Make Strategic Withdrawals

The “two pizza team” — the core of Amazon’s famous “fly wheel” — is one of Jeff Bezos’ legendary organizational innovations.

Ever wonder where it came from?

Unexpectedly, it came from time away.

“In early 2002, as part of a new personal ritual, he took time after the holidays to think and read. In this respect, Microsoft Bill Gates, who also took such annual think weeks, served as a positive example. Returning to the company after a few weeks, Bezos presented his next big idea to the senior leadership team in the basement of his home.

“The entire company, he said, would restructure itself around what he called two-pizza teams. Employees would be organized into autonomous groups of fewer than 10 people – small enough of that, when working late, the team members could be fed with two pizza pies. These teams would be independently set loose on Amazon's biggest problems. They would likely compete with one another for resources and sometimes duplicate their efforts, replicating the Darwinian realities of surviving in nature. Freed from the constraints of intracompany communication, Bezos hoped, these loosely coupled teams could move faster and get features to customers quicker.” (from Brad Stone’s fantastic The Everything Store)

Deliberately blocking time away from work has been an indispensable tactic of innovators from Bill Gates, to Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Sometimes, to move forward, you’ve got to withdraw.

Related: Schedule A Week Unplugged

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