The Three Monks

The “Three Monks” is a Chinese Movie produced by Shanghai Animation Film. 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 movie is based on the proverb that posits : "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." Dr. Mandi was trying to teach management by one  of the most unorthodox methods by showing us this animated Chinese movie. It turned out to be a huge success.

Short Description of the Story:

I am narrating the story briefly. There is a monastery located on the top of a hill .The day to day requirement of water has to be satisfied from  only water source  at the bottom of the hill. To collect water one needs to get it from the bottom of the hill in buckets with a stick.A young monk who lives on hill top understands his individual responsibility and fetches water from river flowing downhill. On the next day when new member joins, conflict starts for inequality of work. They try to share job of fetching water. However, younger monk tries to be mischievous and over smart with his attitude and attempts to make the other monk do majority of the work by pushing bucket to other side of pole. The temporary problem gets solved. Next day, when fat monk joins in, who has different needs and consumes major portion of water, encourages conflict within the team members. 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 old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

LEARNING:

Here i would like to pick up certain instances from the film and talk about them:

Practical Thinking

There was a gross misunderstanding between the monks. First the small monk comes out with a idea and measures the stick with his palm. But the tall monk refuses and starts measuring with his palms. This leads to the unequal division of the Stick. So again there is disagreement because of the subjective measurement. So both monks start thinking again. Immediately an idea strikes the smaller monks. He decides to measure it with an objective. Thus both the monks come to agreement and resume their work. Its all bout creative thinking. But for solving such a complex problems one needs only simple solution.

Implementing in an organization

Organization should follow the scientific methods to resolve any issues arise while doing the task. In the Software Company the employee should use latest softwares, tools and equipment for better productivity and efficiency. Also they should follow the Software development process while coding.

Collective approach:

When the third monk comes, each monk thinks that other will do the daily chores. But none of them does the work. They start praying in the monastery. Suddenly a mouse lights fire to the monastery. Realizing the need the monks overcome the initial difference and came together as team .They extinguished the fire by fetching water from the river. Thus there was clear coordination between the monks. Thus they survived the disaster. This was an eye-opener for all the three monks.

Implementing in an organization

In the organization it is quite normal that disputes arise eventually. It’s the responsibility of the each and every employee to make sure that they work as part of the team and understand their respective roles and responsibility. Each employee should have the spirit of employer first attitude instead of self-centric.

Out of the box innovation:

Because of the Coordination they came up with an out of the box idea. They installed a pulley at the top of the hill to fetch water. Each person had his respective role in this. One had to fetch water from river to pulley. The next monk had to pull the pulley and the third monk had to take the water from pulley to monastery. This was break through innovation for their problems. Here there was no need for any special skill. Everyone was satisfied with their work. The effort needed for per bucket was drastically brought down.

Implementing in an organization

The solution is innovative and the employees should strive towards achieving efficiency and attaining company goals.The employees should be sympathetic with the changing team dynamics and size. The solution also envisions clearly defined roles for individual worker.

A simple analysis can be used to measure the performance across the three methods:

Variables	Method 1	Method 2	Method 3
No of monks	1	2	3
Skill	High	Moderate	Low
Satisfaction	Low	Moderate	High
Dependency	Low	medium	High
Effort	High	Moderate	Low
Effciency or productivity	Low	Moderate	High

SMART GOALS & PYGMALION EFFECT

The discussion in class was in continuation to the Tower Building exercise on Goal Settings done in the previous class. The concept that we learnt this time around was that of SMART goals.

What does SMART goals mean?

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for the 5 steps of specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based goals. It’s a simple tool used by businesses to go beyond the realm of fuzzy goal-setting into an actionable plan for results.

Specific: Great goals are well-defined and focused. A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:

*Who *What *Where*When*Which*Why. EXAMPLE:  A general goal would be to Get in shape.But a specific goal would be to Join a health club and workout 3 days a week.

Measurable: : Goal objectives should include numeric or descriptive measures that define quantity, 

quality, cost, etc. In the broadest sense, the whole goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, the is a success. However, there are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.

Attainable: Goal objectives should be within the employee's control and influence; a goal may 

be a “stretch” but still feasible. When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop that attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. 

Relevant: : Goals should be instrumental to the mission of the department (and ultimately, the institution). A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn’t break them. The bar should be set high enough for a satisfying achievement.

Time-Bound: Business goals and objectives just don’t get done when there's no time frame tied to the goal-setting process. A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency.Goal objectives should identify a definite target date for completion and/or frequencies for specific action steps that are important for achieving the goal.

T can also stand for Tangible – A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses, that is, taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing.

When your goal is tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.

Pygmalion Effect:

The Pygmalion effect was described by J. Sterling Livingston in the September/October, 1988 Harvard Business Review. "The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them," Livingston said in his article,Pygmalion in Management.

The Pygmalion effect, is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.Also, low expectations lead to a decrease in performance. 

To understand the cycle of expectations and performance complement we also discussed the Fibonacci spiral and how the chain reaction leads to a rapid increase in performance. 

OLD gives way to the NEW

Earlier I had written about how Dr. Mandi’s first class was innovative and enlightening. Well, the second class was much better. We were sitting in the same fashion and Dr. Mandi took out some blocks from his bag. This time the activity was to build a tower using these wooden cubes.

The tower building activity was to be done in two stages:

1. Building the tower alone
2. Building it blindfolded with the help of another person.

Let me start with the first scenario:

Dr. Mandi asked us to bid for as to how many blocks a person can stack together. There were various bids that came out ranging from 17-25. In this betting, there was money involved as well. The person betting had to bet some money on his bid. If he manages to stack that many blocks together, he would get his money back. As this happened, the figure started to drip which showed that our risk taking ability is less.

Finally the person who was building the tower could stack 22 cubes together.

 Considering the second scenario:

There were three people involved in this act. The first person was the blindfolded person (acting as an employee), then there was a person guiding the blindfolded person (the manager) and then to guide both of them there was the CEO. Bids were welcomed again and as expected the figures of the bids were substantially low. People were not bidding for anything above 12-13 as they expected nothing much out of a blindfolded person.

When the process began, the employee was guided aptly by the manager to stack the blocks. There was a point where the stack was almost about to fall but the manager ensured that it was properly taken care of. The CEO was also giving his inputs in between.

Finally to everyone’s surprise, the trio was able to build a stack of 25 cubes which was 3 more than the person who was doing it alone. Here we learnt a very important management lesson.

Learning from the exercise:

After both the tasks were completed, Dr. Mandi explained to us why this had actually happened. The concept of Old Vs New Management cropped up. The old management was referred to as craftsmanship (1^st exercise) while the new one was called modern management (2^nd exercise).

Craftsmanship is something in which a person uses his skill to do a particular job. There is no one to guide him and he performs the job at his liberty. This was how management was followed in olden times.

As times changed, an organized and structured form of management came into being. As per this modern management, an employee worked as instructed by his manager. In return he was offered motivation and incentives. As demonstrated in the 2^nd exercise, the blindfolded person did not have any pressure on him as he was being instructed by his manager whereas the craftsman had an additional pressure on him, thereby decreasing his efficiency.

The two styles of management can be differentiated on the basis of the following parameters:

Parameters                     Craft Management                                            Modern Management

Work                                     Ambiguity                                                         Crystal Clear     

Skill                                      Increases                                                              Decreases      

Productivity                           Low                                                                         High           

Satisfaction                             More                                                                       Less          

Conclusion:

As we can see, the modern management is organised and structured and also there is a lot of work clarity. However the satisfaction level of the employee is less as he feels he is under utilized.This is where the motivation and incentives work.

A Novel Beginning

Getting back to college after a long break and having heard of 2 hour long classes at NITIE, I was skeptical, apprehensive as well as curious if I could sustain the long lectures throughout the day. But the professors here put an end to all my apprehensions especially Dr. T. Prasad, popularly known as Dr. Mandi.  He takes our Organization Management course and teaches every bit of it through practical demonstration.

As he entered the classroom on the first day, he asked us to sit on the floor with him. A little amused, I was not sure of what he actually expected from us. But as the class went on he made us comfortable by freely interacting with us and by making us ask whatever questions we had in our mind. The freedom and confidence with which he took our class was truly amazing.

 “Dhanda” as he called it, the art of selling the product by realizing the true value of it. He made us realize that learning by spending a day on the street is much more productive than any marketing text book.

Another unique feature of the class was he used simple toys to explain to us important management concepts.  He used toys like a rubber ball with the world map printed on it. This will help a kid not only play with the ball but also learn with the help of the world map. A Newton’s Cradle was used to teach us about consumer behavior. The class was truly fun-filled and enlightening.