The Three Monks!!

This blog is about the learning from a great Chinese animation movie - “The Three Monks”. I don't know about everyone, but I found it interesting. It was a nice departure from the normal text-book study method, and that's true about the whole POM course here in NITIE. In fact, that's what an MBA education should be because a picture is worth a thousand words. Coming back to the movie - It is about three Chinese monks who live in a monastery on the top of the mountain. It's really fun to watch.

Background:
After the Cultural Revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, 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. 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." If you watch the film, you'll notice that the film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument signifies each monk. It was released in 1980.

Interpretation:
The movie can be interpreted to understand certain management principles too.

When the 1st monk was alone, he was solely responsible for whatever happens at the temple, and hence did his work diligently. Here the productivity was maximum as there were no distractions and no opportunities to shun responsibility.

Then a 2nd monk enters the picture. This leads to the 1st monk trying to kart off the work to the 2nd monk, who soon realizes what's going on. So they come up with a solution where both of them carry a single bucket. Here it can be observed that the productivity has reduced as they can carry only a single bucket in one pass. This could have been avoided if they both had assumed responsibility and had come up with a solution like each bringing 2 buckets of water on alternate days. 
In any case, this is an example of continuous innovation. When the circumstances changed, the process was changed too so that the result could be optimised. 

During the course of my employment I have worked with people from at least 5 different nationalities, and I have learned that it is not often that two people have similar opinions about people and situations. Everyone on my ship was almost equally competent and experienced and being more qualified was certainly not enough to persuade them to go about working in a certain way. 

When asked in class about the solution to the problem of sharing load, a lot of them came up with different solutions. But the best solutions are always the simplest ones. here too the solution was quite simple - measure the centre using a scale.

Towards the end we see that the monastery catches fire. When this happens, all the monks forget their hostility and try to put out the fire. The dilemma of who will carry the water was quickly forgotten and a system arose out of the initial chaos. They all put out the fire quickly. Drastic innovation adds an altogether new dimension to the process and fundamentally changes it. That's what the monks did when faced with the fire at their temple.

Many a times crisis situations are encountered where any kind of system is in place. I myself faced several of those when I was working on ships. However, every time the crisis hit, the entire team came together to solve the issue and take the ship back to the normal state. Forgotten were the hierarchies; gone were the differences. In one instance, the ship's crew fought fire for 52 hours non-stop. Not only the ship's entire crew came together, but a ship passing nearby also lent it's help in the form of human resources.

In the end we see that the monks resolve the situation by fixing a pulley and dividing their roles - hooking the bucket, roping it in and transporting to the monastery. A fairly simple solution!!

Humans have a propensity to stay the same. However, that's not how nature works. As they say - Change is the only unchanging phenomena in this world. In keeping with this, it is important that new ways of improvement are continuously implemented. Change should not be the last resort.

And before you leave, I must tell you that this film won a few awards too:

• Won the outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture.
• Won the Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.
• Won four international awards including a Silver Bear for Short Film at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival in 1982.