HOW TO CUT YOUR

PIZZA:Meetings and Team Sizes

When Jeff Bezos was starting up Amazon, he made a rule: no meeting, however important, would include more people than could be fed with two pizzas.

The assumption was that the more people there were in a team, the less would be achieved. Putting aside the question of the size of the pizza and the size of the slices, the rule is borne out by basic mathematics.

The formula to determine the number of links in a group is defined as:

n(n-1)2

where n = number of people.

ABOUT

• If you are generous with your pizza, and everyone gets two slices and there are six slices per pizza, that’s two pizzas sustaining a team of six

• In a team of six, there are 15 possible unique links between the members

• However, if there are 12 people in your team, there are 66 possible links - and only one slice of pizza each

• If your entire workforce of 50 people are denoted as a single team, they have 1225 possible links - and all complaining how there is never enough pizza!)

HERE’S HOW THAT WORKS

One of the features of many employee productivity apps is the ability to create user groups and temporary teams to address challenges, collaborate on projects, or brainstorm some new ideas.

The pitfall is that one employee might spread themselves too thin and join too many groups. thus making their links unmanageable.

GROUP SIZES IN ONLINE

COMMUNITIES

In an experiment by Bradley Staats, Katherine Milkman, and Craig Fox, two person teams and four person teams were tasked to build the same Lego figure. The two person teams took an average of 36 minutes, whilst the four person team took 52 minutes – almost 45% longer.

LARGER GROUPS ARE SLOWER

LARGER GROUPS CAN CAUSE STRESS

This occurred where team members didn’t know the other team members well enough

to either seek support or offer it with confidence, leading to stress and upset.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

A good employee app will allow managers to hand-pick teams and groups, keeping their membership limited and within workable

margins. Every employee is a member of the app community, but not a member of every

specialist team or interest sub-group.

FLEXIBLE GROUP

FORMATION

At TalkFreely, our employee apps offer businesses the flexibility to form user

groups and teams within an online community. Group members can be

contacted en masse with specific information, activity monitored and

assistance given as required.

EXPLOSIVE FEEDBACK

Given that another of Bersin’s predictions is that “Real time feedback and analytics will explode”, managers will come to expect –and rely on – almost immediate feedback.

This information can be used in many different ways.

REAL-TIME FEEDBACK REQUIRES PROMPT ACTION

There is, of course a payoff. That level of real-time information requires an agile company structure

(and culture) that can react and respond. There is no point in receiving real-time information, and

having to wait a week before reacting. By then the pizza is not only cold but decidedly stale, and

probably a health risk too.

Could your organisation do with a

little help to “put its lightbulb in the

right place?”

#TalkFreely2innovate

TalkFreely is a leading employee app that connects and aligns every

employee with what’s important to your business.

Our multi-purpose app provides organisations with a communications

channel that builds employee engagement through Innovation, Recognition, Collaboration, News,

Surveys and more.

#TalkFreely2innovate

info@talkfreely.com +44 (0) 1730 207 150

Find out how this innovative app can provide valuable insights, help foster pride in your business, and support employee connections across the world to strengthen the

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