We know what you’re thinking. What on earth are they talking about? Let us explain.
When we saw ‘two-pizza teams’ trending our first thought was, well two pizzas would not be enough to feed our team, but as an analogy it works.
Jeff Bezos, Executive Chairman of Amazon, said, “We try to create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas… We call that the two-pizza team rule.”
The idea of this analogy is that the smaller the team, the better the collaboration. You may not know, but collaboration is actually one of our values.
We recently hired a new Operations Manager who has implemented a bunch of new processes and procedures. One of those processes is to divide the wider team into smaller, more collaborative teams.
Here are some of the benefits that we have found.
Better communication: Smaller teams typically make for a more effective chain of communication. With fewer people involved, it’s been easier to share ideas and information, allowing everyone’s thoughts to be heard.
Easier decision-making: With our smaller teams, navigating and making decisions has been easier than ever. It’s also meant that there’s a smaller chain of command to go through to get things approved.
Clearer individual accountability: Everything isn’t perfect all the time and the problem with a bigger team is locating what the problem is. With smaller teams, individual accountability gains more clarity, giving employees the opportunity to learn from any mistakes.
Top ideation sessions: Having group ideation sessions just often led to people talking over one another and ideas being thrown in from all directions. Smaller teams has allowed more space for individual team members to be heard. Once the smaller groups have shared their ideas, the wider team can then get together to discuss further if necessary.
There are some tasks and decisions that require the full team, however, switching to smaller, more cohesive teams has done us the world of good.
We’re still not sure two pizzas would be enough to feed each team though…