Matt of 37signals cites British author Antony Jay to support his point that if you’re working in a big group, you’re fighting human nature:
Jay draws attention to units of around this size in many fields beyond the corporation. A committee works best with about ten members; if it grows much beyond that size the extra people do not take a fully active part. Nearly all team games use a group of about ten on each side. Juries have 12 members and the Jewish minyan 10. In an army, organization often decides life and death, and under this pressure armies, too, adopt a basic unit of about ten; the British army, the US army, the ancient Roman army and that of Genghiz Khan, in fact every long-standing successful army, has built up its larger formations from squads or sections of about this size.That mention of the Roman army takes us back some two thousand years, and Jay traces the ten-group back still farther, back to the foraging communities. The ten-group, found today as a structural unit in successful corporations began, he argues, as the male hunting-group of pre-agricultural times, still with us and still functional.
I enjoyed these Antony Jay quotes on other topics:
He’s suffering from Politicians’ Logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it.‘Referring the matter to a committee’ can be a device for diluting authority, diffusing responsibility and delaying decisions.
The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.
You can judge a leader by the size of the problem he tackles. Other people can cope with the waves, it’s his job to watch the tide.
You can stop focusing on extraneous collateral and pay attention to what matters instead.