Why Three Is the New Seven
When you rethink teams in the age of AI and authentic connection, it's essential to be the '51% person'
🧭 The Team That Wasn’t
Let me tell you about a team that wasn’t really a team—at least not at first.
It was March 2020. The world had just gone remote, and a product manager named Jess suddenly found herself leading a team of seven people she barely knew. They had meetings, sure. They had Slack. They even had Jira tickets and a shared roadmap.
But what they didn’t have was trust.
Everyone showed up to standups. No one showed up for each other.
That changed the day Jess introduced something new: ten minutes of unstructured time at the start of every team call. No agenda, no status updates. Just chat. At first it felt awkward. But then someone brought a pet onto the call. Someone else cracked a joke. Within two weeks, the energy changed.
By week four, the team shipped a new feature three weeks ahead of schedule.
📉 Bigger Isn’t Better Anymore
In the old days (by which I mean 2019), the magic number for a high-performing team was often pegged at around seven. It came from Agile lore, the “two-pizza rule,” and conventional wisdom about communication overhead.
But in 2025, the most effective teams don’t need seven people.
They need three.
With the rise of generative AI, one engineer can test, document, and build faster than a squad used to. Designers generate high-fidelity mockups from prompts. Product managers explore customer insights without needing four days of interviews.
But AI didn’t kill the need for teams. It just shrunk them.
🤖 AI as an Amplifier—Not a Substitute
Here’s what’s crucial to understand: AI amplifies execution, not connection.
You still need human trust, clarity of purpose, and emotional safety. What AI can’t do is care. It can’t offer encouragement after a tough meeting. It won’t ask if you’re okay when your camera’s off two days in a row.
Smaller teams mean fewer relationships to maintain—but those relationships matter more than ever.
🪢 The Hidden Glue: Unstructured Time
We all know structured time—agendas, KPIs, retros, roadmaps.
But the secret to real teams? Unstructured time.
Think lunchroom chats. Friday drinks. Walking to grab coffee. Or, in Jess’s case, those 10-minute Zoom slots with no agenda. It turns out, this “non-work” time creates the kind of safety that fuels real collaboration.
There’s even a rough metric:
6 hours of unstructured time = basic human trust.
24 hours = someone you’d actually call a friend.
In a team of three, that’s a reachable goal. In a team of nine? Good luck getting there without serious intention.
❤️ The 51% Rule: Be the One Who Leans In
Here’s a principle every leader should write on their office wall: be a 51% person.
In any relationship, aim to do just a bit more than your fair share. Offer to grab someone coffee. Ping a colleague after a stressful sprint review. Ask a personal question—not to pry, but to care.
Two people each putting in 51% don’t just meet in the middle. They build a surplus. A buffer. A friendship. In a world of burnout and disconnection, that’s your competitive advantage.
Jess made this real. She started tracking who she hadn’t had unstructured time with that week. If someone looked disengaged, she booked a 15-minute chat—no work talk. Over time, her team became something rare: small, strong, and resilient.
🧠 Vision, Villains, and Victory
Want a fast way to build a team? Give them:
A shared vision – What are we trying to build? Who is it for? Why does it matter?
A shared villain – This isn’t about scapegoating. It’s about rallying around a common enemy—outdated systems, inefficient processes, or even last quarter’s failure.
A shared history – What have we survived together? What did we build? What do we laugh about?
These three elements build loyalty, emotional memory, and momentum. They turn coworkers into comrades.
🛠 Practical Next Steps for Leaders
If you manage people, scale strategy, or coach teams, this is your moment to lead differently. Here’s how:
Shrink to strengthen: Challenge whether you really need seven people or if three trusted, AI-augmented people could do it better.
Design for unstructured time: Add “No Agenda” slots into your calendar. Host a virtual coffee. Make it easy for trust to happen.
Track the 6 and 24: Ask yourself, “How many unstructured hours have I spent with each person on my team?” If it’s under six, start investing.
Be the 51% person: You don’t have to carry the whole team. Just go first. Relationships don’t build themselves.
Reinvest the AI dividend: Don’t just use AI to speed up deliverables. Use the time it frees to slow down—and connect.
🔁 What’s Old Is New Again
In a sense, we’re just rediscovering something ancient: teams work best when they care about each other. That doesn’t change because we’re remote. It doesn’t disappear when AI shows up. In fact, it becomes even more important.
Jess’s story isn’t unique. It’s a pattern we’re seeing everywhere: tighter teams, deeper trust, faster progress.
The future of work isn’t just tech-enabled. It’s trust-enabled.
And in that future, three is the new seven.