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August 06, 2004

Successfully breaking all the rules

Gotta love a successful contrarian:

Fast Company | Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos

If Bezos's personality is decidedly noncorporate, so are some of his ideas about how to run a large organization. One of Bezos's more memorable behind-the-scenes moments came during an off-site retreat, says Risher. "People were saying that groups needed to communicate more. Jeff got up and said, 'No, communication is terrible!' " The pronouncement shocked his managers. But Bezos pursued his idea of a decentralized, disentangled company where small groups can innovate and test their visions independently of everyone else. He came up with the notion of the "two-pizza team": If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large. That limits a task force to five to seven people, depending on their appetites.


Posted by jreighley at August 6, 2004 06:46 AM

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Josh, re: He came up with the notion of the "two-pizza team": If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large. That limits a task force to five to seven people, depending on their appetites.

That only sets the upper limit for number of folks. I can tell you it doesn't set the lower limit, since two pizzas are never too much!

Posted by: russ at August 6, 2004 10:01 AM

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