Context:
The story of the three Buddhist Monks is an anime film directed by A Da. The film has got many recognitions including:
- Won the outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture.
- Won the Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.
It is a short and beautiful movie with a wonderful message. A must watch for managers and practitioners who try to implement working-teams in an organization without looking at the other side of the picture.
Film:
Learnings:
The movie throws light on some important concepts of management. As usual I will try to analyse some of these concepts based on the video.
1) Productivity - It is a measure of how well an operations system functions. In previous posts we have come across the important equation:
Excellence = Efficiency X Effectiveness
We have also seen in much detail the importance of effectiveness and also the role of manager in improving the effectiveness of the system. This video completely on the other hand talks about the importance of efficiency. Efficiency can be described by productivity ratio which is Total output/ Total input.
Different processes have different efficiency levels. One of the important functions of a manager is to optimize the process, improve the work design and try to aim for the most efficient process.
We see that even during the fire, when all the monks were doing extra effort, their efficiency level is not at par with the final solution. This it is important for managers to be thought leaders and try to come up with innovative solutions to improve efficiency.
2) Design of Operations systems: So how do we increase the productivity of a system. One of the most important tool is the designing the operation systems. It includes finding answers to 4 main questions:
It is a continuous process of optimizing the work so that maximum efficiency can be derived out of it. So Now that we know the importance of efficiency and a brief idea about how to improve efficiency, let us look at the third part of the puzzle - Team work.
3) Teamwork
Thus we see a totally new phenomenon that as the number of people increase, the productivity has come down drastically. This is the core learning from this story also:
Without Cooperation, 1 monk can fetch 2 buckets of water, 2 monks can fetch 1 bucket of water and 3 monks will fetch no water at all.
With cooperation, 3 monks can increase the efficiency of the process to a level previously unattainable. (Innovation, creativity etc plays an important part).
Thus every manager who profess the importance of team work should also look at the flip side and the negative effects by having an imbalanced team. Pick two top class Singles tennis players, put them in a team and contest against the number one seeded doubles team. Even though individually the latter is weaker, they can beat the superior opposition thanks to coordination and team work.
These are some of my observations regarding the video. I would love to hear your comments/suggestions/criticisms. Also please rate this post for feedback purpose.
