Jeff Bezos has a tip to help you take the best slice out of your professional life.
The Amazon boss created the “two-pizza rule” for his team during the early days of the company’s launch 30 years ago — a tenet that could boost your career and financial success.
“We try to create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas. We call that the two-pizza team rule,” Bezos has previously said.
The billionaire entrepreneur has argued that larger teams are difficult to manage and can become overwhelmed with mounting responsibilities, whereas a small team — of about 10 folks or so — the rule ensures teams of workers are the right size to be most efficient and productive.
“Ideally, this is a team of less than 10 people: smaller teams minimize lines of communication and decrease bureaucracy,” Daniel Slater Amazon Web Service’s head of culture and innovation explained, per the Daily Mail. “The two-pizza structure also promotes team accountability. Two-pizza teams do not hand over something they’ve launched to another team to run.”
“As such, two-pizza teams need to stay on top of every part of their service, with a clear charter and a tightly defined mission,” Slater concluded.
At Amazon, any team that grows beyond this two-pizza cap should be split into two teams, with the responsibilities of the original group being divided between the newly restructured teams.
Bezos said this guide has helped the revolutionary retailer maximize efficiency and scalability — Amazon’s two pillars of success — making it one of the world’s biggest companies.
The two-pizza rule isn’t just good for business. Finance experts at GoBankingRates say it encourages individual workers to view their time as money.
Purchases should be viewed in terms of how much time it would take to earn it. For example, a $20 pizza would cost 30 minutes of time at work for someone who earns $40 per hour. Keeping this in mind helps earners avoid unnecessary spending and maintain perspective on their personal wealth.
Bezos’ rule is also about breaking down big goals into many small tasks. The same approach helps individual workers ensure they’re not biting off more than they can chew, and can swiftly pivot from one task to the next.
However some business impresario, such as Johnny Warstrom, CEO of Mentimeter, have criticized the hard-and-fast maxim.
“I find Jeff Bezos’ two-pizza rule outdated and in need of a revamp,” Warstrom wrote in Entrepreneur.
“Limiting the number of meeting participants does not increase productivity,” the CEO explained. “In fact, it hinders it. Smaller teams limit the chance for a broad and diverse perspective.”