Many researchers are concerned about how many people to involve in accomplishing specific tasks. Involving too many, sometimes negatively affect the effectiveness. On the another side of spectrum, involving too few could negatively affect how you carry out the ideas and coordinate the activities. Leaving important people out of the conversation may determine work be done ineffectively. So don’t think to save money by limiting the number of folks involved in your activities. Such behavior could have disastrous consequences in some cases; also, never assume that involving more folks than necessary will guarantee success of generate more return.
Here are some key questions to consider:
1. How much will you reward the people involved?
Involving people in your activities is not such a difficult commitment. Let’s think about moving a big heavy box from one place to another. What you need are some strong male bodies and at least somebody who can foresee how the process will take place so the box won’t get stuck while trying to enter a room, round a corner or something else. Such job is usually inexpensive process but needs some planning.
2. How much time is available to carry out the task?
Considering the example above, how much time can you allocate to move the box? If no rush, you can wait for the right people, in our example-strong ones able to pick up the box and somebody who can think visually-actually could be you.
3. How large is the scope of your activity?
Consider the number of people you involve in your activity according to a time-frame. The bigger the scope of your work is, the most people you involve to accomplish the task in a reasonable time. Many tasks need a variable number of people involved according to the difficulty of the task at specific moments.
4. How much money do you want to earn when the job is done?
Depending on the scope and importance of the task as well the income it will generate later, you need to involve the right number of people. Involving too many will initially cost you more but the task gets done faster; however you can save money involving fewer people so the task will take considerably longer to carry out.
5. How much energy are you going to involve in the activity?
If creating a lot of energy is what you want, involving large groups of people is the best solution (i.e. a large group is useful on critical issues affecting the community or for system analysis and prognosis). On the other hand, small groups usually meet the requirements of smaller jobs where not so much energy is needed (i.e. moving the heavy box).
In brief, you have to determine the best number of people to involve in your activities according to the task complexity, your needs and your expectations.
