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Monday, 23 July 2012

Three Monks Film


In the last class of Principles of Management, we saw a short animated Chinese film on “Three Monks”. We all wondered that why Dr. Mandi had come up with this animated film. You might be wondering too that how an animated Chinese film can help in learning the Principles of Management. By the time you reach at the end of the blog, you will come to know. Let’s have a look on the film first.





The film goes on like this.

The first monk arrives to the temple on the hilltop and observes the vase to be empty with no water and the flowers wilted. So, he takes TWO buckets to the river to fetch some water. He fills the bucket and carries them on a stick back to the top. He fills the vase with some water and the flower again blooms. He stores rest of the water in another container. At night he does his normal daily prayers.

Now
the second monk arrives and he needs water to drink and the first monk provides him from the stored water. But he was still thirsty. So he drinks some more water from the container. By the time he quenched his thirst the container gets empty. So he fetches another TWO buckets of water from river and fills the container. At night both of them perform their daily prayers.

The stored water again finishes. But this time the second monk asks the first one to come with him and they carry only ONE bucket to fetch water. While coming they have a little conflict as to where to place the filled bucket on the stick so that one doesn't have to work greater than the other. Initially they try to measure it by hand but cannot come on a conclusion as they thought the other person is trying to cheat. So they use a scale and mark a mid-point where they can hang the bucket and divide load equally between themselves.  
Now the third monk comes. Due to intense amount of heat is very thirsty. He drinks water on his way to the temple. But as he climbs the mountain top and reaches the temple, he becomes thirsty again. So he drinks all the water from the container. After this other two monks ask him to bring TWO buckets of water. He brings them, fills the container and starts to again drink the water from it and empties the container again and all of them start fighting to drink water from it.

Now no water is left in the container. The sun sets and it’s time for their prayers. Now the first monk tries to eat the fruits in hiding. He gets hiccups as the fruit gets stuck in his throat. But they don't have any water to drink so the first monk drinks the water from the idol vase he filled earlier. And each one of them tries to outdo one another in search of water from that vase.

Learning from the movie till now:
In the first 2 scenes, when the monks are bringing TWO buckets of water single headedly.
Input = 2 Units.
Output = 2 Units.
Therefore, productivity = 2/2 = 1 Unit.
In the 3rd scene, when two monks carry only ONE bucket of water between them.
Input = 1 Unit.
Output = 0.5 Unit.
Therefore, productivity = 1/0.5 = 2 Units.


Scene 1
Scene 2
Input
2
1
Output
2
0.5
Productivity
1
2

So it can be seen from the table that productivity increases as they work in a team.

Now the film continues.

There comes a rat in the room where they are praying and the rat eats the candle in front of the idol from the bottom and the candle while falling down lights up the curtain. The curtain sets on fire and within seconds the whole temple is on fire. They get feared due to fire and start bringing water from river. During this they help each other to fetch buckets and buckets of water. The amount of productivity increases as they start to work in a team and they put off the fire.

During this, they come up with a better method to fetch water and that is using a pulley system - one person fill the bucket, another operates on the pulley and the third brings and takes empty and filled buckets of water leading to an enhanced productivity.
The three main characters learn to work together and in the end they all have enough water for each to drink.


Learning from movie so far:

Teamwork leads to increase in productivity. Also it leads to generation of new ideas which further may increase productivity considerably.

So at the end we can say that excellence can be achieved by doing the work effectively and efficiently. And this effectiveness and efficiency can be achieved by performing in teams.

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