Hello....
Today we are going to watch a movie.... A movie that has no dialogues but speaks volumes..!! A movie that came a long-long time back but teaches today's managers how to make use of their resources, improve their productivity, encourage team work and a lot more....
Before moving into the managerial part of it, let's first watch the interesting movie of "THE THREE MONKS"... it's a short animated movie. ENJOY!!!
Let me just summarize
the movie before indulging in the lessons we could learn from this excellent
movie..
A young 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, 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 concerted
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.
Interpretation:
The movie can be interpreted to understand certain management
principles.
1. DIFFERENTIATION:
The
story illustrates that different humans excel at different tasks and
it is require to realise their potentials and differentiate the work
accordingly. Here third monk got fatigued when he went to fetch water the first
time and started shunning the responsibility thereafter. Seeing him the other
monks also avoided the work and retired to remaining thirsty.
2. HIGHER EFFICIENCY:
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 an 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.
3. TEAMWORK:
It fetches far greater
output than all the individual outputs summed up because teamwork leads
to more creativity,more dedication and motivation and growth of superior
decision making ability.
This was the case when
all of them had put a determined effort to stop the fire.They came up with a
creative idea of using a pulley and rope to lift water to such a height from
below without much effort .The scientific management came into play as
they were able to find out the best technical method possible to do the work
with the limited resources.
4. ALTERNATIVES
A manager needs
to analyse all the available alternatives at hand and devise the
execution of a task using the best alternative. This encompasses the use of
technology, wisdom and all other available resources. In the end the use
of pulley helps the monks extinguish the fire in a well-organised and
proficient manner. A manager should be innovative and capable of recognising
and devising the appropriate solution according to the demand of the situation.
5. 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’ve been and work together to save the
temple.
6. THEORY X AND THEORY Y:
Here, it is proved that monks are like theory X employees as they did
not want to work when others are present displaying lazy attitude.They will only work when there is someone with a stick in his hand in
front of them. Similar thing happened in this story when there was disastrous
fire in the temple, it led to a dangerous situation which gave them a virtual
kick in their back to bring water.
6. INNOVATION:
The transformation of the first method to the second method shows continuous
innovation and the third method shows drastic innovation.
Continuous innovation does need fundamental change in the dynamics of
the process ,it updates or enhances the existing one whereas Drastic
innovation is the complete out of the box thinking that can altogether add a
new dimension to the overall efficiency.
Similarly in a business scenario,continuous and drastic innovation can spur an
organization towards success by integrating
business,organizational,process,technology,marketing and product innovation.
