The Story of Three Monks

The Three Monks(Chinese: 三个和尚, San ge he shang)  is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. 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." The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk.

Plot of the Film:

A young monk arrives in the temple and starts living a simple life in temple situated on top of a hill. He sees that there is no source of water inside the temple and there is so much scarcity of water there. Down the hill there is a river flowing. The water could be brought from there only. As the hill has the steep slope so, it
was some what difficult to bring the water up on the hill to the temple. But since it was the utmost need of the monk , he has to bring the water with the help of carry pole and tiding two bucket at the ends of pole. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. After few days there came the another monk. This gave the first monk a reason to relax. Now first monk always instruct to the second monk to bring the water for temple alone, but this could not continued for so long. Second monk wanted the first one also to join him in work. They tried to share the job with each monk, they hold the carry pole from the end while one bucket was hanging there in the middle. In the middle of way they faced too many problem and after few time they came out with a solution which in turn enable them to accomplished their task of bringing the water up to the hill. 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. This continued for some days. One night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally in emergency 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.

Management Lessons to be learnt :

1. Teamwork

At first, the Three Monks succumb to their personal pride which interferes with the performance of daily tasks, each of them 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. From this, it is evident that in an organization and in a team, its important to take personal ego out of the equation and to perform the duty at hand for the greater good. Adding efficiency and effectiveness for any task.

2.  Working towards common goal

When the third monk goes downhill to fetch water for the first time, he comes back only to drink the water all by himself, exhibiting a selfish tendency. This does not help in the goal of having water stored at all times. This only leads to further animosity among the three and the task never gets completed. Similarly, in an organization, selfish motives must be detected and discouraged for the good of the many. All members of a  team working together towards a common goal is the best practice of work.

3. Practicing Standard Process

Complex Problems, Simple Solutions - This should be the motto of decision making for any manager in any organization. When the first two monks were trying to push the weight of the bucket towards each other, we in the class were asked to give a possible solution to the problem. A simple solution was suggested that they should mark the middle of the stick so that they do not fight.There can be a lot of different solution for this problem. In an organization, out of the box thinking, and rational thinking is required to resolve conflicts fairly and logically.

4. Productivity :

Productivity is Important. Productivity is about how well an organization converts resource inputs into goods or services. Workplace productivity is about how firms can utilize labor and skills, innovation, technology and organizational structure to improve the quantity and quality of their output. Basically it's about exploring all the ways that can make a working environment more effective & efficient.

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2