“Teamwork is the
secret that make common people achieve uncommon result.”
-Efianyi Onuoha
Hello everyone,
this time I learnt about the strength of unity in a very unique way. Dr. Mandi
asked us to watch a video about a story of 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. 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 story can be divided into
3 parts as follows:
1.Low Productivity
with 1 monk :
A young monk lives
a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling
two buckets of water up the hill. He gets tired with this task and takes more
time to complete it.
2.Moderate
Productivity with 2 monks :
After few days,
second monk arrives. Both of them decide to share the work of fetching the
water. But each one of them tries to reduce their share of load by changing the
inclination of rod. This leads to their fighting. The normal human tendency to avoid
the work is shown here.
To resolve the conflict, they
decide to use measuring scale to mark the exact mid-point of the rod. This
shows that technology can be used to resolve conflicts. One of them takes
the measurement and other marks so that nobody can take doubt on each
other.From this we can learn that participative management increases trust in
the team which is very vital for the team to function properly.
3.High
Productivity with 3 monks :
The third monk
arrives in the temple after some days. Each one of them thinks that somebody
else will get the water and finally nobody fetches the water even though they
were thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the
candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple.
The adversity unites
them. They bring the water with redoubled vigour and finally succeeds in dousing
the fire. After this incident they start co-operating each other and work as a
team. They use a rope and pulley to fetch the water. As a result of this, they get more water with less
efforts which ultimately increases their productivity. The following table
clearly explains the increased productivity with increased manpower.
Variable
|
1 PERSON
|
1 PERSON
|
2 PERSONS
|
3 PERSONS
|
OUTPUT
|
1 BUCKET
|
2 BUCKETS
|
1 BUCKET
|
1 BUCKET
|
HOW
|
Overhead
|
I pole
|
1 pole,1 scale
|
Pulley,Rope
|
EFFORT
|
300KJ
|
100 KJ
|
10 KJ
|
0.1 KJ
|
PRODUCTIVITY
|
1/300= 0.003
|
2/100 = .02
|
1/10 = .1
|
1/0.1 = 10
|
VERY LOW
|
LOW
|
MODERATE
|
VERY HIGH
|
My Corporate Experience :
I can relate this story to my actual work experience. As a part of my job,I used to do Simulation analysis and Report preparation for the same project. As both the tasks were tedious, it used to take lot of efforts and time.After this, my manager asked me to focus only on Simulation analysis and the task of Report preparation was given to another person.Due to this,we both became experts in our respective areas.As a result of this segregation of activity,the task which was taking 80hrs earlier could be completed in just 30hrs. We worked as a team and this led to improved productivity which ultimately earned us client appreciation.This example clearly underlines the significance of Deskilling(which is mentioned in my earlier post) and Teamwork in a real corporate world.
After attending this class of Dr. Mandi, I found the following quote more correct.
“The strength of
the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is
the team.”
- Phil Jackson
Happy Reading !!!
