Tetris Teams: why lean, complementary skills beat bloated org structures

Every now and then, you come across an image that perfectly captures what you've been feeling for months, if not years.

I had one of those moments recently. After sharing it with the Salmon Crew private community, there was a lot of love for it. Which told me I wasn't the only one feeling it.

The shit show economy

As the culture and media shit show of 2026 continues, the inevitable fallout is that brands need to do more with less. Macro things influence micro things like budgets. That's just how it works.

And when that happens, the specialisation that got us to this point may not be what takes us to the next point. Though if you were professionally raised in a small market, you probably never expected it to be.

Small yet mighty: what smaller markets get right

During an accidental exchange with a Crew member – where he shared something I completely mistook as a take on this image – we both concluded that what we see as "smaller market mentality" is actually a blessing.

When you're operating in a smaller market, you can't afford to not do certain things because it's technically not your job. If there's no one else to do it and you have some time to help, you fucking do it.

That same member pointed out that, being in a technically smaller market, he often sees holdco-type individuals do roughly one fifth of what he'd consider a full job, and yet probably still complain they're oh so busy.

The problem: Title Totalitarianism

You and I don't need to be rocket scientists to see where this is heading. As teams get compressed, we need fewer perfectly distributed specialised atomic units. The problem and the alternative both become clear pretty quickly.

I call the problem Title Totalitarianism. It's when you end up so big and bloated that you need to invent titles just to make sure everyone's egos are taken care of. The bureaucracy follows.

Title Totalitarianism also creates a perverse incentive system where people only feel complete as they accumulate more titles. When in fact, for a lot of us, all we want is to become more senior operators. Not everyone is cut out to be a manager-y type, and that's 100% okay.

The solution: Tetris Teams

The solution is what I call Tetris Teams.

Complementary skills where you don't need a lot of people to get the job done, you just need the right smoosh of skills so people can balance each other out. A Tetris Team is a small group where every person brings something the others don't, and together they cover far more ground than a bigger, more siloed team ever could.

The Tetris analogy works because the pieces literally make up an oddly shaped puzzle. And when things line up in a row, boom, you gain points and buy yourself some more operating room.

What Tetris Teams look like in practice

Over the last three months alone, I've met or worked with creative producers who handle senior client relationships, account directors who can hold a strategy conversation, creatives who scope projects and manage budgets, and strategists who code.

I've even seen a studio that only runs three titles: Partner, Director, and Maker. It's refreshing because it pushes everyone to become more well-rounded, regardless of where they started.

And honestly? That sense of complementarity makes a lot of conversations about work feel more meaningful too. Because you realise there's no room for passengers. No place to hide. You either bring something tangible to the table, or you're probably taking up space.

It sounds harsh. Maybe it is. But we live in harsh times, and the alternative – pretending we can go back to the 90s, take six months to write a brief, and make big films everyone watches at the same time – just doesn't hold up anymore. So let's grieve that a little, and then invent what's next.

Channelling chaos: lean vs bloated

There are no guarantees that Tetris Teams make the work more organised. Creative chaos exists everywhere you go. So the better question is: how do you best channel all that chaotic energy?

As a bloated team that spends more time updating stakeholders than producing work worth updating on? Or as a lean team that smooshes their skills together to do Avengers-type shit?

I know where my heart is right now. And who knows, maybe there's kebab at the end.