Feel Like Eating Chinese, Let's go 'Learning Management' on the way

Before I get carried away with the mast animation in the video 'Three Monks' , let me start first by pointing out the focus lessons to be taken away

1. Staffing
2. Development of work methods
3. Innovation
4. Productivity Enhancement

Now those are some big words we had to learn after watching the award winning chinese short animation film by Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Below is the youtube video of the film

The IM'20 batch, my class was asked to watch the same and what followed was usual discussions which made us understand the movie from a management perspective.

The Plot of the animation with the lessons can be taken in a digestible form as below:

A) The beginning of the film shows a young monk living on the top of the hill in a buddhist monastery who had a regular chore of carrying bucket of water to top for his own consumption and survival of life of a plant infront of buddha. The young monk being alone does all the work, work is done as in traditional way where he had to apply huge effort for a small output. 

Lessons to be taken 

• Under Staffed: Only one person
• Traditional work method: Bringing manually in the beginning and then with pole
• Low Productivity: Large input in form of energy for output

B) Now the second monk a taller one enters into the picture and soon both realize that to stay together and help monastery they have to work together, they try to bring water to the top with the help of a pole but the yardstick to measure the center of the pole is not defined or standard. Hence both face problems but with team work and principle of torques canceling each other in fulcrum system at least these people place less effort for the same output as before .

Lessons to be taken

• Optimum staffed: two person as a team
• Work Method improving: Using fulcrum concept for carrying bucket and team work but standards to be improved (finding centre of pole)
• Innovation: Fulcrum principle
• Productivity: Improves since effort to be applied is less than before for same output

C) So the third monk enters into the picture and soon all three of the monks start fighting with each other forgetting to do the simple chore of bringing water to the monastery. The plant before Buddha starts to decay. 

Lessons to be taken

• Overstaffed: three person and no job
• Work method process innovation: Work itself avoided, no team play
• Productivity: zero

D) At the end of the plot a rat happens to put the monastery to fire without any of the monks realizing what happened. Being in such a crisis situation brings up team work in them and they try by all means possible shouldering each other to put the fire to end. They happen to do so and then decide on using a pulley based system to pull the water from the river to the top of monastery.

Lessons to be taken

• Staffing: Staffing can be optimal provided planned utilization
• Work method: Assembly line with each monk given task, eg. to fill water, to pull water and to carry to monastery. Also a chance to rotate jobs within them
• Innovation: Pulley based system
• Productivity: Least effort for output as needed, reliability on people 

Another lesson to be learned is that sometimes innovation and team work needs crisis, these crisis can be actual problems as in the case of three monks or can be stimulation exercises by effective managers in organizations so as to remain prepared.

I have personally faced many such opportunities of improvements in my stint as an operations executive with Steel Authority of India Limited. One example being operation of salt handling system. The salt dryer system in ammonium sulphate unit was a mess leading to many problems in bagging of salt. The hopper was modified with manual clamp and release system to give baggers control and assembly like structure which enabled output at minimal input and engagement of the optimum number of workers for the job.