Flight Centre

Most retail chains scaled by adding layers of management. Flight centre scaled by refusing to let any team grow past 150 people. In 1982, three Australians in Melbourne pulled $3,000 and opened a single budget travel shop. Graham Turner, Jeff Harris and Bill James held a private rule from the first day. No team they ever built would grow beyond seven people. Each shop was a family of three to seven, ran its own profit and loss, and carried its own targets. Five to eight families formed a village under one area leader. Three to eight villages formed a tribe, never more than 150 people in total. Above that line, Turner had read enough about hunter-gatherer bands to no bureaucracy crept in. The structure carried real money.