If Amazon sold today, it would be worth $1.5T to $2T. That’s a staggering figure for someone who started selling books out of his basement in Bellevue, Washington in 1994. Jeff Bezos realized that mobility was essential for innovation, which later became the foundation of his two-pizza rule.
It’s simple: No team or meeting should be so large that members or participants cannot be fed by two pizzas.
Small Teams Move Fast and Limit Losses
There’s an inherent tendency for individual productivity to decrease in larger groups. Here are the benefits of small teams:
- Small teams are agile. They can rapidly implement and experiment with new ideas without having to pass those ideas up the proverbial ladder. Fewer people allow faster decision-making and real-time iteration. Agile teams can respond to shifts in the market with speed that simply isn’t possible in bloated hierarchies.
- Small teams have lower failure costs. According to Amazon’s Executive Insights, this strategy has lowered failure costs by learning and adapting more quickly. When a small team fails, the loss is often isolated, which enables your company to recover without widespread disruption. It also encourages a culture of innovation, where experimentation is embraced…and often leads to incredible breakthroughs.
Give Up Control to Create Drive Results
The first part of implementing the two-pizza rule is giving up control. You must let your team run autonomously. Amazon calls this giving “single-threaded ownership” over a product or service headed by “single-threaded leaders.” Each team is responsible for a single component. This accountability structure eliminates confusion and creates ownership, making it crystal clear who is driving results.
Follow these guidelines as you set up your own two-pizza rule:
- Structure your team carefully. Be diligent about how you structure your teams and who leads those teams. Think about skillsets, working styles, and communication rhythms when assembling your two-pizza groups. A lean team with the right chemistry will outperform a larger, misaligned one every time.
- Develop KPIs for and with your team. Use personalized KPI dashboards as guideposts and respond quickly to change the team structure and dynamics. Invite team members to co-create their success metrics. Data should empower, not police; your dashboards are living tools.
- Allow autonomy. Giving members permission to participate in successes and failures creates ownership. Autonomy fosters innovation because people are more likely to think big when they don’t feel micromanaged. Trust becomes the fuel that drives breakthrough thinking and sustained momentum.
Here’s your challenge: Identify different ways you can incorporate the Two Pizza Rule into your company.
Start by auditing your current team structure. Where are there communication bottlenecks? Which projects could benefit from more focused ownership? Look at your current meetings; where can you trim down? Pilot the two-pizza model in a single department or initiative. Assign clear accountability, keep the team intentionally small, and track its output against a larger control group.
The Brilliance of the Two Pizza Rule is in its Simplicity
By prioritizing clarity, ownership, and autonomy, you unlock the kind of focus that fuels real growth. For high-performing founders, it’s a reminder that scaling doesn’t require complexity; it requires precision.
Shrink the room. Tighten the loop. Trust your people. That’s how you build a multi-million-dollar culture.
