Twisting the Concepts of Management

Today, we were given an assignment to be prepared before coming to the class. We were supposed to watch the below video and read the related blogs describing the learnings of the video. I had gone through the video earlier when I was skimming through content of various blogs as instructed by the professor earlier.

'The 3 Monks' - An award-winning short film

The discussion in the class began informally about the content in the ‘3 Monks’ video. We were asked to list down the learnings from the video as per our perception.

The usual verbiage of terms cropped up among many in the class, with myself also contributing in the fray.

Some of these were:

·         Co-operation

·         Process Improvement

·         Positive & negative traits in people

·         Synergy and team-work

·         Disaster bringing management skills to the fore

The professor also encouraged us in our answers to elaborate and for quite some time, I was sure that we were going along the right track.

Then one amongst us (Pratik Kadam) gave an answer that the video also showed the importance of using tools like scale and pulley. Initially, I thought his answer was irrelevant in the scope of the current discussion but Dr. Mandi immediately asked for applause for Pratik. That’s when I realized the actual intention of the professor and his way of thinking different from the conventional outlook of management.

Dr. Mandi explained to us that the actual secrets of management did not lay in the conservative ideologies of management but lay in the technical implementations that one could bring about in any application of management.

For e.g. To improve the management in an organization, it is important to implement technical ideologies like improving the process/method, measurement of effort & productivity etc. rather than improving factors like working conditions, feedback mechanisms, etc.

“Don’t focus too much on the human part before you can sort out the technical part.”, is what Dr. Mandi said.

At the start of any management initiative, one should not attempt to modify the human relations aspect; rather one should focus upon the technical aspects first and get in to the HR aspects after having gained experience.

Thus, the film though depicting co-operation, team work, positive & negative aspects of human management, is rather focused upon different aspects like applications of various methods of work, measurement and importance of efficiency and effort, etc.

This was a drastic turnaround in the discussion and we began considering the video in ways not imagined earlier. And now the answers came out in concurrence with Dr. Mandi’s take on the video.

·         The use of technical instruments like scale, pulley, etc. during any process

·         Need to set a process before starting a job

·         Minimizing the effort for a job by using various methods of work

·         Productivity improvement

Discussing further about the various methods of work, the film shows different approaches to carry out the task of bringing water from the lake.

These involved

1.)  a single man carrying one bucket on his head

2.) single man carrying 2 buckets using a rod across shoulder

3.) two men carrying 1 bucket on centre of the rod

4.) use of pulley

Now, he asked as to which method would carry the least effort.

Option 1 can be said to have the most effort (say 20 J)as it involved just one person without the use of tools.

Option 2 involves significantly less effort (around 10 J)than opt.1 but there was confusion when it came up against option 3. The argument was that as option 2 involved more amount of work being done by just one person it was the better methods of working.

However, most people failed to consider the fact that option 2 would take much more effort than option 3. The effort taken in option 3 would be much lesser (maybe 2 J)than that in option 2 and would be almost negligible.

Option 4 would take still lesser effort, but it is kept aside due to its exceptional nature.

The way of carrying the water and effort taken had affected the functioning of the monks (i.e. their management, on a broader level) and we can see that selecting the proper methods at the start would have improved their self-management in a considerable manner.

Thus, this just goes on to show the importance of the use of technology in today’s management which is rather drifting towards non-physical processes and soft skills. New age managers should go back to the old-school way of management by focusing on hard-core measurable like productivity, efficiency, effort, etc.

Dr. Mandi once again showed us an unconventional manner of thinking, putting a twist in our perception of management.

This trend would surely continue in the next class…