Best Practices for Building High‑Efficiency Teams – Insights from Chen Hao

I am Chen Hao, a former chief architect at Amazon and Alibaba, now leading a small startup that built a micro‑service cloud platform, and I will share my thoughts on building high‑efficiency teams from a non‑technical management perspective.

1. Why build a high‑efficiency team? When business complexity, user scale, and interaction depth increase, teams must iterate quickly, deliver high quality, and keep costs low; otherwise coordination, execution, and communication problems arise.

2. How to build a high‑efficiency team?

Adopt processes such as Agile, ISO, or CMMI.

Use authority or strict deadlines when needed.

Instill mission and values to motivate.

Provide monetary incentives.

Apply “motivation‑boosting” tactics (the so‑called "chicken‑blood").

Set KPIs and, if necessary, 996 work‑style.

Leverage tools like DingTalk for communication.

These are common efficiency tools, but they work only if the right people are in place.

3. What defines a high‑efficiency team?

Three dimensions: the people, the work, and the leadership.

3.1 People

Hire higher‑level talent or develop existing members to handle increasing workload.

Identify individuals who can independently complete tasks with minimal cost.

Prefer those who have strong problem‑solving methods and can articulate complex ideas.

Seek leaders with high standards, sharing spirit, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.

Google’s hiring rubric (technician → engineer → expert → leader) illustrates the progression.

3.2 Work

Focus on delivering useful work, not just more work; automate repetitive tasks, simplify processes, and reduce unnecessary support activities.

3.3 Leadership

Leadership is not a title but the ability to inspire others to follow, learn, and emulate; leaders must set high standards and act as role models.

Team role model

Driver : Core pillar who drives vision, innovation, and long‑term focus.

Optimizer : Finds paths, solves problems, and applies methods to achieve goals.

Contributor : Executes tasks reliably, reduces cost, and ensures stability.

People outside these three roles are replaceable and should not be the core of the team.

Key management practices

Set a clear common goal and prioritize it.

Use small, cross‑functional teams (e.g., Amazon’s Two‑Pizza Teams).

Automate, standardize, and scale processes.

Maintain documentation (press release, user manual, FAQ) to enforce simplicity.

Run meetings with defined agendas and multiple solution proposals.

Assign responsibility owners and follow a hierarchy of standards (industrial → foreign → internal experience).

Make data‑driven decisions and cite authoritative references.

By focusing on the right people, clear work, and strong leadership, a team can continuously improve its efficiency and tackle increasingly complex problems.