-the-beaten-track learning methodologies being applied in POM.

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." A noticeable point is that the film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture.

PlotA teenage 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 who had recently joined the monastery, 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 combined 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.

Observations
#1 Disagreements will arise when people work together due to difference in viewpoints.
#2 Work needs to be divided scientifically and objectively.
#3 The solution should be conceptual.
#4 When multiple parties with differing opinions are involved, what is required is Participative Management.
#5 The last scene of using a pulley to get water says that for success, one has to go for disruptive methods that have the power to change the game.

Creative Problem Solving

When face to face with the problem of drawing water from the lake that is quite far off from the monastery the monks devise new methods. Initially the first monk starts to travel the distance on his own to get water. But it turns out to be tiring for him. When the second monk joins him, both of them go out together to get water and through mutual understanding they come to implementing a better plan of tying the bucket to the mid of the pole that they were using to fetch water. But creative solutions become mediocre in no time. This becomes clear when the two monks have a quarrel while carrying out the job. Even in real life disputes between the participants can lead to work getting stalled.The Challenge is – To apply every time, all the time “Ever Creative Mind” in solving the stock of

problems is the principle applicable here for managers. When the monks do this they get the results immediately. This way they were working more efficiently than before as they conserve more energy. But the actual creativity comes out when three delegate the work between themselves as well as when they upgrade to a totally new solution of using pulley and bucket to fetch water.

Thus the lesson that i drew here was that to be a successful and effective manager i need to :

• Learn Problem solving through practice
• Need to develop the art and science of developing solution
• Solutions need to be drawn keeping in mind the constraints that are there

We can see in the picture here that creative problem solving is a cyclical process. The first stage is exploration of the challenge. The steps involved are -
Objective Finding - Identify Goal, Wish or Challenge

Fact Finding - Gather Data

Problem Finding - Clarify the Problem

The second stage is Generation of Ideas which deals with Idea Finding - Generate Ideas.

The next stage is Preparing for action which involves Solution Finding – Select and Strengthen Solutions and Acceptance Finding – Plan for Action. 

Productivity
Does team work increase productivity or decrease it? Rather than answering in a straight yes or no, lets go step by step. 

• Initially, a single monk could get 2 pails of water daily. High effort, high output. 
• When the second monk joins, they get 1 pail of water everyday. Now, the effort as well as output has become 1/2 of original (for a team of two). 
• The work comes almost to a standstill when the third monk comes, nobody bothers to get the water himself as all of them leave it on the other person to take care of the chore. Originally, this behavior was called “social loafing,” a term coined by a French professor, Max Ringelmann in the 1890s.

Then how can the management ensure high productivity in an interconnected and interdependent environment?

• Availability of adequate support systems and resources for teams
• High degree of instantaneous feedback and communication
• Rigorous accountability systems for teams
• Synergistic work environment will increase the productivity manifolds for a team

Thus, team work can actually increase the productivity exponentially, given that above features are incorporated in the work culture laid out by the management.

Learning
The story of the three monks teaches us that everyone is capable of being selfish and working individually, but doing so diminishes our ability to cooperate with one another.

A thought on Team Work- "If its not efficiently effective then its not useful."