Why are meetings considered the biggest time waster in the business world? The furnace of vanity and self-promotion which can easily blaze without a fixed set of meeting rules can quickly lead to inefficiency. Here is a helpful rule for successful meetings, which not only comes from the USA but has been inspired by pizza: the Two Pizza Rule from Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
What is the Two Pizza Rule?
Jeff Besos came up with this rule to help his meetings run smoothly
- Basically, meetings should only have as many attendees as could comfortably share two pizzas
- To this end, Two-Pizza teams were created with the number of participants determined by the size of the doughy Italian delicacy
- In meetings with under 5 people, you run the risk of falling into groupthink
The Two Pizza Rule in Practice
Tell the team in advance that there will be some changes in the group and explain why these are necessary
- Think before you invite who needs to be there
- Define responsibilities
- Those you’ve invited will be responsible for conveying the content of the meeting to those who haven’t participated
Two Pizza Rule: You’ll never have too few again
Smaller meetings can generate a feeling of intimacy which often leads to bolder and franker discussions
- Fewer participants also mean more time to listen to and consider everyone’s perspective
- This measure of openness and clarity in a small meeting can mean that measures and results can be more easily reconciled
Two Pizza Rule: You’ll never have too many again
Four main reasons why problems can occur when a group has exceeded its optimal size
- Larger teams can create an overwhelming mental load for the individual members
- There is a higher rate of delegating between team members which is prone to errors and misunderstandings
- As each team member now needs to pay attention to a higher number of people, the social cohension of the group will become weaker
