From a Stripe and Google executive, a practical guide to company building and scaling the most important resource it has: its people.
A leader at both Google and Stripe from their early days, Claire Hughes Johnson has worked with founders and company builders to try to replicate their success. The most common questions she's asked are not about business strategy-they're about how to scale the operating structures and people systems of a rapidly growing startup.
Scaling People is a practical and empathetic guide to being an effective leader and manager in a high-growth environment. The tactical information it puts forward-including guidance on crafting foundational documents, strategic and financial planning, hiring and team development, and feedback and performance mechanisms-can be applied to companies of any size, in any industry. Scaling People includes dozens of pages of worksheets, templates, exercises, and example documents to help founders, leaders, and company builders create scalable operating systems and lightweight processes that really work.
Implementing effective leadership and management practices takes effort and discipline, but the reward is a sustainable, scalable company that's set up for long-term success. Scaling People is a detailed roadmap for company builders to put the right operating systems and structures in place to scale the most important resource a company has: its people.
Scaling People : A Tactical Guide to Company Building
Description
Table of Contents
Introduction
Setting your metronome
The core frameworks
Who is this book for?
How to read this book
Exercises and templates
Chapter 1
Essential Operating Principles
1. Build self-awareness to build mutual awareness
2. Say the thing you think you cannot say
3. Distinguish between management and leadership
4. Come back to your operating system
Exercises and templates
Chapter 2
Core Framework 1: Foundations and Planning for Goals and Resources
Founding documents
The operating system
Operating cadence
Exercises and templates
Chapter 3
Core Framework 2: A Comprehensive Hiring Approach
Recruiting
Hiring
Onboarding
Hiring mistakes
Exercises and templates
Chapter 4
Core Framework 3: Intentional Team Development
Team structures
Diagnosing team state
Team changes and restructuring
(Re)building the team
Creating the team environment
Team-building complexities
Diversity and inclusion
Team communication
Exercises and templates
Chapter 5
Core Framework 4: Feedback and Performance Mechanisms
Hypothesis-based coaching
Giving hard feedback
Creating a culture of informal feedback
The formal review process
Compensation
Managing high performers
Managing low performers
Managing managers
Managing out, firing, and layoffs
Some final thoughts on management
Exercises and templates
Conclusion
You
Manage your time and energy
Foster relationships
Consider your career
Endnotes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Author Description
Review quote
"Claire
Johnson gave me some of the best feedback of my career: 'You don't ask for help
often enough.' Whether you are a new manager or a CEO, there are going to be
moments when you feel alone and need help. Odds are, the advice you need is in
Scaling People. You are going to pull this book off your
shelf over and over!"
-Kim Scott, author of Radical
Candor and Just Work
"The
practical guide to running a world-class organization... Claire has demystified
how you run a large, high-performance organization, with clear concepts and
practical templates that you can start implementing today."
-Jason
Citron, founder and CEO of Discord
"I was excited
to learn that Claire Hughes Johnson has taken her many years of operating
excellence from Stripe and Google and distilled it into a new book. Scaling
People is a key book to be added to the shelf of any people leader and
manager."
-Elad Gil, entrepreneur, investor, and author of
High Growth Handbook
"Scaling People is approachable, entertaining, and exceptionally useful, with lots of heart and humor. Claire leverages her years of unparalleled experience to provide a deeply helpful resource to read and revisit again and again."
-Aileen Lee, founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures
"Through the entire
history of startups and entrepreneurship, the world expects founders and young
executives to succeed and thrive as their company grows larger and larger. Yet
no one takes the time to give them the skills and processes that are necessary
to achieve great leadership. Now someone has-hats off to Claire Johnson for
writing Scaling People."
-Bill Gurley, general
partner at Benchmark
"If you want to scale your
business from 10 people to 10,000 without losing the things that make it
special, Scaling People is the handbook you need."
-Ravi
Gupta, former CFO and COO of Instacart, general partner at Sequoia
Capital
"There's a lot of reinventing the wheel in a startup environment. Scaling People offers strong frameworks, sound advice, and tried-and-true processes that any company can use to build stronger foundations and sustainable success."
-Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, host of Masters of Scale
"Claire Hughes Johnson is the ultimate operator. She distills two decades of management and leadership expertise into one accessible volume with real-world examples and actionable guidance. Scaling People proves that it's possible to operate in a high-growth environment while simultaneously focusing on and caring about developing people-and that doing so also leads to a fundamentally stronger business."
-Mallun Yen, founder of Operator Collective
"Everything you need to know about building and scaling a company, being an exceptional leader and manager, and getting the best out of your people in one empathetic and enjoyable package-with easy-to-use worksheets and templates to boot."
-Frances Frei, author of Uncommon Service and Unleashed, professor at Harvard Business School
"Claire Hughes Johnson has been in the catbird seat at two companies: Google and Stripe. She participated in Google's transformative journey in the decade following its IPO. Since then, she has helped Stripe develop from a two-floor office into a global, multibillion-dollar infrastructure company on which millions of businesses depend. Two eras, two companies-one Claire."
-Michael Moritz, partner at Sequoia Capital