Principles Of Management

Here I will analyze the learning from a very famous Chinese short story called “The Three Monks”.
Before I go further I would suggest you to watch the video of the movie.

In case if you don’t have the time here is a brief synopsis of the story which would help you to understand the concepts as we go further.

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."

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. Then one day another monk joins him. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket.So they both share the load. 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 candleholder, 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 device a method which leads to equal load sharing between the three of them and they begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

Some of the important takeaways from the story are:

1) Sharing of Responsibility:

This story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. 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. This points to general human psyche of trying to avoid work and behave like a superior with others. In the story all 3 monks are completely capable of fetching the water from downhill and would have done so in absence of others. Hence the important lesson here is that at our workplace we are driven more so by not our capabilities and potential rather than on our pride and prejudice against a certain type of work. Hence while delegating responsibility among employeesthe preferences and choice of an individual must be kept in mind along with his potential.

2) Bureaucracy:

This storyalso criticises bureaucracy that are extremely inefficient and ineffective. In any organization eliminating bureaucracy completely is not possible but it should be designed to be minimalistic and efficient. In many organization especially government owned so many people are hired but nobody does any job because everyone wanted somebody else to do the job, just like the way those three monks expecting others to get the water.

3) Continuous Innovation and Drastic Innovation:

Harry Lime:" In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
The story also depicts how a tragedy or crisis situation can be beneficial for the organization. As the number of monks grew from 1 to 2 and then 3 all of them were trying to pass on the job to other rather than trying to find a way out through which the job can be easily done. It was only after the temple caught fire that they realized the need to work together and find a faster way of getting the water up to the temple. This is when they thought of implementing a pulley system otherwise they might have continued with the traditional system of fetching the water by walking down to the river forever. Such a situation is very dangerous in today’s competitive world since there is always a chance of your competitor developing a new technology which can lead to obsoleteness and hence shutting down of operations for an organization. Successful Organizations today are those which are continuously hunting for internal and external development.

Here I will analyze the learning from a very famous Chinese short story called “The Three Monks”.
Before I go further I would suggest you to watch the video of the movie.

In case if you don’t have the time here is a brief synopsis of the story which would help you to understand the concepts as we go further.

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."

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. Then one day another monk joins him. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket.So they both share the load. 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 candleholder, 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 device a method which leads to equal load sharing between the three of them and they begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

Some of the important takeaways from the story are:

1) Sharing of Responsibility:

This story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. 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. This points to general human psyche of trying to avoid work and behave like a superior with others. In the story all 3 monks are completely capable of fetching the water from downhill and would have done so in absence of others. Hence the important lesson here is that at our workplace we are driven more so by not our capabilities and potential rather than on our pride and prejudice against a certain type of work. Hence while delegating responsibility among employeesthe preferences and choice of an individual must be kept in mind along with his potential.

2) Bureaucracy:

This storyalso criticises bureaucracy that are extremely inefficient and ineffective. In any organization eliminating bureaucracy completely is not possible but it should be designed to be minimalistic and efficient. In many organization especially government owned so many people are hired but nobody does any job because everyone wanted somebody else to do the job, just like the way those three monks expecting others to get the water.

3) Continuous Innovation and Drastic Innovation:

Harry Lime:" In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
The story also depicts how a tragedy or crisis situation can be beneficial for the organization. As the number of monks grew from 1 to 2 and then 3 all of them were trying to pass on the job to other rather than trying to find a way out through which the job can be easily done. It was only after the temple caught fire that they realized the need to work together and find a faster way of getting the water up to the temple. This is when they thought of implementing a pulley system otherwise they might have continued with the traditional system of fetching the water by walking down to the river forever. Such a situation is very dangerous in today’s competitive world since there is always a chance of your competitor developing a new technology which can lead to obsoleteness and hence shutting down of operations for an organization. Successful Organizations today are those which are continuously hunting for internal and external development.