Read time: 4 min

Every company is a two-player game and the best organizations have a structure like a pizza.

Bring your business structure to the next level for more fun at work.

In my last business, I was fortunate to work with Fabio on my team.

He was our Geeks & Culture Manager.

Yes, we had a lot of fun inventing our titles. 😂

Together, we designed a lot of the company's culture.

We noticed it took new starters a long time to understand how we operated and worked together.

This is when Fabio found the pizza model and extended it with our two-player company metaphor.

It was the perfect fit for our company—gamers eating pizza.

I can't stress enough how important it is for everyone on the team to understand your culture.

So I would say the pizza model is the best organizational structure for any company.

Let's take a bite and see why pizza and games are good for business.

I hate organizational charts.

They contain no information that helps me:

build better products,
make my customers happy,
or have more fun working.

I can read someone's rank and sometimes decision-making power from an organizational chart.

It tells me where I am in the food chain compared to my colleagues.

How is my rank of any use?

The pizza model is another way of representing my company's organizational chart.

In the pizza model, I replace hierarchies with each person's ownership.

The Pizza Model

Benefits of the Pizza Model

It has a lot of benefits if my company is a pizza instead of an organizational chart:

Everyone's goals and ownership are clear.
There is no space for political agendas.
There are no hierarchy ladders to climb.
There are no empires to build.

In other words, the pizza model trades knowledge of your place in the food chain to clarify your goals.

Be careful, though, when applying this model to your existing teams.

It is highly experimental, and your team might not be ready.

I'm not kidding.

I saw one case in my last company where a team member got unpleasant physical symptoms.

It was a significant problem for them not to know who was above or below them in the company.

In a company without hierarchy or ranking, that is.

This reminds me of my evergreen advice on hiring:

Hire for culture fit over experience.

I have two components in a pizza:

the crunchy crust,
and the cheesy center.

I am either part of the crunchy crust or the cheesy center.

If not, I don't belong in this company.

What do the people in each part do?

Being Part of the Cheesy Center

I focus on my customers when I'm part of the cheesy center.

The customers sit at the center point of the pizza.

As part of the cheesy center, I should create customer value, nothing else.

I'm not part of the cheesy center if I'm not directly creating customer value.

The alternative is that I'm not focusing on our customers but on the people inside the cheesy center.

Being Part of the Crunchy Crust

I am part of the crunchy crust if my focus is the cheesy center.

The crust embraces all that cheesy goodness in the middle.

I hold them together and support them in their needs.

This way, the cheesy center can focus 100% on the customer.

Now we know the pizza model; how do I turn this into a game now?

The Two-Player Business Game

I remember my childhood playing soccer on a playground with my friends.

Today, I see my companies as playgrounds for me and my team.

Everyone playing in a playground is a player.

Fabio and I also spent countless hours playing console games back in the day.

On a console, there is a Player 1 and a Player 2.

Player 1 usually made more decisions and worked more actively towards the game's goal.

And Player 2 supported Player 1 when they bit off too much to chew.

The pizza model has two components, and so two types of players live on it.

We called them Player 1 and 2, using the console games Fabio and I used to play.

Everyone knew their role immediately without lengthy explanations.

I like the switch of numbers in this metaphor.

In traditional companies, we go from top to bottom.

This makes CEOs and Managers look all-important when they aren't.

I like how the numbers make CEOs and Managers an afterthought.

They are support players and not the heroes.

There is no room for micro-managers, tyrants and empire builders on the pizza.

We focus on the cheesy center by calling them first.

I can spot misplaced team members with the pizza model very quickly.

A developer who doesn't want to solve customer problems makes no sense.

Or vice versa, a CFO who tries to decide what customers want from the product.

I can see directly what is unnecessary or non-essential and cut it out of my two-player pizza company.

This is impossible when I stare at an organizational chart.

I'm an observer if I am not one of the two players.

Observers don't play or interfere with the game.

If I don't play, I get out of the way of the players so I can enjoy the spectacle.

Beyond the Pizza Plate

I take on both player roles during the early stages of my business.

The pizza is still being shaped at that point.

Especially as a founding member, I will switch roles fluidly.

One day, I'll be writing code for our website, and the next day, I'll be doing our bookkeeping.

BTW, a founding member who only can fill one of the two roles is usually not a good fit.

As you read this, I assume you mainly take on the Player 2 role.

When you do your job right, you will become obsolete eventually.

Isn't that awesome?! 🤩

My highest aspiration as Player 2 is to become obsolete.

The thought of not being needed anymore might be scary, but it is the best measure of my success.

When I am obsolete, my Player 1 has everything they need to achieve their goals.

Being obsolete creates a lot of new opportunities for me.

I can invest my free time into finding new player 1s who need your support. As a result, I help more people, and helping more people is more good.
I can also become a Player 1 myself if I am passionate about that. Again, I help more people.
Or I can look ahead beyond the pizza plate to pave the path for my Player 1 in the future. I help more people in the future.

Most importantly, it lets me decide how to spend my time.

That is the true freedom I want to reach.

Do you prefer to be a Player 1 or 2?

Shoot me a message on LinkedIn.

The Best Companies Are Gamers Eating Pizza