Last weekend my 10-year-old son asked me to help him on his school oratory assignment. The topic was “‘Too many cooks spoil the broth”. He had to give the meaning of the proverb and give examples of where it caused failure and the opposite caused success. “I” being lazy on weekends (I can hear my back wife saying when it comes to family you are lazy all the time) dodged him till Sunday night. Finally, he cornered me that I will be responsible for him losing 4 marks in his English score. Being a loving Dad this got me into overdrive working on my iPad. Google search didn’t help me with examples, so I had to put my thinking cap to dig into my brain – which not being deep was easy to search!

Here is what I wrote for him, of course, the examples are mostly from Information Technology industry because that’s what I could find near the shore of my memory.

Dear friends, I am here to speak on the topic ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’, the meaning of this proverb  is that if too many people work on one particular object,the subject of their pursuit will be muddled up.

Let me give you few examples, Apple dethroned Blackberry, Nokia and others with its successful iPhone due to its single leader Late Steve Jobs, whereas Blackberry lost its way due to having two leaders – CoCEOs till recently.

The same fate awaited India’s pioneering software company Wipro technologies due to having two CoCEOs and a powerful chairman Azim Premji all making decisions, whereas their younger peer Cognizant overtook them due to its single CEO.

In Mahabharata Kauravas  had too many  leaders in their ranks including Bhisma, Duriyodhana,  Karna and the likes, whereas in Pandava rank & file everyone listened to Yudishtra.

Now I will narrate a first hand experience I had in our house, we are currently renovating our independent house completely. If all in our family keep giving suggestions and make modifications like in tile pattern, wall colour, size of room, position, materials used – the workers will keep constructing, demolishing and not making any progress, So we all agreed that my father will take the final call and we all will agree with him.

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