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Corporate America has entered the era of the megamanager. For years now, employers have assigned more and more workers per boss in an effort to minimize the cost of managers and accelerate decision-making.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s one titan of industry bucking that trend: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. In his letter to shareholders, published Monday, the investment bank\u2019s longtime chief executive praised the agility and ownership of small teams in military terms. \u201cThe teams needed to tackle [specific problems] should be small and authorized with the decision-making ability to move and act like Navy SEALs or the Army\u2019s Delta Force,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis is trench warfare; it\u2019s about fighting for every inch, moving quickly and getting things done.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s some basis for the comparison with special forces operations: The SEALs are known to work in squads of eight or fewer, for example. And in the business world, organizing workers into smaller teams can ensure that everyone has a stake in the outcome, Dimon argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a team with too many members, accountability is spread too thin, he wrote: \u201cVery often when a management team wants to accomplish something new\u2026 everyone on the team says, \u2018We\u2019ll get it done,\u2019 meaning they will add it to the long list of tasks already on their plate. But when efforts are 1% of a lot of people\u2019s jobs, it will never get done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smaller teams, with shorter \u201cto do\u201d lists, are incentivized to give their full focus to any given task, he explained: \u201cYou need a team 100% dedicated to the mission\u2014and everyone else supports them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In championing smaller teams, Dimon is at odds with the ultra-flat management model being adopted by firms like Meta, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expecting workers to do more with less in the AI era. The tech giant has laid off hundreds of workers this year and implemented worker-to-manager ratios of 50-to-1 in at least one department\u2014a lopsided organizational structure that\u2019s far beyond even the outer limit of the so-called span\u2011of\u2011control scale (which measures how flat or hierarchical a structure is by how many direct reports each manager has).<\/p>\n
Eliminating layers of management is intended to speed up decisions and innovation by cutting hierarchy and bringing leaders closer to front-line employees and customers, thereby boosting engagement and ownership. But in such arrangements, junior staff can get overlooked, employees can feel directionless, and managers can burn out\u2014or, as Dimon points out, accountability for getting things done can be diluted.<\/p>\n
Despite those risks, U.S. companies are continuing to \u201cflatten,\u201d according to Gallup. The average manager\u2019s span of control grew from 10.9 direct reports in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, meaning average team sizes are now nearly 50% larger than when Gallup first began tracking them in 2013.<\/p>\n
Flat structures often don\u2019t last long, as employees gravitate toward more managerial interaction. \u201cWhat happens in most organizations is eventually either a formal or an informal structure appears sort of underneath direct reports,\u201d Andr\u00e9 Spicer, executive dean of Bayes Business School in London and a professor of organizational behavior, previously told Fortune.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The general consensus among management experts is that the ideal team size is seven, give or take a few. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos famously captured this idea by introducing the two-pizza rule in the company\u2019s early days; if two pizzas can\u2019t feed a team, the team is too big.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That illustration seems almost quaint now, but the central concept still holds. Dimon has landed on roughly the same team size, only he made his point\u2014perhaps fittingly in a time of war\u2014with a military metaphor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
#Jamie #Dimon #teams #work #Navy #SEALs #sprawling #flat #corporations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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