Three Monks – TeamWork

The film “Three Monks” 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."

Plot

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 tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again. [Source: Wikipedia]

Analysis

Let’s look at several acceptable definitions of teamwork

“Work done by several associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole”    by Merriam-Webster dictionary

“The interdependent components of performance required to effectively coordinate the performance of multiple individuals”

Let's have a look at the method employed by the monks to fetch the water up to the monastery.

1.                  One monk carries 2 buckets of water at a time and takes it to the monastery.

2.                  Two monks share the load of a single bucket of water.

3.                  The work comes almost to a standstill when the third monk comes

4.                  The use of pulley system to fetch the water in which all 3 monks are involved.

A team is supposed to achieve what an individual person can’t achieve. One might wonder why even after having more team members productivity decreased from 1 à 2à 3, well because there was no team work at all, this so called team was actually counterproductive, achieving less than what a single person could achieve. This scenario is not too uncommon, it happens in day to day life. Let’s explore the reasons why it happened, I have highlighted the most important ones here

Lack of leadership

Individual tasks undefined

No open communication

Working relationship not good at all

What changed in situation 4? Well, they started working as a “team”

Open communication - In any collaborative effort, communicating openly is a very important component of the process. This factor helps create the ideal environment for teamwork to actually work

Balanced team membership - No five fingers are alike. Every team comprises of people with different attributes and quality. The strengths and weaknesses of the team members should complement each other. This way, at least one person could work on each important aspect of the tasks of the team. Three monks took roles in situation 4 according to their competencies.

Good working relationships - Team members need to work together harmoniously. Personal differences and opinions can differ at times. But don’t allow these to affect good working relationships. Friction in the team actually gives team members the opportunity to practice professionalism and collegiality.

Creativity - Solution to the water problem shown at the end of the video was indeed creative

Fun - As a consequence of creativity, team members will have fun while working together. Fun also helps keep the drudgery away. Most of the time, passionate people know how to have fun even while at work.

Results-orientation - It is good to have fun while working yet, the achievement of results should never be compromised. But actually, results can be the natural consequence of creativity and fun tempered by the other ingredients of effective team work.

Loyalty to the team - When team members are loyal to the team, they tend to set aside extreme individualism, thus facilitating a smoother working relationship.

Clear goals and targets - Team members should have clear goals and targets so that team members know what they are working for and when they should be delivered.

Clear expectations - When team members know exactly what is expected from them, they can manage their workload and work more effectively and more efficiently.

Commitment - When team members are committed to the appointed tasks, the team becomes more intentional in completing these tasks. Even when they encounter setbacks and difficulties, the team can persevere and do what is necessary.

Competence - Team members and the team in general should have a level of competence so that the tasks can be accomplished more easily and efficiently. This level of competence will decide whether the innovation brought about in water fetching process would be incremental or drastic. The solution presented at the end of the video was creative and an example of drastic innovation.

Collaboration - Imagine a team without collaboration. That’s not a team at all; it is merely a collection of obstinate individuals.

Coordination of efforts - A team member’s task should be clear and well coordinated. Otherwise, the tasks of each member would be confusing and overlapping.

Mutual support - Effective teamwork presupposes mutual support. After all, when one member finds his tasks difficult, the other members can come to his aid and help him figure things out.

THE KHAN ACADEMY

                                                          Pedagogy of excellence

Khan Academy is a non-profit organization which was established by educator Mr. Salman Khan in 1996 with a motive of helping students in learning. The founder is a graduate of MIT and Harward Business School.

This organization is working via a website www.khanacademy.com which supplies online collection of more than 3200 lectures which has been stored onwww.youtube.com . These tutorials teach mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, economics etc.  

Mission

The mission of this organization is “providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”.

Below are few numbers which are mind boggling. Have a look! 

 ·         

• Around 5 million unique students have watched videos over KA last month.
•  Every month there are around 80 million lectures delivered
•  Till date, there have been around 260 million exercises completed

On a different note, Sal (as he is more often known as to the Silicon Valley) says that KA has taught more students than what HBS has taught till date from the time of its inception. Which is like WOW!! 

                                      Khan Academy Vs Traditional education system

Teamwork

Where he once was an army of one, the staff has been ramped up to 32, including the recent high-profile addition of Google's first hired employee, programming ace Craig Silverstein. The staff's immediate mission is to further broaden the site's content and improve assessment and feedback features so the Khan Academy experience becomes more interactive.

Innovation

Innovate or die. Look at Apple. Look at Google. Every top company will have a story or two to talk about innovation. Khan’s academy is a perfect example of how we can innovate in even the smallest of things. What started as a collection of youtube videos is now a complete teaching platform. Practice exercises. Self-paced learning. Concept of badges etc are amazing pieces of innovation which must have played a big role in the success of this venture. Khan Academy as a whole is an amazing innovation in itself

Future 

Love it or hate it, Khan Academy is part of a looming tech-education iceberg. To go from making videos for your cousins to promoting a new model for education in a few short years is amazing. But it's also the best thing that can happen to this space. It needs more smart people who care. The future prospects are very bright for Khan Academy.

Key Learnings

• As the saying goes "education gives the best returns". The concept of E learning has revolutionised the society in such a way that various universities are adopting the same.

          http://hbsp.harvard.edu/list/elearning
          http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

• One should always have a bigger picture in mind when you come up with a venture. There should be long term thinking. Here, he wanted to impart free and world class education to students all around the globe, irrespective of the profits to be earned. 
• One has to back his/her instincts and shouldn't just give up.

Principles of Organisation & Management

Lecture 2 : Theory X & Y
Prof. Prasad threw light on the two basic styles of management

1. Authoritarian management style (say X)
2. Participative management style (say Y)

On the basis of nature of employee and manager's perception of the same, these styles are further sub-categorized. Please refer the table below :

Category of Manager	Type of Employees	Manager’s perception of Employees	Remarks
X1	Lazy	He assumes that his employees are lazy	Authoritarian style Not good for the health of the          organization &employees
X2	Good	He assumes that his employees are lazy
Y1	Lazy	He assumes that his employees are good	Participative style Conducive to the growth of the organization & employees
Y2	Good	He assumes that his employees are good

X1 Category : While working in an organization, the most common thing which we come across is- “Bosses criticizing their subordinates for not meeting the deadlines or not performing at par to his expectations”. Do we real feel that only criticizing or scolding a lazy employee would make him perform better ?  Of course not. Employees are lazy and manager assumes that they are lazy. Manager thinks that no matter what he does, situation is not going be better. He (Manager) does not have faith in his employees and never inspire them to work harder & give their 100 %.

  X2 Category : This is the scenario where employees are not lazy but manager assumes that they are lazy. This is one of the most dangerous management style as it discourages the talent pool of highly efficient & hard working employees of the organisation. As per my experience of industry, there can be two cases when the manager behaves like this. One, when he himself carry a negative attitude that whatever attributes others possess are not up to the mark. He never get satisfied with the output of his employees, so never appreciates his team. Second, which most of us might have experienced, when manager deliberately criticizes his employee's work or better to say do not appreciates it just to show his bossism or to maintain discipline within the team. In both the cases, either the employee stop working, stop taking new initiatives or switch to some other organisation.

Y1 Category : This is the scenario where employees are lazy but manager assumes that they are efficient & hard working. This is the attitude which every manager should possess. In an organisation, not every employee is self-motivated. And even if there are lazy employees then also fault lies on the management side because they are responsible for their recruitment. Managers motivate these employees with compliments on their small achievements which make them pull their strings and start working hard.

Y2 Category : In this kind of a scenario employees are not lazy and the manager also assumes them to be efficient and hard working. This is the most sought for situation in any organization. Efficient and hard working employees' effort is constantly recognized by the manager and the organisation progresses towards its goal in an efficient way.

Lecture 1

The first lecture of POM started with Dr.Prasad giving us insights on looking at our 2 year MBA program at NITIE from an all new perspective which i had never thought of. He talked about our opportunity cost of MBA. He emphasized that there is no greatness in just spending the  money which you have not earned to get a degree. Greatness is in earning that money we spent here till the time we passout.

Then, Dr. Prasad clearly distinguished between efficiency & effectiveness.These are two most valuable tools of management which when used together can result excellence.

EXCELLENCE = Efficiency x Effectiveness.

Effectiveness is about what to do, how to do and why to do whereas, Efficiency is how good, how fast or how efficiently we are doing that task.

Tower building exercise :

The tower building exercise is one of the best ways of exhibiting efficiency, effectiveness and ultimately excellence. In this exercise a tower of blocks was to be built by a person using his odd hand. The selected person was supposed to predict the number of blocks he would be able to stack and the students were asked to note down their predictions.

The builder predicted 10 blocks but was able to build a tower of 18 blocks, showing that people often underrate their strengths and capabilities and thus lower their goal then what they can actually achieve. The target set should always be greater than the organisation's assessment of what might its actual performance will be. This in turn will lead to an increase in capability, leading to an ever increasing limit of goals that can be set.

Now, the rules of the game were changed and this time the person was supposed to play blind folded. Students were again made to guess the number of cubes he would stack and almost everybody came down with their numbers.

This was a simple situation illustrating how we lower our goals at difficult times.  Learning was that we should always set the target higher than our potential. Then only, we will stretch ourself to the fullest to achieve that target which is excellence.