CHAPTER 26
Forming the Perfect-Sized Team
When it comes to teams, size matters. We’ve worked with teams of all sizes, from three to twenty-five members. The right-sized team has between five and twelve members. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, put it best when he coined the two pizza rule21: a meeting shouldn’t have more people than two pizzas can feed.
Why? A team with fewer than five members lacks the necessary diversity to represent the organization. A team with more than twelve people is cumbersome in dialogue and debate. In large groups, people spend more time reporting on status or advocating for their opinions because they want to be heard. This leaves little room to inquire about each other’s ideas. And because the audience is large, team members are more focused on looking smart and are less likely to be vulnerable and ask questions.
The right team size fosters the rich dialogue necessary to discover new possibilities.
Getting the right team size can be a tough pill to swallow for the leader.
Most teams are too big, and leaders don’t want to reduce the size for two reasons:
- They have strong performers whose input they want and worry it won’t happen if they aren’t at the table.
- People are fighting to be on the team because they want the ear of the leader.
Neither of these reasons merits keeping a large leadership team. Both reasons reflect a different problem; primarily, lack of good regular back-and-forth communication.
Most people fight to be at the leadership table because they are concerned they won’t get the right information, or their concerns won’t be heard unless they are present. When that issue is clearly dealt with by an effective flow of information, people are generally quite happy to let go of the leadership table and focus on the work that needs to be done.
One of the main jobs of a team member is to communicate leadership-team information to their own direct reports. It requires discipline to determine what needs to be communicated to whom at the end of a leadership-team meeting. And it requires commitment by each team member that they will do so quickly, within twenty-four hours, with their teams. This type of disseminating communication is a key discipline that resolves issue of team size.
Each time we have coached a large team, we’ve had to work diligently to convince the leader to reduce the size. We usually pair this discussion with additional coaching about organizational communication. In all cases, after just a couple months, not only have the leaders been happy and more productive, but so have the folks who were pulled off the team. And guess what? Other employees in the company were happy with the change too. We’ll share a client example to illustrate how this works.
Early in our business we worked with one team at a technical engineering company. The leader, Fred, a VP, invited us to work with his team of twenty-five. When we asked if his team really had twenty-five members, he explained that only eight reported to him, but if he didn’t invite the rest, it would create lots of political issues. We understand that politics is a reality for most corporate cultures. After much dialogue, Fred agreed to reduce the group to eighteen. However, when we showed up for the two-day off-site, there were twenty-one at the table. Somehow he managed to slip three more through the door.
We went forward with the planned off-site. We agreed that the best way to approach this session was to let Fred discover the problem himself.
The first morning of our two-day off-site is designed to help people build trust and goodwill toward each other. We do this to create an atmosphere where people will dive into dialogue and debate about the real-time strategic issues facing the team. The logistics of building trust around the different styles of twenty-one people is challenging, but heck, we could do that. The situation wasn’t perfect. In a group that large, people aren’t as willing to be real and vulnerable. But it can be done.
The real problem isn’t developing trust and fostering goodwill. The real problem shows up once we dive into the business issues.
Sure enough, we got to the business discussion in the afternoon of day one, and things unraveled. As folks discussed the team’s direction and what goals were most important, everyone wanted to put in their two cents. No one took the time to ask questions or clarify what someone else said because that would take away from their speaking time. At the end of the first day, we went to dinner with the team. Conversation around the table revealed that people were frustrated and wanted something different. Fred, over a glass of wine, said he thought the team was too big.
The next day, we brought up the idea of shifting the team size. After some discussion, the group agreed the current size wasn’t satisfying and that a smaller group would be better. The problem: no one thought they should be the one to leave.
We asked, “Why don’t you want to leave?” What came out was that matters discussed at the leadership level rarely disseminated down. Meetings throughout the organization consisted of reporting on status, with very little time spent dialoguing.
We introduced our ideas about disseminating leadership team communication through a rhythm and structure that the next level down could adopt. We suggested ways to improve the meetings and the importance of building in time for debate, as well as specifically clarifying what would be disseminated and what would not.
The group discussed and agreed: The pared-down leadership team and newly structured lower level teams would use both the meeting model and disseminating communication tools. The team agreed to let Fred decide who was the right fit for the leadership team. Fred chose his eight direct reports plus his HR person and him. The new team size was ten.
It didn’t go perfectly. We worked with them to tweak things over the next year.
Some people were upset to be left off the team. They felt like they were losing power. They feared they would be marginalized. We worked with the leader and these people to hear and validate their concerns. We asked if they would be willing to test drive the new team structure for ninety days.
A month later we returned and had a great meeting with the pared-down leadership team. They dove in, engaged in healthy conflict, and reached some key decisions. We learned later, though, that while they loved their new leadership team meetings, they had not invested the same effort into the meetings with their direct reports, the people who had been at the previous meeting. Those folks were unhappy. The people who had been asked to leave the team were realizing their worst fears.
The team renewed their commitment to communicate to their own direct reports within twenty-four hours of the leadership meeting. We supported the company rolling out the meeting model based on smaller team sizes and disseminating communication while ensuring leaders were trained to create similar team commitments with their direct reports.
At our second on-site meeting at the ninety-day mark, we learned that they had applied the smaller leadership team size to the next level. The leadership team was not only clearer and more defined, but information disseminated down to those who weren’t there in person, and feedback was coming back up. They liked that!
Fred has since moved on to another technical engineering company. Right away he reduced his team size. He now communicates the value of a smaller leadership team and quickly gets the buy-in. But when he invited us in to kick off his new team, he told us there would be eighteen in the room.
We opened our mouths to challenge him, and he laughed. “Got you!” In fact, he had reduced this group size to eight!
As Fred learned, size does indeed matter, but in this case bigger isn’t better. Having a team that is willing to inquire, question, and debate is essential. If more people are asking to come to the meeting, it’s likely that communication is not flowing into the organization. People aren’t getting the information they need. Once you have the right team size, ensure the efficient outflow of communication and inflow of feedback.
When your leadership team is the right size and you are working on the WE, you foster healthy, engaged conflict and clarity on organizational direction, both wide view and narrow focus. Help the rest of the organization stay in step. Build the commitment for team members to quickly and consistently communicate information to those who need it. The organization will be informed and sigh in relief knowing that the leadership team is working together.