Three Monks - Management Lesson

Let's carry on with our Lessons....

Three Monks 

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. 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.

Three monks is a famous story in China. On the high mountain there is a temple. There is a long distance from the temple to the river which is located at the foot of the mountain. One monk used to live there. He had to walk a long way to fetch water, but he did it everyday. One day, another monk appeared in the temple. Now who’s to fetch water became a regular argument between them. Luckily they found a solution : they carried water together. Then the 3rd monk became a member of the temple, which brought complexity, because they all thought the others should go and get water. They suffered from thirst, but nobody still did not want to move until … a mouse ate the candle, and the flame started to burn down their temple. They worked together and transported water from the river and finally saved their temple. Since then they understood the old saying "unity is strength" and began to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacked water again.

Management Lessons

Productivity

We know that productivity = output/ inputWe can see that when one monk was carrying two bucket the productivity (output/input) is 1 but when 1 bucket is carried by two monk then the energy per unit share by each monk is 1/2 (as they a equally sharing the load of bucket) due to which the productivity increases to 2. it overall means that when we are working in a team than total productivity increases.

Innovation

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 how a difficult inspires ingenious solutions. 

Responsibility

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 have been and work together to save the temple.