Learnings from 3 Monks Story

The principles of management can be understood by a movie on three monks. 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.

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.

STORY:

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one 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 old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

MANAGEMENT:

Innovation: Transition from method 2 to method 3 is innovation.  When the monastery is on fire they realize that it is better to think in terms of team goals rather than individualistic goals. The monk at the bottom fills the buckets, the middle monk works on pulley system and the third monk at the top douses the fire with water in the bucket. This shows difficult situation inspires ingenious solutions.

Teamwork: The Three monks allow personal pride to interfere with the performance of daily tasks, each 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. So, from this we learn that in an organization and in a team, its important to take personal vanity out of the equation and to perform the duty at hand so that there is no regret later. A Manager has to take a note of this and check for any signs of work-delegation to others in his team.

PRODUCTIVITY:

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

CONCLUSION:

The productivity increases with the increase in the number of persons

Disputes and conflicts are bound to arise but they need to be minimized.     

Team work and coordination is the key to success

The productivity increases with the increase in the number of persons 

Synergy needs to be maintained

Khan Academy....A lesson on Future of Education!!!

Khan Academy is a brainchild of Harward, MIT passed, Indian origin, hedge fund analyst Salman Khan. Popularly known as Sal Khan, his mission is to make it world's first virtual class available to anyone, anywhere.  He has revolutionized online teaching. His pedagogy is simple. He uploads videos complete with sketches and background voice that enables a student to learn at his own pace. His 3000 videos have garnered over 150 million hits so far. The idea was conceptualised by him while teaching his cousin online who was more comfortable with his YouTube videos rather than Salman in person. This encouraged him to take this social cause forward. Now this Not for Profit Organization receives fund from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and Google and it has listed it as top 10 ideas having potential to change the world. I love the idea of putting learning online. I believe that there’s a big advantage to having access to a teacher’s think-aloud at any time of the day, anywhere in the world. That is an extremely powerful idea, and it wasn’t available or possible a few years ago.

Mission:

The mission of Khan Academy is to provide a high quality education to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Vision:

Khan Academy wants to provide world class education to people around the world and to use technology to give them an opportunity to learn at their own pace and convenience. They want to turn academy into a charter school.

Not everyone agrees. Critics might argue that Khan’s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting with real live teachers. Even Khan would acknowledge that he’s not an educational professional; he’s just a nerd who improvised a cool way to teach people things.

The skill that sets it apart from others is of assortment and arranging of information over the web, clarity of thought, and ways of presentation. All this gives it a unique setter advantage with which it has achieved its place in market.

                                             

                                             

                                             

Learning from Theory of X and Y

Managers need to control the things for an organization with their colleagues to achieve the targets effectively.
There are two types of managers:

 THEORY X: Managers who think their workers are LAZY.
 THEORY Y: Managers who think their workers are GOOD.

These two types relates the managers to colleagues working under them.There can be 4 scenarios:


Lazy Employees and Theory X Manager
In this kind of a scenario employees are lazy and the manager assumes them to be lazy . So this kind of scenario is not going to help in anyway in the growth of the organization . The manager will always treat his employees with a negative mind set. He will never encourage his lazy employees and will only be criticizing them. Criticism leads to discouragement and bad morale.It can also lead to stubborn defiance. 

 Not Lazy Employees and Theory X Manager
In this kind of a scenario employees are not lazy but the manager assumes then to be lazy. This kind of a situation can be very harmful and can demotivate the employees.The employees may be highly skilled and efficient person but the management underestimates their true potential.This kind of negative attitude discourages the employees to work in an organization and will ultimately hamper the growth of the company.

Lazy Employees and Theory Y Manager
In this kind of a scenario employees are lazy and the manager assumes them to efficient and hard working. A lazy employee can be a problem for a manager in many ways. A good manager knows her options when it comes to a lazy employee and is prepared to exercise the option that is in the best interest of the company. 
So managers motivate lazy employees with compliments followed by constructive criticism .When people receive recognition for the good things they do, they feel more motivated to be productive.Also, when people are empowered and given choices, they tend to work harder. Incentives work well, also. 

Not Lazy Employees and Theory Y Manager 
In this kind of a scenario employees are not lazy and the manager also assumes them to efficient and hard working. This the most sought after situation in any organization . Hard working , dedicated employees are constantly motivated by the managers and the growth of the company becomes many fold. Goals set by the managers are easily achieved with high level of accuracy within a short span of time. The organization starts growing rapidly in this kind of a scenario. 


Studying all the scenarios lead to a conclusion that the managers should be a Theory Y manager which will be beneficial for organization and employee as well.It will create a positivity in the minds of employees towards growth and work.