LEARNINGS FROM THE THREE MONKS-A CHINESE SHORT FILM

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.
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: 

The movie throws light on the key concepts of management. The key learning from the movie are

1) Productivity: Productivity is important. Productivity is a measure of how well an organization system functions. It is about how well a company can utilize skill and the available labor, innovation and technology to improve the quality and quantity of the output.Productivity can be represented in the following equation. 

            Excellence=Efficiency * Effectiveness.

In the movie, it could be seen that the productivity was not up to the mark. There were ego clashes and prides which were coming in the way. So methods have to be thought for improving the productivity. We have to optimize the work so that maximum efficiency can be obtained.

2) Team Work: In the video, it could be seen that 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.The team work which should have existed did not exist. The main important aspect of team work is co-operation. Unless there is no co-operation productivity cannot be achieved. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. But as fire broke out they all realized how silly they were and started working in a team. 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.

In the lecture some alternate solutions were also proposed

     One person getting one bucket of water

     Divide the work in half

     Get a motor and connect a pipe

In an organization such out of the box yet rational thinking is required to resolve conflicts fairly and logically