Strength lies in Unity !

“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 !!!