3 Idiots crossing the Valley

The objective of this session of Dr. Mandi was TEAM WORK. We were given an assignment which was an exercise of “3 Idiots crossing the valley" which had the following agenda:

• What is TEAM WORK?
• Designing the work in such a way that it becomes "Team Based" 
• Comparison of TEAM WORK with INDIVIDUAL WORK

What is Team Work???

A team is one wherein all team members work towards a common goal. The communication between the team members should be free from any barriers. It should be well channelized and directed towards team building.

It’s a process of working together in order to achieve a goal. It forms a business part of day to day business as it is necessary for the colleagues in a company to work together. In a team, individuals cooperate using their individual skills and provide constructive feedback.

One piece of log creates a small fire, adequate to warm you up, add just a few more pieces to blast an immense bonfire, large enough to warm up your entire circle of friends; needless to say that individuality counts, but team work dynamites. - Jin Kwon

Why Is Team Work Important?

·        Achieving Goals:
It is a widely understood concept, that united we stand and divided we fall.  Collective team activities are very important if the company or a process wants to reach its goal. There are some tasks that cannot be done individually, but can be easily accomplished by working in a team.

·        Increasing Individual Learning:
In simple terms, a team is a group of people who have come together for achieving a common objective. Therefore, in a group of people, there are many intelligent minds and brains working. When team members work together as a team, they can learn the skills and capabilities of each other and advance their knowledge. This certainly can be beneficial in your professional as well as personal life.

·        Resolving Conflicts:
There are many types of conflicts that may arise in the company, which may in turn have an adverse effect on the collective output. In order to resolve business conflicts; the knowledge, understanding and expertise can be used efficiently for determining solutions to the problems. This significantly helps the business to grow.

Good Communication:
Communication is an inevitably important factor in teamwork. When employees work in a team, they are able to pass on their ideas clearly. This rules out the possibilities of miscommunication due to complex hierarchy in the company. And due to ideas and concepts passed clearly, there is no scope for misunderstanding.

Generating New Business Improvement Ideas:
If a manager encourages team members to participate in collective decision making, he will be able to reach a good strategy by considering views and suggestions from all members. The business can also think of incorporating ideas suggested by the team members. Employee participation in the management is a very effective tool in meliorating business strategies.

The Activity – 3 Idiots crossing the valley

We can see that three people were able to cross the valley without much trouble. At each point of time when one of the team member is in trouble (crossing the valley), the other 2 team members support the one at risk. Following observations have been made from the activity:

 

·        Every Team Member has equal distribution of different kind of risk :

Fully Safe – 5 times

Half Safe – 2 times

Fully Unsafe – 1 time

·        All the three members have the same role in terms of effort and risk. Nobody is overloaded or relaxed.

·        Every team member is indispensable in completing the task

·        At equal instances, individual needed support of the other two.

The activity was an example of how we can make the work “TEAM BASED”. Team based work is process oriented and not person oriented.

This is how team work becomes very important and can benefit entire team as well as the individual. To tell you the importance of Team Work and how if not implemented can have bad outcomes, let me narrate a story .....

A little mouse living on a farm was looking through a crack in the wall one day and saw the farmer and his wife opening a package. The mouse was intrigued by what food the package may contain. He was aghast to discover that it was a mousetrap. The mouse ran to the farmyard warning everyone “there is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap in the house”.

The chicken raised his head and said “Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this trap is a grave concern to you, but it has no consequence to me and I cannot be bothered with it.”

The mouse turned to the pig, “I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse, but the trap is no concern of mine either.”

The mouse then turned to the bull. “Sounds like you have a problem, Mr. Mouse,” the bull said, “but not one that concerns me.”

The mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected that no one would help him or was concerned about his dilemma. He knew he had to face that trap on his own.

That night the sound of a trap catching its prey was heard throughout the house. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness she could not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife.

The wife developed a bad fever and the farmer knew the best way to treat a fever was with chicken soup. He took his hatchet to the farmyard to get the soup’s main ingredient.

The wife got sicker and friends and neighbors came by to take turns sitting with her round the clock.   The farmer knew he had to feed them, so he butchered the pig.    

The farmer’s wife did not get better, however.   In fact she died. So many friends and family came to her funeral that the farmer had to slaughter the bull to feed them all.

The story beautifully suggests that in an organization, if problem comes it’s not the problem of an individual, it is the problem of entire organization and each individual should contribute to solve the problem.

In my previous blog, I mentioned about how we at workplace faced problem initially due to lack of team skills and then we employed TEAM WORK and solved the difficulties.

In previous blogs I have talked about INDIVIDUALISM through “Tower Building” activity and here we have talked about TEAM WORK through “3 idiots crossing the valley” activity. Below chart presents the advantages of team work over individualism:

Three Monks

Three Monks is a Chinese animated movie film produced by the Shanghai Animated Film Studio. After the Cultural Revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

Those of you, who have not seen the animated movie, please watch the video posted below. This would help you understand the content of the blog much better.

The film 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.

This movie holds in itself immense amount of lessons for the budding managers. Dr. Mandi asked us to watch the movie, which would be discussed in the class the other day.

There was a healthy discussion on the same in the class. The discussion on the movie made us understand the intricacies of Team Dynamics. We understood how a simple situation (crisis) turns into a complicated one and how instead of providing a simple solution we end up giving complex ones.

1st Part of the movie:

The first part of the movie shows that there is a monk who lives in a monastery on the top of a hill. He comes down to fetch water from the river and lives happily. He does his job seriously. Then a second monk comes and starts living with the first monk. The problem starts when they go to fetch water. None of them wants to put in extra effort to carry the filled buckets back. They are unable to decide how to divide the work among themselves as no one wants to do any extra work. The monks calculate the length of the stick carrying the bucket and hang the bucket in between. 

Dr. Mandi explained us that as a manager our job is to find simple and easy solution. The solution should be universal so that the application does not depend on the kind of user involved. A system should be such that is allows application to be used by anyone, anywhere without possessing any special knowledge or skill. Organization with complex rules and regulation mostly do not thrive.

2nd Part of the movie:

2nd part shows the arrival of 3rd Monk in the monastery. The arrival of the third monk creates a conflict as he consumes more amount of water than the other two plus who two will bring the water. Since they are not able to resolve this conflict no one goes and the monastery is without water. The conflict makes them disregard each other. They do not talk to each other, do not share the resources. They even stop performing their duties of worshiping Buddha .Then one day fire breaks in the monastery. Seeing the crisis, all three of them start working together. Each one of them put in lot of efforts and finally they cease the fire.

This is short time management as the decisions are being taken for a very short duration of activity. It explains how they were not ready for the crisis. It also shows how by working for a common cause they were able to achieve success in ceasing the fire. Though they did not employ an easy way to fetch water, they were able to achieve results because of their hard work and common mission.

3rd Part of the movie:

This part shows the monks coming together as a group and devising a technique for drawing water which will require less effort and better coordination of the three people. They employ a pulley for the operation. This was an efficient as well as effective way of fetching water.

Lessons from the Movie:

• Teamwork enhances efficiency: The Three monks first allow personal pride/ego to interfere in the performance of daily tasks, each believing that the other two should be the ones to go downhill to fetch water. When a fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they have been and work together to save the monastery. So, from this we learn that in an organization, it’s important to take personal vanity out of the equation and to perform the duty at hand so that there is no regret later. A Manager has to take a note of this and check for any signs of work-delegation to others in the team.

• Disputes tend to arise, but we should not forget the mission: As the complexity of an organization increases (as no. of people increase) the arguments or disputes do occur, but they should not affect your day to day work. A good manager is one who does entertain people’s suggestions or opinions, but at the same time makes sure that the basic agenda or the mission of the organization stands healthy.Team working towards a common goal is best direction for an organization.\

• Technology should always be used to the fullest: Human Beings develop technology so that they can be used to deliver efficient and effective outputs. An organization should always be ready to employ better technology.

•  Complex Problems, Simple Solution: A manager should always try to give simplest of the solution to a problem. No matter what the complexity of the problems is, there are always simple solutions to them.

• The most efficient method to solve a problem evolves over a period of time: So which of the following is efficient way of bringing in water :

          a)     1 Monk bringing 1 bucket of water at a time, or
          b)  1 Monk bringing 2 buckets of water at a time,or

          b)    2 Monks bringing 1 bucket of water at a time
          
          Here we define the term "productivity"
        
PRODUCTIVITY - Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is the ratio of production output to the efforts or inputs given to produce the same.

Productivity = Total Output/One unit of Total Input

There was lot of discussion on the same in the class; the solution for the same is explained in the following table:

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input (No. of Monks involved)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 1 bucket	1	1	1
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	1	2
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	2	0.5

•  2 + 2 = 5
•      An individual’s strength when realized and utilized properly gives better results compared to result achieved when they work individually. Each monk’s strength was better utilized when they drew water by pulley. This helped them develop a simple solution to long lasting problem.

 I had such an experience in my professional career.I worked in an IT industry. Once in my project,the entire team was suppose to develop a particular deliverable in specific time frame.It consisted of lot many modules.The modules were highly inter dependent on each other. Initially each of the developers tried to just be concerned about finishing their own module,without realizing that its not the module's success which matters,it entire deliverable which matters.As I said,the modules were highly interdependent.Working of ones module made the other dis function. 

As a result not all test cases were tested plus many of the functionalities did not work till dead line.Finally,all the team members held a meeting.The approach and strategy to deal with the issue was planned.We all realized the dependent elements.Worked in team,tested each others codes and functionality and got most of the deliverable working.

Initially,we had a lot of time.We did not utilize it properly.We were busy completing our own work.Had we planned at the first place,we would not have faced the crisis and surely could have avoided working on weekends to complete our work.It was sheer lack of management and team work.But we finally understood the importance of working in team and making proper plans and strategies before rushing into things.