For our next lecture we were asked to complete a
small assignment before we come to class. But this assignment was different. We were asked to watch a Short film called “Three Monks and No Water”. It is
a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio
in 1976, 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
Brief Plot
A young
monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. Every
day he gets two buckets full of water from down the hill and carry them back to
temple using a shoulder pole. This time around another monk joins him and they share the job of
carrying water using bamboo stick after
initial arguments over the position of bucket on the bamboo stick. The arrival of a third
monk gave a sigh of relief to the other monks. They made the third monk carry
water. He gets so exhausted in the task
that he drinks all the water by himself. So he evades from the task. Eventually
everyone starts expecting the other person to take on the chore. Consequently,
no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. One night, a rat accidentally knocks the
candle holder, 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 peaceful life.
LEARNINGS FROM THE
STORY
As soon
as the second monk came to the temple, the 1st monk ascertained a
way to partner with him and divided the work among them. This shows that division
of work is a positive trait and helps in increasing the throughput.
We saw
that when second monk joins and wants to share up the load, they end up pulling
1 bucket together. Here the load was shared but efficiency was reduced. It is
important for a proficient manager to realise that though load sharing is
important to maintain the harmony amongst the team members, utilisation of
the available resources should be done in a way such that the overall
efficiency increases.
With the entry of the 3rd monk all of them started to
run away from their duties. This happened because there was no clear cut
defined role for them. The same thing may happen in an organization which has
many members but not well defined set of goals to keep them focused.
This
story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. Three monks allow
personal pride to interfere with the performance of daily tasks, each believing
that the other two should be the ones to go downhill to fetch water. When a
fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they’ve been and work
together to save the temple.
The story shows that when one person carries 2
buckets of water, the amount of work done by the person is more and hence the
productivity decreases. When 2 person carries 1 bucket of water, the amount of
work done is split into halves and the productivity increases.
|
Task
|
Output(No. of buckets)
|
Input(Unit Work Done)
|
Productivity (Output/Input)
|
|
1 Person - 2 Buckets
|
2
|
2
|
1
|
|
2 Persons - 1 Bucket
|
1
|
0.5
|
2
|
When the
monastery is on fire they realise that it is better to think in terms of team
goals rather than individualistic goals. The monk at the bottom fills the
buckets, the middle monk works on pulley system and the third monk at the top
douses the fire with water in the bucket. This shows difficult situation
inspires ingenious solutions.
