Communal Decision Making Sucks

Here’s something revolting I’ve experienced dealing with recently: board of directors. What comes to mind immediately is this excerpt from The Fountainhead:

“Have you ever known a board to do anything? […] A board of directors is one or two ambitious men—and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can’t visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing.”

Focus groups are that way. Committee meetings are that way.

“No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought.”

This isn’t a warrant for lack of planning or development discipline. My point is, when you rely on communal decision making, what you get is a Frankendog—an ugly creature made of patches.

That's the damn truth. I've very... umm, John Galt"ish" in my decision making.

When someone takes control from the reins of those who know WTF is going on and sets it in the hands of a "committee" or other "communal" group I make one last promise.

"What you are doing will fail if you do not enable the builders of this system to do what they do best, and build the system. This last thing I promise, you will fail."

...and every single time the "board" or "community" group takes over an idea, it begins thrashing, people become demotivated, and the last step is failure.

every time. I could go on but about every "lean", "six sigma", "meritocracy based", etc process basically outlines how you can't put upon people, you MUST enable them. Then just get out of the way and greatness will happen. :)