LE04: Three Monks

"Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success. "

           ~ Henry Ford

Teachings from Zen are usually short and delightful. This short movie is a beautiful adaptation of a 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. I found it inspiring and really worth to ponder about.  Although it does not contain any dialogues but it still imparts some important lessons in management. It can be watched here.

Method 1: One monk fetches the water

The monk fetches the water faithfully and regularly every day. As his needs are limited he doesn’t mind carrying two buckets with a stick on his shoulders.

Method 2: Two monks fetch the water

When the second monk moves in then the first monk thinks of distributing his work. Initially they both fight over how to carry water but later on they find a solution. They find a pole and jointly fetch a single bucket of water every day. Although they work as a team but it seems as if they are not satisfied with each other.

Method 3: Three monks working as team to fetch out water

When the third monk moves in, both monks try to delegate entire work to the newcomer. Infact, third monk fetches the water once but he consumes all by himself. After arguing with each other constantly over whose turn it is to fetch the water, nobody goes to fetch the water. No water gets fetched even after they all are thirsty. 

Lessons Learnt

Continuous Improvement

Method 1 and Method 2 are the examples of using old techniques but continuous improvements over time. It leads to better efficiency and process improvement.

Productivity

Method 2 brings us to an old debate Individual Vs Team Productivity. As per productivity analysis method 2 is more productive than method 1. To make it clearer, here is a table illustrating the productivity statistics in either case. Assuming 1 Man uses 1 unit of energy to lift 1 bucket. 

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2

Innovation

Transition from method 2 to method 3 is innovation.  When the monastery is on fire they realise that it is better to think in terms of team goals rather than individualistic goals. The monk at the bottom fills the buckets, the middle monk works on pulley system and the third monk at the top douses the fire with water in the bucket. This shows difficult situation inspires ingenious solutions. 

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. When a fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they’ve been and work together to save the temple.

Work for each other, no selfishness

The great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, once wrote "I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea." The story of the three monks teaches us that everyone is capable of being selfish, but doing so diminishes our ability to cooperate with one another. People must rise among themselves and see the group as whole. People must be deliberative in their collective decision making.

Pursuit of Excellence

Increase in excellence directly leads to the increase in effective productivity. Excellence can be defined as the product of efficiency and effectiveness. Moving from method 2 to method 3 is the increase in excellence. In the story there is no dearth of talent as all three monks are equally capable, but still as a team they struggle.

Conclusion

The moral of the story, sane group can make bad group decisions if the group dynamics is bad.