History Main / TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup

* Norman Augustine wrote that at one point, the US had 23 different types of military aircraft -- 11 of which were produced at the rate of 12 a year or less -- with concomitant loss of efficiency. His point was that when the government distributed money for projects, the more projects there were and the less each got, the less likely any of them were to succeed.
** In another chapter, he notes, "The optimum committee has no members."
* The average American sitcom has at least a dozen writers behind the scenes. Few of these sitcoms are ever critically praised.

* Apple's employee training program, "Apple University", reportedly compares a [[http://bgr.com/2014/08/11/apple-google-tv-remote/ 78-button Google TV remote]] to their own 3-button Apple TV remote as an example of design by committee.
* As video game projects and their budgets grew bigger, so did the number of people working on a video game. It is not unheard of to have several dozen or even 100+ people working on one video game nowadays, yet a good chunk of them are either seen as mediocre or filled with glitches and bugs while ExecutiveMeddling can muck things up even further. TheNewTens saw a surge in indie games developer by a small group of people and sometimes developed by just a single person, causing many critics to give such games a ton of praise since less people means less interference and no meddling from publishers.

* The Creator/AdultSwim short appropriately titled ''Series/TooManyCooks'' is a satire/deconstruction of this trope occuring in television, mocking the tendency for shows to be given far more writers and producers than needed with the result that they lose their original vision. This is represented by the show starting off as a {{retraux}} family sitcom, only for the opening credits to suddenly extend with more and more characters, and the show loses track of what it's supposed to be. It cycles through numerous genres, settings, and casts all of whom grow increasingly confused and mixed up. Things go even further off the rails when [[spoiler: a nameless Killer starts trying to off the cast so he take the show for himself. Said Killer is strongly implied by WordOfGod to be the original main character of the show before it got butchered by new writers, trying to retake his show out of jealousy.]]

Not to be confused with the theatre show, ''Theatre/TooManyCooks'', or the Creator/AdultSwim [[Series/TooManyCooks short of the same name]].

!!Examples

[[folder:Anime And Manga]]

[[folder:Film]]
* Played with in ''Film/StateFair'': Melissa refuses Abel's suggestion to sweeten the mincemeat with brandy, so Abel decides to add some without her noticing. After he leaves, Melissa decides to add some brandy herself. Even though the dish ends up having an abnormally high alcohol level, the judges still reward Melissa with a blue ribbon.
* ''Film/ThePentagonWars'' details how this happened with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Originally designed as a troop carrier by Colonel Smith, the committee he answered to made constant revisions of the design until it couldn't do anything well. Too slow and big to be a scout, but too bulked up with ammo and weapons to be a troop carrier, and not enough armor to stand up against actual tanks. The result was that the Bradley was in development for ''seventeen years'' and went billions of dollars over budget.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* In an episode of ''Series/ThirtyRock'', Jack recruits some of the writers to help him come up with a new microwave oven. When all their suggestions are combined he ends up with a Pontiac Aztek.

-->'''Liz:''' How did this happen? I had Grizz call him at eight o'clock this morning and pretend it was eleven.\\

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' had one strip with a bunch of scientists arguing with the caption "Another case of too many mad doctors and not enough hunchbacks."
* There was also a ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strip where this trope is compressed into a proper theory: The combined IQ of any team starts at 100 for one participant, with 5 points deducted for every additional member to the team.
** Another time it was expressed as equaling the IQ of the dumbest member, divided by the number of members. [[labelnote:note]]It turns out that, for both of these to remain true, the only realistic team size is 20 (with a lowest member-IQ of 100). Any higher, and someone will have to have a 0 or negative IQ; any lower, and everyone will have to have at least supergenius intelligence (or there'd be a team of one). Granted, either case would be very likely to happen in the Dilbert universe... and doesn't take away from the fact that the combined IQ of a 20-person team is still 5.[[/labelnote]]
[[/folder]]

* Used in a surprisingly dark and serious manner in ''WebComic/TheOrderOfTheStick''. When the gods were first weaving together the world from the fabrics of reality, their bickering and fighting over how they wanted aspects of the world resulted in the fabrics getting tangled together, eventually forming [[EldritchAbomination the Snarl]].

* [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment Dr. Insano]] notes that the shlock 80s fantasy film ''Film/TheDungeonmaster'' had ''seven'' directors[[note]]Though not ''at once'': each of them directed a different segment corresponding to the protagonists' several "trials".[[/note]]. And yet none of them seem to have stuck around long enough to film an ending; the movie just sort of stops 20 seconds after the climax.

* [[VideoReviewShow Internet video critic]] WebSite/SFDebris usually makes sure to point out which episodes have too many cooks by calling a bloated writing credit "the wall of text" or something similarly sarcastic.

[[/folder]]

* The ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' episode "Comic Book Capers" has Darkwing preparing to pitch a comic book of his fabulous adventures, but he keeps getting called away from his typewriter. Other characters study his pitch while he's away and decide to "improve" it, resulting in the comic book storyline going completely OffTheRails in a CrowningMomentOfFunny.

* The number of writers of a film is often inversely proportional to the quality of the finished product.
** Same for number of producers[[note]]executive producers not so much for some reason[[/note]] and directors.
*** Producers pull the purse strings, so can and will have say over whether certain things make it into the film, often over the advice of the director and writer(s), which can often be contradictory to what other producers have already demanded.
*** Too many directors are even worse; barring directing teams (ie, Coen Brothers, Miller and Lord) or guest directors[[note]]these directors are not credited in final versions, and usually are doing a single scene in a subject they are good at[[/note]], a film with more than one director - and they often aren't even working at the same time - can often derail a project, as each director will have their own idea of how a story should go. Notable examples are the DC Films, ''Film/SuicideSquad'' and ''Film/JusticeLeague'', where, in the first case, producers didn't like the final version and brought in a late director to add in scenes they thought the film needed. In the later, the first director left for personal reasons and was replaced with someone of general approval, but who had a complete reverse idea of what the tone should be. In both cases, the final versions had inconsistent tone and pacing, leaving audiences wondering what, good or bad, the original idea was supposed to have been.

* This was ultimately what killed ''VideoGame/MushroomKingdomFusion''. There were too many ideas to reasonably input and tasks were delegated to people who couldn't contribute on time. The project ended up collapsing in on itself.

* Some legislators have invoked this trope with regards to law-making, saying that it's actually good when big public projects are poorly executed, because it means that many people had a say in it.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode "Arthur Writes a Story," for a school assignment, Arthur writes out the story of how he got his dog Pal. But each of his friends whom he shares it with call it boring and offer suggestions to make it "better," which he takes. He ends up writing [[MindScrew a musical set in outer space in which Pal is a striped elephant]], and after his friends hear it, they much prefer his original version.

* The point of ''{{Series/Extras}}'': Andy's sitcom gets picked up, but he allows the producers' suggestions to turn it from [[TheOffice a witty character study and commentary on office life]] to a cheesy, lowbrow WorkCom.

->''My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.''

* One ''Manga/FrankenFran'' story ends this way. A rich man plots to capture his niece's inheritance (along with every other one of her relatives) by being put into her brain-dead body. OPnce he realizes just how much her relatives destroyed her life, Fran transfers the rest of the family's minds into the body after an accident, and now they can't take a single action if they aren't all in agreement (with the uncle deliberately vetoing every action to get back at them).

* In Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Discworld/TheLastContinent'', this is how the Literature/{{Discworld}} got the duck-billed platypus, no thanks to a group of temporally-displaced wizards from Unseen University.

** In ''Discworld/TheLastHero'', Ventinari deals with this sort of problem in his truly magnificent style; when leaders from hundreds of nations come to Ankh-Morpork to discuss how they're going to stop Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde from blowing up the world, he has them form committees and then locks them in the room. Then, while they're arguing, he takes a few of the people he knows aside and tells them how they're going to save the world.

* In the {{Redwall}} book ''Legend Of Luke'', this happens with ''literal'' soup.

* Used in a surprisingly dark and serious manner in ''WebComic/TheOrderOfTheStick''. When the gods were first weaving together the world from the fabrics of reality, their bickering and fighting over how they wanted aspects of the world resulted in the fabrics getting tangled together, eventually forming the Snarl.

** In the episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", the [[ExecutiveMeddling producers of "Itchy and Scratchy"]] decide the show needs a new [[CousinOliver hip, young character]] to improve its ratings. The result is a new character largely designed by committee ("Can we put him in more of a hip-hop context?", "He's gotta be a surfer", "I feel we should rastafy him by 10% or so") that everyone despises after his first episode airs.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', the reason Apu and Manjula got octuplets is because when conceiving, Manjula took fertility drugs...while Apu, Homer, Marge, and Bart slipped her some more without each other knowing.

* Used in a surprisingly dark and serious manner in ''WebComic/OrderOfTheStick''. When the gods were weaving together the world from the fabrics of reality, their bickering and fighting over how they wanted aspects of the world resulted in the fabrics getting tangled together, eventually form the Snarl.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh'', when Rabbit gets trapped in a fortress he built without a door, Gopher decides to blast him out with dynamite. Before pushing his PlungerDetonator, he comments that only a single keg of dynamite would be necessary...not knowing that Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet had each added a keg to pile.

* Used in ''WesternAnimation/ChalkZone'', where Rudy and Penny are trying to design a robot, but because they have different views on how it should work (Penny wants it to be helpful, Rudy wants it to be a superweapon), the design turns out a mess and after being erased, it goes on a helpful/destructive rampage in chalkzone. Even worse, Rudy's [[ArchEnemy archenemies]] Scrawl and Craniac discover it and decide to use it in a scheme they were concocting.

* Seen on ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'', where the title character tries to make a gravy boat and ends up with something resembling a jet pack crossed with a water gun.

** In another episde, while making omelettes Edd uses a spoon to take a small amount of butter from a stick. Eddy thans him and takes the stick. Eddy has a habit of not measuring ingrediants in cooking and simply using as much of it as he can find.
* Shown in one of the "Aesop and Son" segments of ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle''. In the tale, a bunch of animals cook a stew but won't let a bear eat any of it because he didn't contribute any ingredients. The dimwitted bear brings an ''undersea mine'' that was painted yellow mistaking it for a goldfish. The other animals aren't any smarter and also think it's a goldfish. Boom. When Aesop tries to give the aesop "Too many cooks spoil the broth", his son is ComicallyMissingThePoint because the story was about stew instead of broth.