Team Work

Dr. Mandi once again took an innovative method to illustrate the importance of team work. Yes, animated short movie “Three Monks and No Water” was taken for the purpose. The story is about how disputes occur between three monks in a monastery located on top of the hill for carrying water from the foothill and later how they overcame the problem.

The story starts with a monk in the monastery where he was living alone and fulfilled his needs on his own. He got water from the foothill by carrying a stick on his shoulder which could carry two buckets of water. He faced no problem and he enjoyed his work doing alone.

After some days he is joined by another monk in the monastery. Now the problem arises in carrying the water from the foothill. There arises some problem between the two and the same is solved by reaching a consensus. By which the two will carry a stick whose two ends rest on the shoulder of each monk and a bucket is suspended at the centre of the stick which could be filled with water.  

Later the third monk joined the other two in the monastery. When the new monk is in need of water the remaining two asked him to bring the water from the foothill, he also obeyed the order and when he realized that the other two enjoyed the time while he was away, it annoyed him and he refused to get water. Once again the problem arose and no one was ready to do bring the water.

One day the fire broke out in the monastery and the three monks forgot their dispute and their aim was to douse the fire. They were able to accomplish the mission of putting off the fire and they realised their mistake of not being united till then.

Later they devised the mechanism by which the water is drawn from the lake in the foothill in more efficient way that minimized the energy and also drew lot of water from it.

Lessons learnt:

·  Initially the productivity was two buckets of water and in the subsequent scenes the productivity of bringing water almost came to zero. 

·  This implies that the resources were not used effectively to increase the productivity.

·   The three monks were reluctant not to share the work and their fingers pointed to one another for getting the water which is not the right thing to be done in a team.

·    But at the difficult situation they came together and were able to overcome it by staying focused.

·    The productivity will definitely will get increased if the individual contributes to the team. Working as a team and more focused in achieving the goal will make the things to be done in more efficient way.

·    The “Assembly Line” work is the one where the each individual’s work in the team is interdependent on other’s work and if one fails it is going to affect the team as a whole.

The word “WE" is always more powerful than letter ‘I’….