3 Monks Story

     The Learning from 3 Monks Animated Story

When we are talking about Organizational management, Team work and its importance takes a vital role. The very simple animated video that Dr. Mandi referred us to watch is filled with learnings. Once you watch the video you will not directly come to any specific conclusion but a thinking process will start in your mind and with eventual analysis lot of learning can be derived from the same.

The below is the link of the video in YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY&feature=player_embedded


The whole story can be segmented into the following major stages:

• Stage 1, with a single monk:

Each monk has a capability of carrying 2 buckets at a time and performed his work very efficiently and his needs where also fulfilled when he carried 2 buckets of water.

• Stage 2, second monk arrival:

The requirement of water is increased since the number of people are increased. So they planned to get the water by collaborating with each other. So they carried 1 bucket of water and placed the bucket exactly at the center so that the work load is decreased.
Some of you might be in an assumption that this is inefficient since 2 people are carrying only 1 bucket (Initially I felt the same :) )

But, By Calculating the energy used in each case, the 2nd case was more efficient than the 1st.

• Stage 3, third monk arrived:

Since everyone consumes equal amount of water no one is willing to get the water. Suddenly an emergency situation(the monastery started burning) occurred when they realised the value of team work. They collaborated effectively and make the problem resolved.

• Stage 4, Introspection of the Ideas:

The three monks now started thinking to increase the efficiency which lead to new method of using wheel and axle to lift water.The idea which they generated reduced their effort drastically. They increased it to a vast extent and lived happily.

• Understanding from the story:

1.  There is always a scope for improvement in the organisational systems.
2.  Team work will always lead to efficiency in the organisation.
3.  Team work helps in generation of new ideas which may lead to innovation.
4. Technology should be used to reduce the work load.
5.  Experiences in crisis management comes handy to come up with new innovative methods to solve the problems.
6. Improvement is a continuous process but innovation is sudden.
7. Like the size, figure and nature of 3 different monks, an organization also consists of different types of people. The nature, personality differences as well as the ego can create disparity in the system which may lead to complete organization failure. So its the task of the manager to channelize the resources in one direction so that maximum efficiency can be derived out of them.