3 monks: A wise old Chinese fable

The film ‘3 monks’ 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." The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk.

                The film is available on you tube and has more than 15 thousand views. The video is described on you tube as follows: “ Three Monks is a Chinese animated short, released in 1980 and directed by A Da. It is one of the most famous and beloved of Shanghai Animation Film Studio's productions, and has won awards at film festivals throughout the world. 
                A note about the columns of text that appear at the beginning: the first column reads, "one monk fetches water to drink", the second column reads, "two monks carry water to drink", and the third one merely says, "three monks". The unfinished sentence reflects the film's central question, which is whether the three main characters will learn to work together so that they can all have water to drink.”

                The film teaches us a valuable lesson in organizational management. The story of 3 monks is analogous to the corporate world when a company is in growth phase.

                When there was one monk, all the responsibility was on his shoulders and he worked hard and with more productivity to complete the task at hand. The first monk alone carried two buckets of water and this was sufficient as the water required for one person was lesser. Similar is the case for organizations in the start-up phase. The tasks are fewer, but so is the staff. There was no co-ordination or co-operation required for goal achievement and everything was based on hard work.

                When there were two monks in the monastery, the productivity decreased to a quarter as 2 monks were carrying just one bucket of water. However, the cost of this decreased productivity was compensated by increased comfort for the monks. Same goes for organization as they expand. Everyone is unable to perform equally and some of them try to make others work for them. Increased workforce in an organization doesn’t necessarily mean that more work is done because everyone thinks that there are plenty of people to accomplish the task at hand. Another reason that the productivity decreases is that everyone doesn’t think at the same frequency, thus the situation is like different people pulling the cart in different directions which is always detrimental to the organizational goal. Hard work is important in this situation, however co-ordination is also very significant.

                In case of 3 monks, no one works for the common goal and the productivity is almost zero. This is the classical case of large organization when there is no co-ordination between different departments. Finally, there is a crisis analogous to the fire, and thus things get shaken up. Everyone works together for a common aim to bring forth a ‘revolution’. Thus a new organizational procedure is evolved which is productive for large organization. This ‘revolution’ is necessary for large organization without which growth cannot be beyond a certain point.