Back to Plato

One of the most fascinating questions with an ultimate team is how should it be run, and by run I mean what is the team structure. One aspect of the team structure is what type of governing system will your team employ to run things.

It's not a trivial choice on how you run a team, and before I go into looking at some of the pros and cons of each system, I'll tell you how I like to run a team. One person in charge, hopefully me, and a group of two or more advisers. I, personally, don't like sharing decisions with other people, and in a small unit like an ultimate team, I think one is enough. I, however, like to keep doors open to advisers, and in turn, they keep doors open to team members. I, also, like to delegate tasks where a delegated task is up to the people, but I will keep tabs on progress.

Pictured Above: My roommate, Peyton Leung, at WUCC. Picture courtesy of James McKenzie.

Let's look at some different governing choices with respect to an ultimate team:

• Shared power between two
• Advantages
• Share responsibility
• Always have someone to share the brunt for losses
• Disadvantages
• Need to always run decisions between someone
  
• Disagreements are hard to come to conclusion
• Shared power between multiples
• Advantages
• Share responsibility
• No clear blame point
• More ideas
• Disadvantages
• Hard to come to conclusion
• Hard to organize time to discuss things
• Long discussions so everyone can have there say
• Too many voices in situations like huddle
• Team democracy
• Advantages
• People tend to feel involved with direction of team
• Shared responsibility
• Disadvantages
• Take long time to make decisions
• Too many voices
  
• One leader
• Advantages
• Clear voice
• Decisions made fast
• Disadvantages
• Blame point
• Lots of work by one person
• Can be hard to accept decisions

The final deciding factor, as important as each system is, is who the people are (my title reference to philosopher kings). If you don't have good people in any of these positions, then it really doesn't matter how you organize your leadership.

With the introduction of coaches things get a little trickier. In most sports, the coach and manager are the top dogs, but many ultimate teams still haven't fully converted to the coach. In most cases, we still have captain/coaches. It's another wrinkle to think about.

PJ