Jeff Bezos has advice to help you make the most of your career.
Amazon’s CEO created the “two pizza rule” for his team during the company’s early days 30 years ago — a principle that could boost your career and financial success.
“We try to create teams that are no bigger than the number of pizzas you can feed,” Bezos said earlier. “We call that the pizza team rule.”
The billionaire businessman claimed that large teams are difficult to manage and can become burdened with increasing responsibilities, while a small team – of about 10 people or so – the rule ensures that teams of workers are the right size to be more efficient and productive.
“Ideally, this is a team of less than 10 people: smaller teams reduce lines of communication and reduce bureaucracy,” explained Daniel Slater, head of culture and innovation at Amazon Web Service. According to the Daily Mail“The double pizza structure also promotes group accountability. The two teams of one pizza don’t hand off something they put out to another team to run.”
“Therefore, pizza teams need to stay on top of every part of their service, with a clear charter and a well-defined mission,” Slater concluded.
At Amazon, any team that grows beyond the two-pizza limit must be split into two teams, with the responsibilities of the original group divided between the two newly restructured teams.
Bezos said the guide helped the revolutionary retailer maximize efficiency and scalability — the cornerstones of Amazon’s success — making it one of the world’s largest companies.
The two-pizza rule isn’t just good for business. Finance experts At GoBankingRates They say it encourages individual workers to view their time as money.
Purchases should be viewed in terms of the time it takes to earn them. For example, buying a $20 pizza might cost 30 minutes of work time for someone earning $40 an hour. Keeping this in mind helps income earners avoid unnecessary spending and maintain perspective on their personal wealth.
Bezos’s rule also boils down to breaking down big goals into many smaller tasks. This same approach helps individual workers ensure they don’t take on more than they can handle and can quickly move from one task to another.
However, some business leaders, such as Johnny Wartrum, CEO of Mintimeter, have criticized this strict rule.
“I find that Jeff Bezos’ pizza rule is outdated and needs to be rethought,” Wartstrom says. Written in Entrepreneur Magazine.
“Limiting the number of participants in meetings does not increase productivity, in fact it hinders it,” the CEO explained. “Smaller teams limit the opportunity to get a broad and diverse perspective.”
