Three Monks

THE THREE MONKS : THE RELAVANCE OF A TEAM.

TEAM BUILDING is the most vital part in the formulation towards any goal. It is philosophy of job design in which employees are viewed as members of interdependent teams instead of as individual workers. Be it any pursuit , either in sport , or in defence or business, the importance of team cannot be overemphasized.

In order to better understand the importance of team building , let us refer to a wonderful cartoon film created in China in the year 1982, which became really popular.

This particular video highlights importance of "team building and team management" in the completion of any task. It also describes as to how the any task can be done more efficiently with the help of simple innovation and proper utilization of the available resources.

This video can  be subdivided into three main parts.

The Singleton : Here the monk is shown to get water for the temple alone, he does all aspects of a job himself , identifying the need to get water, taking the buckets, going to the river , fetching the water, etc. It has some similarities to craftsmanship , where the person does not specialise in any aspect and does the entire job himself.

Any job which is done on a single basis has only a limited potential particularly in business scenarios which are becoming increasingly integrated.

However for the singleton does really have an advantage, in areas of pursuit like arts, research, etc.

Leverage of the two monks: In this case the work load has been divided into two equal parts but one important factor to be considered here is the coordination between the two members in the team.

 The root cause for their difference of opinion is that there is no 'standards' or rules for completing the task in a coordinated manner. This is later sorted out when the first monk draws a scale and makes a fair ruling. This principal is also very important with regards to any organization as there is a need to a unity of direction and proper distribution of work for the organization to march towards its goals.

Another thing which needs to be highlighted is that the increase in manpower leads to increase in efficiency as the work-load on one person is reduced.

In any organization the division of labour is very important. Proper concise and well defined roles really help in streamlining the task at hand.Also as seen from the video, standardization of a task is also very critical, as objective measures , which are well defined help in making the job easier as well as avoiding conflict.

The three monks: The entry of the third monks really changes the equation, initially it results in a lot of discord as to who will bring the water, it even results in no one bringing the water, and one of them even taking water from the vase near the Buddha statue. In organization lack of clear and concise well defined roles , often results in conflicts with each one shirking from his responsibility. This is called Social loafing. Here the role of the management is critical in the sense that it has to be proactive in resolving those issues and clearly laying down the roles and responsibity of each person.

The Realization : In the cartoon it is shown that there is a major fire in the monastery, and during that instance , they find that working together as a team is the best way to quench the fire. So they work together , whole heartedly and ultimately manage to quench the fire . they finally realize that working together is the best way to realize any objective for that matter.

A real life example can be the Pakistan team in the 1992 , world cup, where initially they were struggling with a lot of infighting going on, but when they were on the brink of elimination , they realized the importance of goal alignment and worked together to achieve the impossible.

In any organization , not only the goals should be clear and precise, but also the roles must be

designed in such a manner that  those goals are aligned with the organizational goals.