Three Monks Short Film

The Short Film 

We saw a video in the last class. I don't know about everyone, but I found it interesting. It was a nice departure from the normal text-book study method, and that's true about the whole POM course here in NITIE. In fact, that's what an MBA education should be, because a picture is worth a thousand words. Coming back to the movie...

It is about three Chinese monks who live in a monastery on the top of the mountain. It's really fun to watch.

To mention about the film here are some notable points:

• Won the outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture.
• Won the Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.
• Won four international awards including a Silver Bear for Short Film at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival in 1982.

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. It was released in 1980.

What the movie conveys:

The movie can be interpreted to understand certain management principles too.

At one point of time the movie shows that two people are trying to carry a single bucket, hanging from the bar held on their shoulders. Each one tries to push it towards the other in order to carry less weight.


During the course of my employment I have worked with people from at least 5 different nationalities, and I have learned that it is not often that two people have similar opinions about people and situations. Everyone on my ship was almost equally competent and experienced and being more qualified was certainly not enough to persuade them to go about working in a certain way. 


When asked in class about the solution to the problem of sharing load, a lot of them came up with different solutions. But the best solutions are always the simplest ones. here too the solution was quite simple - measure the centre using a scale.


One more thing to notice is how the process of carrying water uphill is changed when the second monk arrives. The single monk was carrying water everyday, but when the second monk arrived, they both started sharing the load. They updated the process so that all resources are optimally utilized - Continuous Innovation.


Towards the end we see that the monastery catches fire. When this happens, all the monks forget their hostility and try to put out the fire. The dilemma of who will carry the water was quickly forgotten and a system arose out of the initial chaos. They all put out the fire quickly - Drastic Innovation.
Many a times crisis situations are encountered where any kind of system is in place. I myself faced several of those when I was working on ships. However, every time the crisis hit, the entire team came together to solve the issue and take the ship back to the normal state. Forgotten were the hierarchies; gone were the differences. In one instance, the ship's crew fought fire for 52 hours non-stop. Not only the ship's entire crew came together, but a ship passing nearby also lent it's help in the form of human resources.


In the end we see that the monks resolve the situation by fixing a pulley and dividing their roles - hooking the bucket, roping it in and transporting to the monastery.