How to Keep Your Working Tribe Intact: The Rule of Tens

Back in the early 2000s, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos came out with his now well known "two-pizza team” principal. The rule dictates that, within a large organization, any working team that can’t be fed with two pizzas is too large to be effective. This generally limits an ideal task force to five to seven people. Bezos was definitely onto something: His pizza teams went on to create some of Amazon’s most popular features at the time.

It turns out many experts in leadership have observed something similar, and it’s part of a crucial principle for keeping working tribes intact: "span of control." Put simply, span of control refers to the number of team members a leader directly manages. Theories differ on what the ideal number is, but it generally seems to sit around an average of ten. Hal Gregersen, for instance, who is the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, contends the optimal number of direct reports is between 6 and 12—whether you're a CEO or lower-level manager. Business guru Jack Welch meanwhile pins the ideal number at between 10 and 15, a size that allows a leader to focus on the big important issues, not get lost in micromanaging.

So today, after directly and indirectly managing hundreds of teams, I’ve settled on my own number for ideal span of control: ten. When a team leader sees direct reports swell beyond ten people, it’s time to think about re-organizing and introducing an extra layer of management. The shuffle can involve some extra effort initially, but it pays off in the long run. The principle may seem like pretty basic one, and it certainly has some nuances, but was reached only after lots of personal trial and error.

Back when Hootsuite was just getting started, for example, our team had just seven core members. It was an ideal size for me to manage, and tight enough for seamless communication among members. I still owe much of our success to date to this strong, cohesive group. But as we started gaining momentum—and realized we had something promising on our hands—I doubled team size. That's when we ran into trouble. Having all those people report into me just didn't make sense. I needed to have regular check-ins with each of them, but also the time to address big organizational issues and keep our business moving forward. So I built a management structure into the team and selected another person to lead part of it.

Importantly, the "rule of tens" also works in multiples. When Hootsuite was approaching 100 employees, similar challenges again began surfacing. By this time we had fully functioning marketing, engineering, HR, finance, sales and other departments. Team leaders were each handling a maximum of around ten people, including me. But with the company continuing to grow, we realized we were spending too much time in meetings rather than focusing on pushing the business forward in more substantial ways. That was a wake-up call: it was time to bring in another layer of senior management.  

So we began to go out and aggressively recruit new senior managers, directors and VPs for our largest and most critical departments. This required a significant outlay of resources for a growing company, but it was important to get the right people. As Hootsuite tipped past 100 into the hundreds, team leaders began funnelling their reports to the new leaders. It was up to this new layer of management to take in findings, reach conclusions and bubble up relevant strategic issues to the next level. Thanks to this adjustment, I found I was able to maintain a good feel for the pulse of the company, while setting aside enough time to seek out future rounds of investment and steer the ship during the next phase of rapid growth.

One critical point: This rule of tens only works with the right people. Every team leader needs to be an A-plus hire, someone who checks off every box and is also an absolutely great person to work with. Solid A-player candidates might have a proven professional track record, but if they’re not culturally aligned with your company it can later become a serious liability as they move outside your span of control. Steve Jobs was a stickler this principle, reportedly spending an unusually large amount of time vetting hires. Clearly, it’s an important legacy he’s left for Apple, as the company remains one of the world’s most sought-after employers, year after year.

Fast-forward to the present and I'm now looking up at a whole new ceiling. Hootsuite is currently approaching 1000 employees. The time is now to add some new layers of management, before our current leaders get too swamped with the day-to-day to keep their eyes on the horizon.

My rule of tens may not seem terribly scientific or sophisticated. It doesn't involve pizza. But it's been developed and tested in the most rigorous lab I know—real life. I hope these observations are useful for other startups experiencing the same kind of rollercoaster growth as we did. The bottom line? As companies move from 10 to 100 then to 1000 employees, it's critical to have the foresight and carve out the time to add in additional layers of top-notch management at each of these levels. Because for the best leaders, the goal always is to find ways to remain connected to the day-to-day of your business, while also leaving enough time to have a clear vision for the future. This requires taking the time to find and hire A-plus leaders, delegating to them more critical responsibilities and putting faith in them to surface to you the real issues that need to be addressed.

Do you have experience working with or leading with teams of 10, 100 and 1000? What leadership factors contribute to the best tribes in business? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Image: Hootsuite