I'm reminded of a quote from The Office:

> Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that set sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be...without the Popes.

Notice that throughout the article, the author is still in charge of the overall strategy, granting each lead their authority, requiring status updates.

"name a country that doesn't have two presidents". A lot of countries are run by a government with a cabinet of ministers. There's a lot of negotiation. Many decisions are collective. In fact many governments are an example of what the article is taking about.

The Catholic Church is an authoritarian organisation and that structure has caused it some extreme problems leading to its demise in many parts of the world.

That said, it is a good joke.

However there is still a "Prime Minister" which picks the cabinet.

Not always. In many cases 10 heads = 9 people criticizing/undermining 1.

Effective teams are built on people who trust and respect each other. Leadership must be recognized by a majority of group members for any person to take the lead - and any person can lead at any time if they have the group's best interests in mind and are able to demonstrate that.

This is the basis of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. A dysfunctional team will tear itself apart given run of the place. There's a lot of ground work that has to go into getting a team to the point where they can even enact what's in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Tea...

There's also a lot of work that goes into maintaining delegations at this level. I really like this article, because this part is actually covered in relatively high detail. Normally it's not addressed at all... "Just delegate!"

I'm thinking of the scenario where 10 people all help solve the problems, vs when 1 person does all the thinking, and then hands out orders to the other 9.

Scenario 1 is obviously better, at least if the people are reasonably smart.

That doesn't mean all 10 are coequal leaders, and how to organize things so responsibility dynamics work well is... outside the scope of this comment. Also, I don't have a complete answer :)