THREE MONKS AND THE MANAGEMENT FUNDA

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.

So after watching the short film we came to a conclusion that:

Table shows a comparative study of number of monks and the buckets of water they carried.

The parameters on which combination is to be judged best are manpower (input), number of buckets carried (output), time .

A simple formula has been devised to calculate the efficiency of each of the methods in terms of Number of buckets transported per person per unit time.

Efficiency = Output/(Manpower*Time required*Effort)

From the 3 situations, it can be inferred that efficiency in the case of situation 3 is higher than the efficiency in situation 1 & 2.

However, during times of crisis the following parameters can force a manager to choose from other options :

1.     Availability of manpower
2.    Time available for production
3.    Motivation levels of manpower

Standardization of Work

Standard working procedures are designed to reduce effort, time and manpower. An organization is supposed to design its procedures in such a way that people of all backgrounds find it easy to work in the designed environment using the designed procedure.

Some advantages of work-standardization have been shown above.  (taken from Toyota’s lean manufacturing concepts)

Similarly , in the movie a point comes where the monks were trying to mark a wooden stick using there hand-span. This led to a divergence of opinion since measurements were not the same every time due to different hand-span lengths of the monks.

A scale as a standard was used to mark up the position from where the load would be hung.

Standardization will help in minimizing loss of any activity due to different skill set of persons.

A lesson from the movie can be taken as all people having different attributes, different skill-sets.

The above depiction is a fundamental expression of how all people are different. The different animals in the pictures showing the different personalities of the monks. Organisations face similar problems  in standardizing work due to different personalities of humans working in a particular field.

FLAT Organisations vs Single Head

If we compare the way organizational principles apply in the beginning and the end of the film, in the beginning only one monk was operating . Looking after all activities. He was the sole-decision maker.

The end of the film showed the working of the three monks portraying the facets of a flat organization. Where all hierarchical levels are similar and every person has an equal say in all decisions. Procedures are also defined in such a manner that any interchange of positions will not result in any loss of productivity.