What was the most effective team you've ever been on, and what made it excellent?

A question posted by Eli Tyre on the LessWrong Rationality Forum has sparked widespread discussion by asking a fundamental question about organizational performance: 'What was the most effective team you've ever been on, and what made it excellent?' The post frames the inquiry by referencing Richard Feynman's time at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project as a personal 'reference experience'—a period where things worked exceptionally well and could be used as a benchmark. Tyre argues that individuals who add tremendous value to organizations often do so by importing successful processes and tacit knowledge from highly effective teams they've witnessed in the past. He expresses a wish to have prioritized joining such teams to build a personal library of these reference experiences to better guide ambitious projects.

The post explicitly seeks first-hand anecdotes from any domain—research groups, sales teams, film crews, political campaigns, or startups—provided they were exceptional. Tyre asks respondents to detail not just the team's output, but the specific contributors to its excellence: hiring standards, cultural elements, practices, procedures, or expectations. This crowdsourcing effort aims to move beyond abstract management theory and gather concrete, lived examples of what 'highly effective machines' look like in practice. The discussion has resonated because it targets the often-tacit knowledge of teamwork that is difficult to codify but essential for replicating success, making it a valuable resource for founders, managers, and anyone aiming to build better organizations.