Three Monks : Productivity & Team Work

Team work and productivity are the most important aspects of running a successful organization. In the following blog, we would aim to highlight the importance of the above aspects through a couple if videos popularly knows as "Three Buddhist Monks"

The video

Part 1

Part 2

Brief Description About the Video

The film tells a simplest story with simplest lines and a simplest form. There is no dubbed voice. Even the background music is reduced to the occasional sound of wooden fish. But it is this simplicity that makes people unwilling to miss a single scene. When we review the Three Monks after seeing numerous Japanese, Korean, European and American cartoons, we will be shocked. We will even smugly say, look at our Chinese “silent movie”. Maybe, only Chinese water-and-ink painting has such a magic to depict a figure with distinct personality with just a few strokes. The film is based on a folk proverb. It has national features, a complete scene of mountain, water and temple drawn with traditional painting skills, and figures with strong characters. Although it is meant to reason things out, the film is humorous and void of rigid sermon.  

Scene 1

A monastery located on the top of a hill and water can be availed from the lake below. To get water, the monk has to get to the bottom of the him. The monk's daily routine included fetching water, chanting mantras and adding water to the water pot placed in front of the Goddess of Mercy, thereby respecting it. His life was smooth and comfortable.

Player The only monk

Scene 2

As soon as the second monk joined, he completed the entire water from the container, so the little monk asked him to fetch the water from the source below. The taller monk felt that the work should be equally divided, so the bucket was placed in between the rod and both the monks shouldered the responsibility of fetching the water. In this way, even tough the productivity decreased and they could carry only one bucket at a time, they were still self sufficient.

Player

The little monk and the taller monk.

Scene 3

The taller and the little monk were joined by another fat monk, who was tired by the time he reached the monastery situated at the top of the till. Naturally he craved for water and finished the entire water available and was asked by the other two monks to refill the container.

Player 

The three monks

Fat monk drinking the water

Fat Monk fetching the water

The fat monk after fetching the water finished it again. After this everyone carried out their own mantras and didn't bother to fill up the container. In this way the water has eventually dried up.

Scene 4

Later that night, a mouse in search of food climbed up near the holy Goddess and bit into the candles lit. That has caused the curtains around to burn apparently causing a fire. Since there was no water left, there was a panic and this encouraged them to act smartly and work as a team. In a crisis situation, the differences were all forgotten and the three monks worked together as one unit and the total work was divided into three parts.

1. The first monk filled up the water and gave it to the second monk.

2. The second monk ran to the almost half the distance between the water and the monastery to give the bucket of water to the third monk.

3. The third monk took it from there and pour the water to douse the fire.

With all the efforts, the fire was extinguished.

After the incident the monastery never lacked water again and they worked together.

Learnings

The major emphasis laid here was on productivity increase when working in a team.

Productivity is defined as the output per unit of input.

It is usually noticed that when people work in a team, the overall productivity increases. 

Here in the video we could see that when the fire broke out, each of the monks individually tried to fill the buckets and tried to douse the fire which proved ineffective. Later when all three of them started working together as a team, more amount of water was fetched in the same amount of time.

Productivity is important because it allows the business to be more cost effective. The more output a business has for a specific cause, the cheaper it is to produce the product. This in turn allows the business to have a higher profit.

As quoted by Franz Kafka
"Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."

Valley Crossing Exercise - Team Work

The valley crossing exercise was performed in order to demonstrate the importance of team work. Team work involves many facets someone of them being communication, coordination, interdependency, trust, support, contribution from members and cohesion between members.

Valley Crossing

The activity involved 3 persons crossing a valley with the support of the rod. The distance between two ends of the cliff was more than 1 step but less than 2 steps. The activity was to be performed in such a way, that at any instance of time during the crossing of valley, not more than 1 member was at risk, i.e. if one person was at risk during the act of valley crossing, the other two members would take up that person’s weight. In this way the interdependency between the members was tightly coupled which is one of the most facets of team work.

It is also to be noted that when one of the persons is at risk, that person has to trust the other two persons to ensure that the objective is achieved. In this way, during the entire exercise, all the persons are at equal risk and need confidence and trust between the members to achieve the objective.

Three wise men Crossing the valley  - Detailed task process

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Steps
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky
3	Full Risky
4	Half Risky	Half Risky
5		Full Risky
6		Half Risky	Half Risky
7			Full Risky
8			Half Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

A. Safe - Both the legs of the person have full support
B. Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
C. Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
D. Half risky – One leg is in the air and the other leg has support
E. Safe - Both the legs have full support

The above table can also be depicted as

 

Lessons Learnt

Responsibility

When a team is assigned a work or has to achieve an objective, each member of the team should be responsible enough to complete their portion of the task. If even one member of the team is not responsible to complete their portion, then the entire objective is at a risk and can lead to harsh consequences.

After all “Boondh Boondh se sagar banta ha”

Communication

During the process of performing a task, there needs to be effective communication between the group members for two main reasons.

The first reason can be to know the status of the work performed so that the percentage task completion of the task can be gauzed. The second reason can be related to the clarity of the task between the members. If even one member interprets the task incorrectly, the whole objective of the group is put at stake.

Confidence and Trust

The organization cannot be successful if there is no element of trust in it. As in the case of valley exercise, persons can take the risk to cross the valley only since they trust the other two. Similarly for the organization to be successful, managers and workers have to follow the Theory X which tells the people or managers have trust on the other people or employees for the job to be completed effectively.

Innovation

When the team memebers have gelled , then innovation is something that comes on its own. A good team always has a good number of people who come up with innovative ideas all the time.

To conclude :

“There are three types of workers: those who get things done, those who watch things get done, and those who wonder how so much got done.”
The third type of workers are team workers.

Khan Academy – Revolutionizing the way we learn 1+1 =2

“Khan Academy is usually known for its collection of videos”. This line put us in a fix as to how Khan Academy is different from you tube because even You Tube is a collection of videos.

Watch the video to know more.

Khan Academy has a collection of carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. It is a non-profit organization and a collection of 3200 micro lectures.

Mission

Started with a stated vision of “providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere”.
it is a non-profit organization that lays its emphasis on providing better quality education. It has a firm belief that everyone is equal and possesses an equal ability to learn new things with different pace of understanding. Through its online videos, Khan Academy aims to put all students on an equal platform and making the process of learning innovative and enjoyable.

Underlying Concept

After tutoring his cousins remotely for Math, Khan created a video so that his cousins could use the video later on as a supplement or a source to revise their concepts. He had received a feedback that they preferred to have his videos rather than having him in person because they could review whenever they wanted to or clear any conceptual doubts without having to waste his time
He thought there was no reason to keep the videos private and hence the video was uploaded on you tube. As more and more people stumbled upon the video, he started getting good feedback and hence decided to record more videos for a variety of concepts after learning that his videos were used in classes by teachers.

Theory X and Theory Y assumptions application

Khan academy works on the concept of Theory Y. As theory Y assumes that employees are not lazy even though they are, the academy gives you the freedom to learn and practise at your own pace of learning. Each student is given an equal opportunity to learn at their own pace and excel and compete with other students irrespective of their pace of understanding.

Creative Problem Solving

The basic paradigm is that innumerable numbers of questions are generated per concept unless the student gets a hang on the concept. In the current system, we all have a system where we get a certain mark and we all tend to move on without actually mastering the concept and Khan Academy gets you the mastery of the concept.

The gaps created between concept slowly increase and the student eventually starts failing because of lack of clarity of concept.

The concept provides software where a teacher can monitor the performance of each student in the class. It encourages peer to peer learning from a good student to a student who is not conceptually strong in the same concept.
The motivation to learn more or help more is provided by energy points or by providing badges. It was observed that students who learnt things at their pace had the ability to pick up very fast.
The concept enables even a street kid at some other part of the work, who has to work all day to earn his living and can’t go to school, learn things at his own pace and not feel embarrassed with their work. It would also help the kid at a one part of the world to learn from another part of the world thereby achieving their mission of building a global one world class room.

Quality, Teamwork & Entrepreneurship

Khan academy has a very small dedicated team which is very passionate about the work it does. The team makes sure that all the decisions are taken keeping the learner in mind (i.e. the customer).

In short the organization (Khan academy) was built for customers (the learners) and the dedicated team is working only to make sure all the aspirations of the customer are fixed which is the most important aspect for an organization.

Being just a start up, the concept has caught eyeballs from people across the planet. It has been widely appreciated from the best people including Bill Gates. The funding received has encouraged him to take up the venture on a more serious note.