The three monks & productivity management - POM lesson 5

objective: to learn the productivity management.

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of production output to what is required to produce it (inputs).

Productivity= total output / one unit of a total input.

its a simple assertion that as the resources of an organisation increase, its output tend to increase commensurately.  but, unfortunately, this is not the case with real time organisation. lack of management and absence of direction to channelize the resources readily turns the resources into liability. It harms the productivity and thus materially affects the financial health of a company.

the argument stated above is captured by A Da's award winning animation film: the three monks. the plot of the movie goes like this:

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 now two monks were fetching one bucket in contrast of one monk fetching the two 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 came and knocked 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.

If we consider monks as the resource for an organisation and fetching the water as the final product, productivity should have increased as the resources increased. but what actually happened is summarized as follows:

case 1. one monk carrying two buckets.

case 2. two monks carrying one bucket.

case 3. 1 monk carrying one bucket.

the productivity table for the three cases is as follows:

.as we see, the productivity is highest when only one monk is working. something went wrong in the process as the productivity is falling. the process didn't change even when the resources were tripled. increase in resources always calls for change or modification in process or sometimes for a new process altogether. that is why, management always have to be vigilant about these changes however subtle may be. this principle is to be use in correlation with the smart goal principle that we discussed in the last blog. because, in the absence of a common driving motive internal conflicts may corrupt the whole process.

if you are interested to dig in the process change that the three monk employed to increase their productivity, watch the following video.

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

please share your valuable feedback. further discussion on the topic are most welcomed. keep reading.