Essay

The author suggests that all organizations should emphasize on teamwork and making decisions and sharing responsibilities and duties is a more effective way to get work done rather than giving one-person central authority and responsibility. Though I agree that teamwork is part of the fundamental tools on building a successful organization, I do not agree totally that central authority and responsibility is not effective.

Firstly, in a team, the group will not be able to make decisions and reach consensus. Individuals have their own views and ideas and groups are definitely more effective during brainstorming sessions. However, one person must make the final decision and bear the major responsibility. If the project can be divisible into smaller parts and assigned to individual team members to take charge and be responsible, it would not only enable the individuals to take up responsibility for their part of the project, it would also give them a sense of attachment to the project and give it their best. As a simple illustration, when our division sits in for a brainstorming meeting, though fruitful, we would not be able to move forward to materialize the ideas. Until the subsequent meeting, when we decided to divide the division where individual team member would have to report their updates. With this, we realized that our division gets creative ideas and most importantly, materializing the ideas quickly.

Secondly, authority and responsibility goes hand in hand. When people are being assigned such authority and responsibility, they tend to be more motivated to excel, as there is a high degree of accountability for their actions. Another example from my company would be our recent quarterly category meeting where each subsidiary would present their departments along with the action plans to boost their sales, to our country manager. It is known that giving such presentation, the buyers themselves are held responsible for their action plan sand that they...