Management Lesson from 3 Monks     

3 Monks' Story - Part 1

                               

3 Monks' Story - Part 2

Story of 3 Monks

A young monk while travelling reached a monastery on a hill and he started living there. Every day he would fetch 2 buckets of water from a cold stream downhill. Rain or shine, he would never miss a day lugging this burden up the mountain to the temple.

One day another travelling monk came to stay with him .Young monk gave him water to drink and they both did their daily chores and slept. Next morning, when 2nd monk was going to get water from downhill, the young monk ridiculed him thinking that he is extricated from his daily duty of bringing water. But second monk noticed and asked him to come along with him. Since they would share the water, they descended the mountain together to fetch it. Due to the difference in their heights, the men were unable to balance the shared load on their carrying rod without sloshing the contents of the two buckets all over the short monk. So, now they both were not co-ordinating properly. And on the way back they both stopped due to differences of opinion on how to carry the water. They both tried to find out a solution to the problem in their own ways, but nothing substantial came out. Finally, they both used a ruler to measure the rod on which bucket was loaded. And they found a solution to take water uphill together marking the parts on the rod that each will carry. But They managed to retrieve only a fraction of the water (only one bucket), the young monk would have carried on his own, and not enough to store in the water tank. 

Just as the monks began to see each other as ungrateful and unreasonable, a third monk arrived. He also drank water and his arrival prompted everyone to expect that someone else would take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetched water though everybody was thirsty. At night, a rat came to scrounge and then knocked the candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple.

Then, the three monks finally united together and made a concerted effort to put out the fire. They all went to get water. They divided the task, co-ordinated and helped each other. They did commendable Team work and finally got successful in dousing the fire.

And then they understood the old saying "unity is strength" and the importance of co-ordination. And since then, they used a Physical pulley on the hill to fetch water from downhill, so that only one monk would go down, other would pull water bucket up using pulley, and 3rd would take water from pulley to fill the water tank. At last, they began to live a harmonious life. And the temple never lacked water again.

In this story we have seen 3 different ways of doing the same task - bringing water uphill in the monastery from the water stream that is down the hill.

1^st Method

Only one monk was doing the work. He never missed to fetch water from downhill. He was not dependent on anyone and was able to work with much concerted effort because there was no one whom he could rely on or share his work with.

2nd Method

Since 2 monks would share the water, they together had to do the work. But younger monk tried to extricate himself, putting the whole work on other monk's shoulders. So, there was a tendency of running away from responsibility. And this is what happens in a real team in the real world scenario.. But a team wins only when it tries to reach an optimized solution considering opinions of all. So, there has to be co-ordination. This optimized solution comes with a standardized technique as in the case of 2 monks, they used purely objective way of measurement using a ruler.

And in the real world, here comes up the responsibility of a manager to divide the task among his team in such a way that no one would try to shun his/her part of duty. A manager thus uses a standardized way to divide the task considering everyone’s capability and skills. The differences of opinions also arose and that is bound to happen when more people are involved.

3rd Method

When a rat came, knocked the candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple, then the three monks finally united together and made a concerted effort to put out the fire. They all went to get water. They divided the task, co-ordinated and helped each other. They did commendable Team work and finally got successful in dousing the fire. This was the best way as they all focussed on a central goal of dousing the fire. They all gave their cent percent without escaping from the responsibility. They divided the task efficiently - one would fill the water from the stream and take it to the midway, from where other monk would fetch bucket from him and take it to third monk near temple, and third monk would put the water on the fire to douse it. This proper planning led to accomplishment of the goal in a much easier and faster way. That is why now they devised a new scientific method of pulley to use for fetching water.

So,

In the 1st method, the productivity of a single person was maximum as there was no one to intervene.

In 2nd method, the productivity could have been maximum, but they both relinquished their responsibilities so, they could not do better. Had they both understood the importance of the team work, co-ordination and proper planning, then they would have done extremely good job.

In the 3rd method, they all focussed on a common goal, did great team work, coordinated well, and finally achieved their target. And thereafter to improve their process, they started using a pulley system to fetch water. This also shows that a team, if properly coordinated, continuously improves the efficiency of the working methodology by adoption of more innovative methods and makes the work culture more harmonious and congenial.