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The 'Two Pizza Rule' Is Jeff Bezos' Secret To Productive Meetings

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Jeff Bezos
Steve Jurvetson via Flickr

The more people there are, the less productive most meetings will be.

The idea is that most attendees will end up agreeing with each other instead of voicing their own opinions and ideas.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has a solution for this problem. He calls it the "two pizza rule": Never have a meeting where two pizzas couldn't feed the entire group.

In fact, Bezos advises to only have meetings when absolutely necessary.

"[Bezos] wanted a decentralized, even disorganized company where independent ideas would prevail over groupthink," writes Richard Brandt at The Wall Street Journal.

In The WSJ profile, Brandt interviews a former Amazon executive who recalls Bezos saying "communication is terrible!" during an offsite retreat.

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Vivian formerly ran the Careers vertical at Business Insider. She's fascinated by the evolving office, growing industries and how technology, education and the rise of freelancers play a role in the future workplace. Previously she freelanced for Dan Rather Reports and worked in public relations in Colorado. She's had internship stints with CBS, CNN and TBS. Vivian has an M.A. in Business and Economic Reporting from New York University and a B.A. from the University of Georgia. She resides in Chinatown and is working on a collection of short stories.