Just Eat: Management Structure and Incentives

What structures did you put in place at Just Eat, to enable that team cohesion, in terms of incentives or processes, to ensure a certain standard across the business?

The management structure was quite a lot of delegation of power and responsibility to our general managers, in different markets. The P&L of the business was owned, locally, by a general manager in each country. Those people reported into me and we delegated significant decision-making power to those people, so that they felt true ownership and accountability of the P&L for their market. Of course, we had central functions supporting them, but I think we did a good job of not making it feel like the central functions were deciding things and were responsible for things. It was the local general managers who were making all the most important decisions for their markets. That was the key structure that we had at Just Eat.

At Google, it was more of a matrix structure, where the marketers in the UK would report in to the marketers in California. I think it’s a really important principle, in any organization like this, to have very clear accountability of who, ultimately, is accountable for the result and that should dictate where decision-making authority lies. As soon as you remove decision-making power from a person, they are not going to really feel accountable for the result. If it’s your plan and all your ideas and I’m just doing what you tell me, then I don’t feel like I’m the one who is accountable. It’s you, not me.

Do you link compensation with accountability?

It depends on the role. If you are doing a role where you need to deliver revenue and growth, I think it’s important that you, personally, do well when the company does well. That’s the way I always like to look at it. If the company is doing well and people have worked incredibly hard to make that the case, then they and their families should also do well.