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.
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.
- Small teams have lower failure costs. According to Amazon’s Executive Insights, this strategy has lowered failure costs by learning and adapting more quickly.
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.
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.
- Develop KPIs for and with your team. Use these as guideposts and respond quickly to change the team structure and dynamics.
- Allow autonomy. Giving members permission to participate in successes and failures creates ownership.
Here’s your challenge: Identify different ways you can incorporate the Two Pizze Rule into your company.
