Three Monks.

Three Monks  is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. 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. The film 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.

SUMMARY
A young monk arrives in the temple and starts living a simple life in temple situated on top of a hill. He sees that there is no source of water inside the temple and there is so much scarcity of water there. Down the hill there is a river flowing. The water could be brought from there only. As the hill has the steep slope so, it
was some what difficult to bring the water up on the hill to the temple. But since it was the utmost need of the monk , he has to bring the water with the help of carry pole and tiding two bucket at the ends of pole. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. After few days there came the another monk. This gave the first monk a reason to relax. Now first monk always instruct to the second monk to bring the water for temple alone, but this could not continued for so long. Second monk wanted the first one also to join him in work. They tried to share the job with each monk, they hold the carry pole from the end while one bucket was hanging there in the middle. In the middle of way they faced too many problem and after few time they came out with a solution which in turn enable them to accomplished their task of bringing the water up to the hill. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. This continued for some days. One night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally in emergency unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "Unity is Strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

Working Method involved in the Story.

Working Method 1: One monk fetches the water
The monk fetches the water faithfully and regularly every day. As his needs are limited and he was alone he doesn’t mind carrying two buckets with a stick on his shoulders.

Working Method 2: Two monks fetches the water
When the second monk moves in then they both try to bring water in single bucket together. Initially they both fight over how to carry water because the bucket would  tend to slip either side since they had difference in their height. But later on they find a solution with the help of standard ruler and cutting the pole so that it  do not slip. With the help of short pole ,they 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.

Deadlock Situation
When the third monk moves in, both monks try to delegate entire work to the newcomer. In fact 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. Sometimes deadlock situations also arrives while there is transition from one step to another.

Working Method 3: Three monks work as a team to fetch out water

When the fires broke out in the temple. All three monks then put aside their personal ego and collaborated as a team. Now one monk went down to hill to fetch the water another monk would stand on the edge to pass on to bucket to the temple and the third monk would help in putting off the fire by throwing the water on the temple. So, There was no feeling of jealousy and selfishness in that team. All member were working for a single goal. As a result they were able to putt off the fire.

Management Lesson
Innovation

Transition from Working Method 2 to Working Method 3 led them to innovation.  When the monastery is on fire they realize that it is better to think in terms of  team goals rather than individualistic goals. Now they have introduced the pulley system in fetching the water. One would draw the water from river and tied to rope
,second one would pull the bucket through pulley and third would take the bucket inside the temple. In this way they can draw as much water as much they need without  any hassle. This shows difficult situation inspires ingenious solutions.

Team Work
The 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, they work together to save the temple. So, from this we learn that in an organization and in a team, its important to take personal
ego out of our self and  perform the duty at hand so that there is no regret later.

Productivity

While talking about productivity Working method 1 has less productivity than Working Method 2 and Working Method 2 has less productivity than Working Method 3.
To make it clearer, here is a table illustrating the productivity statistics in each case.