TEAMWORK

Learning about TEAM work from THE CHINESE SHORT FILM THE THREE MONKS

                    Teamwork is what we hear quite often these days.why the managerial world is behind this??what exactly is this??What is a Team?

               A team is defined as a group of people working and influencing each other driving towards a common goal. The effort they put in to achieve the goal is known as Team effort or TEAM WORK.When we have survived so many years by individual performances,why is this TEAM such an important thing these days.Here comes a short Chinese animation movie "THE THREE MONKS" to explain more about what TEAM work is. 

• History of the film:

            The Three Monks  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.

• About the film: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.

                    A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has a daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. 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. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle-holder  leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the essence of teamwork remembering the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

• Phases:

                 Phase 1 : A single monk carrying two buckets of water
                 Phase 2 : Two monks carrying a single bucket of water
                 Phase 3 : Three monks working as a team to make the temple free from fire. 


               Phase 1: In this phase the monk have not faced any issues.His daily routine was shouldering water, chanting sthothras, knocking the wooden fish, adding water to the holy water bottle on the table honoring the Goddess of Mercy, and watching over the mice from stealing food at night. His life was smooth and comfortable. This depicts about the individual effort and the outcomes,satisfaction out of it.When one is responsible and focused on what he have to do,he can see no issues ahead if his work results in  his satisfaction.

                 Phase 2: Monk 1 and 2 go to pond to get water to the temple.Each of the monks tries to pass on the weight to the other to relieve themselves from the burden,thereby making an easy task of carrying water a tough one. Monk 1 tries to point out the line of division using his hand. Monk 2 denies and uses his own hand to identify the line of division. Finally Monk 1 gets a ruler and identifies the line of division with mutual consent. Monk 2 lends support giving his hand as marker during measurements.

   Lessons to learn:

            - Always use the standardized tools of measurement, which is universally accepted.
       - The work has to be designed in such a way that it is divided equally among the members.
         - All the members of the team have to contribute and mutually decide the terms of work order.
            
         Phase 3: The temple catches fire. The three monks had to douse the fire off.They started working collectively to set the fire off and were successful in doing it thus elevating the teamwork.

   Lessons to learn:

            - Team work is important than individual performance. Though each of the priests had the ability to get the water from pond, they could not set the fire off individually without seeking help from others.
              - The monks have divided the entire line of action into 3 equal parts. Thus work has to be divided equally.
               - When you work collectively as a team, you can generate more practical ideas.

•      Management lessons learnt:

                      Efficiency and Effectiveness from teamwork:

                 Initially  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,they understand how silly they have been and worked together to save the temple. From this, it is evident that in an organization and in a team, it is important to take personal ego out of the equation, to perform the duty at hand for the greater good.

        Unavoidable disputes when more than one person is on a particular job:

                      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.

       Complex Problems, Simple Solutions:

                  This should be the motto of decision making for any manager in any organization.In an organisation, out of the box, yet rational thinking is required to resolve conflicts fairly and logically.

       Efficient method evolves over a period of time:

                           Productivity analysis according to which getting 1 bucket shared by the two monks is a much better proposition.  

Event                       Output                         Input                                Productivity=Output/Input

                              (No. of buckets)       (Worker Energy units)  

1Man – 1bucket            1                                  1                                                       1

1Man – 2buckets          2                                  2                                                       1

2Men – 1bucket           1                                   0.5                                                   2

   

         Synergy : whole is greater than the sum of it's parts

                          To put out the fire each monk panicked and tried to do his best and ran down the river to bring the bucket full of water. But this process was long, tiring and had too many inefficiencies inherent to it. So, it was ineffective as well.A coordinated effort by all three was very effective in dousing the fire.

   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.It is all about exploring all the ways that can make a working environment more effective & efficient.