MONK STORY- A TEAMWORK LESSON

The story of three Monks!

                                                     An epitome to learn true teamwork!

How can a teacher, a professor or for that matter a mentor teach you what team work really is? I supposed myself in Dr. Mandi’s place, and then I imagined that if I have to teach this concept of team work. Actually speaking that my mind was in a baffled state that how can this simple concept or rather a concept which appears to be simple be taught! But since I always believe that Dr. Mandi is like a magic man, who comes out with something extremely bohemian at times and like always he didn’t let me down even this timeJ.

The concept and insight of team work was explained to us thru this video. I recommend that anyone who is going to read this entire article must watch this video first and then proceed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY

 

Now let’s get into the individual cases shown in this video.

There are three monks that are shown in this video, which are as follows:

·         The little monk (M1): inherently naughty, not lethargic towards work but avoids excess work.

·         The Taller monk (M2): again not lethargic but dominating and wants everyone must work.

·         The Fat monk (M1): A team member that would work properly but at the end wants the bigger share of pie.

So the story goes something like this:

Scene 1:

               A monastery is located on a cliff top, below the cliff there flows a river which is by far the only source of water available and if anyone needs water, that person must take the vessel to the river, fill it and then quench his/her need. In the beginning it is shown that M1 is sitting in the monastery and doing his daily activities, therein he suddenly realises that the flower pot which is kept in front of GOD’s image is falling short of water. M1 immediately recognizes it and go and collect the water. This shows that he doesn’t only care about himself but also about the monastery on the whole. Then as per his daily way of living, he continues with his prayers and then goes to sleep.

Lessons from Scene 1:

1.      Everyone has inherent ability to work.

2.      Whenever there is a need in the system, then people in the system always tend to work for the need.

Scene 2:

Then enters M2, the guys who is portrayed to be a little matured and can take good decisions at times. We see that as he reaches the monastery, he drinks water to quench his thirst. But as soon as he realises that there no more water left in the container, he immediately takes M1 along to arrange for water. But like we all know that the system must be designed in such a way that work would be done irrespective of the height or weight or body structure of the persons doing it. But here when two of them are trying to bring filled buckets back, they enter into an altercation as the weight was not evenly distributed among the two. They just stop in the middle of the way and sit down. M1 tried to show the midpoint thru his yard length, then immediately M2 showed him his yard length and gave another midpoint. The altercation was finally terminated by M1 when he showed a stick and thru that stick they could find a better point to be called as midpoint in coherence.

Lessons from Scene 2: 

1)      Whenever there is a new entrant in the existing system, there got to be some degree of turbulence in the system.

2)      There would be solutions from every end, but there would also be counter questions from other ends.

3)      But the best thing is that there is always a positive and optimum solution available and that is generally universally accepted.

Scene 3:

The entry of a little lethargic M3, the team member who will definitely work equivalent to everyone else in the group, but wants a bigger share of the pie. That is his desire and needs are on higher side compared to others. As he reaches the monastery, he finishes all the water available. When he goes to fill another lot, he finishes it again due to tiredness!

This leaves everyone’s mind in a confused state that how work would be done? At this point there is confusion about finding the way to do the work!

Lessons from Scene 3:

1)      There are instances of highest turbulence in the system at times wherein there are no option gates available.

2)      In those cases even the most innovative and complex solutions turns out meaning less.

3)      The need to solve this complex problem is not a complex solution but a simple one. We need to bring the team together. How will this be done, let’s find out further!

Scene 4:

All three are sitting alone, angry with each other no signal that they are going to come together. Then the thing that is really worth a watch that everyone is keeping a stock for themselves without worrying about others. This is a very dangerous situation for a team when team members are not thinking about other team members. In the middle of all this what really is another point of concern that M1 takes the small left over water that was otherwise getting used for a very important reason. When it starts to rain, all three thought of taking a short cut of using rain water, but as they set up the system, the rain stopped. The team work is still not established and the biggest concern.

Lessons from Scene 4:

1)      The entire system breaks without proper coherence among the team members.

2)      There is no short cut in achieving any target.

3)      There is a basic requirement of coherence among the group in case the members wish to attain a team status.

Final Scene:

In the final scene we get to know that how GOD (as per my understanding the manager here!) creates the situation in which all the 3 monks comes together and portrays only their positives and leaves behind all the negativity associated with the situation. It also portrays that in case of emergency situation which happens to be fire in this case, plays a vital role in bringing all the 3 monks together and work in harmony and coherence. They even get to set a full-fledged system in the end in the system which is:

a)      Simple to understand.

b)      Imbibed all three monks with equal efforts.

c)      Independent of size, shape or structure of the monks.

d)      Crisp and juicy.

Learning from Final Scene:

1)      Teamwork if not there can be built by making situation in such a way that it attracts a common interest for everyone!

2)      Work should be backed with a vision which must be juicy, rosy, inspirational and unachievable.

3)      Final structure’s efficiency can be achieved only when there is 100% team effort involved.

So all in all team effort has following traits:

1.      Effective team has both values and norms.

2.      Have members that both respect and trust each other.

3.      Effective team has tried and true method of problem solving.

4.      Agrees on each member’s role in the team.

5.      Members have complementary skill sets.

6.      Celebrate success together, and share both praise and blames.

7.      Members are other oriented rather than self-oriented.

8.      Members have sense of belonging towards work.

9.      Members embrace need when they need to.