Two Pizza Teams

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Here’s a myth that refuses to die:

If you want a winning team, fill it with the smartest people you can find.

For a football team, that's Mbappe upfront, Vinicius Junior on the wing and Bellingham in midfield.

Surely the same applies in business?

That’s what Google thought.

Lesson: Google’s Secret to Great Teams

In 2012, they launched Project Aristotle¹ to uncover the formula for building high-calibre teams.

With access to more data than most companies could dream of, they studied 180 Google teams, tracked everything from performance metrics to lunch habits, and conducted hundreds of interviews.

The result?

Their hypothesis was dead wrong.

Project leader Abeer Dubey succinctly summarized: “We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter¹.”

So, they turned to a study published in Science² that analyzed small teams and identified two key traits:

Empathy: Individuals skilled at understanding others’ feelings.

Equal Communication: Team members speak for the same amount of time.

Armed with this insight, Google revisited their data.

Sure enough, these traits were common in their most effective teams.

Example: Two Pizza Rule

But here’s the catch: empathy and equal communication don’t scale well³.

That’s where Jeff Bezos’s Two-Pizza Rule comes in.

If your team is too large to be fed with two pizzas, it’s too large for empathy and equal communication.

So, when building your team, keep it small. Two pizzas, plenty of empathy, and equal time to speak.

And don't pack it with superstars. It might work for Real Madrid, but it's unlikely to work for you.

Resource: Smart Management

This week’s newsletter draws heavily from the fantastic book Smart Management: How Simple Heuristics Help Leaders Make Good Decisions in an Uncertain World. If you enjoy Nudge, you’ll like the book.

I'm interviewing one of the authors next week — Phill

P.S. The Marketing Meetup Conference early bird ends Feb 7th. If you're after a conference full of Britain's smartest marketers, then this is for you.