How true is the proverb " Too many cooks spoil the cake"?

Personally, I like delegation of work( any team work) and expect that a specific individual be responsible for seeing the completion of work. (S)he might take inputs from others, but the responsibility completely lies with that individual.
Same goes with ideas contribution- a group of people contributing ideas to a vision will help in solidify the vision , rather than many people contributing ideas for a single task which makes it difficult to close in.

what is you take?
more the people better the work?
less the people more responsibly ? Posted in: #Coffee Room

I think less the people more responsibly they work.

The sense of responsibility is lost in BIG groups. People tend to shove their work on others.

I personally like working alone or in small groups of like-minded and equally passionate people.

I had a written a post about it on My Blog: Working in Groups or Going Solo? « Junkyard

I accept it 100 %

For example if I do the work alone I complete it in 8 hours ,if I do it with team mate's help It takes 12 hours.

I support working independently. If we do something wrong, we will know something IS wrong and correct it. But what happens when someone in a team does a mistake, the blame goes round and round, if you are good team player, you defend your team mate but chide them within the team, else , you end up bashing them openly. It wont help either ways. And frankly. how many of us like someone say -" see you did this wrong, it should have been done this way?".

Its not like we should struggle independently, but there should be a limit on how many people contribute is what i feel.

I will feel comfortable if i work independently..if i believe on others and they dont complete it on time then everybody has to face the consequence..You cant blame them if they dont do perfectly.One more thing you will feel satisfied with your work if you do it alone.You cant say to the person that you are not satisfied with their work..Now I suffer doing my project work in group.

Well I feel that a team work is more solid and to the perfection, because if a team is working on any subject then all the members of that team has different field of work in which they particularly are the perfectionist, so there there is very less chance of mistake in that case. But if a single person is doing the same then it's true that one person cant be master of all the techniques.

@Rishi: I know what you mean. But, when its too many cooks we have to have THE right team. The correct people who are masters in diversified fields of interest yet bound by a common objective -> its almost an unrealistic situation in majority of the cases.

But as you know there are always exceptions.

I believe, its all about getting the right people at the right place on the right time.

i like working alone. i prefer doing all the important work myself. it gives a sence of satisfaction to know that the job has gone well. if i had given the work to others i'll be apprehensive and not sure if it has gone well. but if the team consit of people whom i've worked with earlier and if i'm confident that he'll do a good job then i might be quite better. but still the 100% satisfaction comes only if i see that the work is perfectly done. which is when i work alone or in a 2 or 3 member gang at the max. the more people the more i'm sure the project is at risk. too much ideas may conflict each other and end up as a fiasco 😀

Some tasks consists of parts that are basically known technology. (Making a cake is such a task. I've more often heard the proverb stated as "Too many cooks spoil the stew", which is also an application of known technology.) It's efficient to divide a complicated task involving known technology among several people. However, some tasks are poorly defined and may require drastic innovation. Attempting to perform a miracle by dividing into sub-miracles is ineffective. It's also ineffective to divide a task that is poorly defined into sub-tasks that are poorly defined, or mis-defined.

@Tashirosgt
Yup!!! I agree, something known or can be imparted can be done by many people, but I still believe the idea person is only one. Be it innovativeness or having a vision - its a single man's effort and rest contribute to it.But what if in the process of contribution to a idea we completely deviate form the main idea?

A single person can do a task more independently & efficiently but a group is needed when the work is bulky & requires lot of expertise which is mostly the case in corporate world.
What I feel that more people working on the same subject may spoil the task at hand, the key to a successful execution of group activity depends on fool proof planning & management & the demeanor of the members of the group towards the task. Even if two or more persons are indulged in the same in the same line of work, the success rate depends on cooperation & camaraderie. This situation arises when there is a pressure of completing a work within a deadline.
A group effort may achieve incredible result when each person has been allotted a different sub task as per his expertise & each of the member is devoted for the successful execution of the task. Some of you might have seen Ocean 11, George Clooney plays the role of mastermind & every other toiled hard to make the theft infallible. It's a perfect example of group effort. Recently the movie received the ultimate theft mastermind movie award of all times. 😉

in case of team work with ''too many cooks'', it is more important that the team has a strong and skillful leader who can manage the team well. A good example is that of George Clooney's character in the movie Ocean's 11 as mentioned by Vik.

I am currently the core member of IT Students Association in my college and it currently has 84 members(other associations have around 30-35). Initially it was a real pain to manage and co-ordinate work among the lot but after a couple of months of good planning and management, working with such a big team has become more pleasant. This was my 1st real life experience of working with a large team(earlier had worked with a larger team in an online game) and I understood why there's a big demand for management graduates.