Learn from Mistakes

LEARN FROM MISTAKES

When I saw the Chinese animated movie 3 monk directed by A Da, I couldn’t help but laugh thinking of my childhood when I encountered a very similar situation. Every year during summer vacations we used to visit our grandparents’ house. My family and 2 of my paternal uncle’s family used to gather there and stay together for a week or two. I was the oldest of all the children which include my brother and 2 cousins.

It is great fun meeting extended family as it involves sharing food, interesting stories, life events, and what not. It was summer time and since my mother and my aunts would be busy most of the time in making arrangements for lunch and dinner, my father asked all children to make sure that we fill water bottles and keep it in refrigerators so that everybody gets cold water to drink. Though it seems so simple task but due to high consumption the frequency of filling bottles was very high and so nobody wanted to do it. Each of us thought it was other person’s responsibility and not theirs. We were reminded many times and warned but we did not take it seriously. We thought someone will do it.

But one day my grandfather went out for doing some work and when he came back in afternoon he was very thirsty. It seemed as if he was fully exhausted and drained of all energy. He asked for cold water. My father went to bring it. But to his shock it was not available- not a single bottle. He became very furious. He came out and let loose all his anger on us. He told that we were entrusted with just one task which we couldn’t do. All persons in the family were doing something or the other and we couldn’t even provide water to our old grandfather. Also he said that from now on he himself will do it.

I felt very ashamed of myself. I was the oldest son there and was trying to shirk from simple duties. Not just me in fact all my cousins felt very bad and we promised my father that we will make sure that from now on nothing like this happens again. All of us apologised each other and accepted their mistake of being selfish and stupid. 

We came with a plan and divided the work among ourselves. We divided day into 4 slots – 1 each before and after lunch and dinner. Since after lunch its the maximum amount of bottles which needs to be filled, taking the initiative I took that slot. The cousin of same age as me took fter dinner slot. Similarly each one decided their time of the day when they will fill the bottles. Since then onwards nobody ever got a chance to complain. Everybody was happy with our self formed strategy and we were applauded many times.

WHAT did I learn from this incident which is same as that of the case of 3 monks? Many things like:

Team Work: Somebody truly said “ United we stand divided we fall”. When we thought of working in team all negative energy vanished. We worked in coordination and our relation also strengthened.

Innovation and Creativity: When people come together with the intention to achieve common goal, they help the team in constructive manner in giving valuable suggestions and ideas.

Efficiency and productivity: The output improved and there was no error reported in the outcome.

Difficult to initiate but easy to finish: I also realised that each of us was capable enough to complete the task but nobody wanted to take the initiative. Once the process was set in motion things improved and everybody could realise their full potential.

Work Division: Since we divide our work based on the the capability of each person. Not only it strengthened the whole organisation structure it also instilled confidence among our juniors that work has been fairly divided.

I realised that management is there in many things. Either you learn from someone else or you learn from your own mistakes.................