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Team Leaders: My Two-sense

Too many cooks indeed spoil the diner. There always needs to be a hierarchy. Someone who makes the final decision after hearing all sides, or reviewing ideas from a brain storming session. Someone who has the initial vision of the whole picture, he/she is the captain of the ship.
Or in this case the game development team. 
In a "memo" to a previous member of my team, I wrote the following:

"...Administrators don't have a right for a vote on creative issues, though brain storming session are always welcome, and proposed future game designs. They have their place. It sounds good to be voting on ALL issues, but it isn't a good idea. This needs to be discussed further, no biased. This is a business but separately artists will be artist and suits will be suites. I the music industry far too money "suits" who don't know shit about music have too much control, and often over look a great band looking for a sure thing."

I spent 12 years in bands and learned in the first year that someone had to be the "big cheese" else band practice wasn't as productive. Someone had to step in.  A hockey team without a coach? need I say more. So would the team vote democratically on ALL issues? That everyone would be equal? That sounds great on paper but so does Communism. ; ) The truth is that there is far too much bickering and indifference.  Creative endeavors are not the same as business endeavors. So approaching the creation process of a game like forming a business is shear stupidity.   
Letting your business people have a say on creative issues is suicide! Likewise to an artist voting on money issues. It All comes down to a shear vote, a bad idea can very well be executed because of a democratic vote made it so. You could spend a great deal of time finding that perfect person to manage your money and totally lose the advantage of having him by giving him only one vote on a board of eight members.  The others not adverse as he in that area yet voting. The others could ruin the business interjecting with ignorance, voting on thing they know little about. Meddling in another's affairs. Sounds like chaos. It is. So this says that you can't divide leadership into a committee. I am not speaking out against voting on things only that there should be someone with the final say so, the tie breaker, the last word. The judge before the jury of pears, notably can over turn the juries verdict. Maybe this is a bad example, but think of the judge as the "boss" or team leader. If you don't respect the judges final decision you trouble. So importantly all members need to respect the team leaders authority and vision. 
- Ken Deel

 Read a great related article "Take me to your leader...":  from Game Developer Magazine by Id Software's Paul Steed Here
(Excuse the file size the document didn't convert very well to acrobat format.)

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