There is an 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. There is a film based on this
proverb which tells how people behave in teams and how can we make the team
work efficiently. Click to watch the video. There are three ways in which the
monks carry the water. The film depicts the comparisons of the different
attitudes of the monks when staying alone, staying with one other monk, and
staying with two other monks.
.jpg)
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 does it by using bringing
two buckets of water on a bamboo stick balanced on his shoulder. When the
second monk joins the first monk stops doing
the job completely. But then the two monks decide to share the job by bringing
one bucket of water using bamboo stick after initial arguments over the
position of bucket on the bamboo stick. Then the third monk comes. Initially the
two monks make the third monk bring the water. But he is so tired that he himself
consumes all the water. Now nobody is ready to get the water. There is no water
in the temple and the temple catches fire.
This crisis brings the three
monks together. They co-operate with each other and extinguish the fire. One monk
goes down the hill fills the bucket with water. Other monk pulls the bucket up
using a pulley and the third one near the temple extinguishes the fire. This could
have happened earlier but they were thinking about themselves initially and not
about the organisation as a whole (here the temple). The emergency made the
monk forget the individual goals and work together as a team.
.jpg) |
| Innovation is the key |
From first way to second way the
number of bucket have come down. Initially one monk was bringing two buckets
but in second case two monks were bringing one bucket. But here the
productivity is not decreased if we take the human fatigue into consideration. If
we only consider through materialistic point of view the productivity has come
down but the monks are not machines so must take human effort into
consideration.
 |
| Out of Box Thinking |
Now if we look at third case we
can see that it is the most productive way of doing the work. In the third case
all the three monks have different predefined and clear roles. Their roles are
different but interdependent and everybody is equally responsible for the job. The
job and responsibilities are equally distributed so that nobody feels cheated. There
is a facility of instant feedback. Thus by using simple management principles
the job is simplified. Usually most of the complex problems have the simplest
solutions. It is upto us to look at the problems differently and think out of
box and innovate to reach to the solution. This way the work becomes fun and
the productivity is improved significantly and this in turn helps the
organisation become efficient and grow by leaps and bounds.
Productivity in each case can be compared as follows.
Productivity in each case can be compared as follows.
Method I
|
Method II
|
Method III
|
|
Members
|
One Monk
|
Two Monks
|
Three Monks
|
Input - Effort by monks ( Units in Jouls) ( Esti..)
|
100 Jouls
by One person
|
50 Jouls by two persons together
|
Insignificant effort by three monks together
|
Output - Water
|
2 buckets
|
One bucket
|
Many buckets of water is fetched
|
Productivity Measure: ( Input / Output)
|
100 J / 2 =
50 J per bucket of water
|
50 J / 2 =
25 J per bucket of water
|
Insignificant effort per baucket of water
|
Nature of Member Roles
|
Independent
|
Somewhat Interdependent
|
Very much Interdependent
|
