Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building

by Claire Hughes Johnson

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.

Genres: Business, Management, Leadership, Nonfiction, Entrepreneurship, Self Help, Technology

609 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 7, 2023

Reviews

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have some mixed feelings here:

1. on one hand, CHJ (the author) is NOT an anonymous person - she's very experienced and has a lot of valuable knowledge to share - and this book only proves that
2. on the other hand, after getting familiar with the introduction, I had a specific expectation regarding the book - my impression was that it's a handbook for COOs at a slightly higher level of abstraction (teams, org. structure, company level); I KNOW that the title doesn't make such an impression ("scaling PEOPLE", "tactics ...") - as I've mentioned the expectation was based on the initial section (intro)
3. while, in fact, the book is all about everyday work with other people - hiring, developing teams, feedback & performance mechanisms, PIPs & handling firing/layoffs; I'm not saying it's bad (or not useful at all), but I remember CHJ claiming that if you look for basics (for managerial position), you should look somewhere else
4. to be absolutely frank - the work done here is very good; I do agree with pretty much all the advice, and it's all phrased in a clear, comprehensible way - but I was a bit disappointed, as I expected to learn much more from a person like CHJ - instead of bread'n'butter, a bit more about strategic thinking or building succession, creatively growing others, etc. - but in the end, I've got some lessons that albeit valuable, can be already learned from many other sources

Let's summarize - it's a good book, but it doesn't stand out in the "row" of similar ones. I didn't have any "a-ha" moments; there was just one mental model I applied to my knowledge base (pushers VS pullers when it comes to top performers). Solid 4/5.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The right audience for this book are managers/ leaders with a certain level of experience.
Although many tactics were not brand new to me, the power of CHJ’s book is to put them together as a guide and give practical examples. Also her own experience is inspiring in itself and I found myself thinking that’s the type of leader I would want to be. I did have a few highlight moments such as the concept of pushers/pullers performers.
Negative point is related to the e-book version: many examples sections are written in a lighter grey font which made it unpleasant to read at times.

[Federico Cutrock · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Scaling People" is a book by Claire Hughes Johnson. She's been at Google and Stripe, so she knows a thing or two about leading people.

The early part of the book is the best for me. It talks about self-awareness, being a leader versus a manager, and something she calls the "operating system" of a company. It's not rocket science, but she lays it out in a way that's easy to understand and useful.

She talks about self-awareness, which is basically about knowing your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. It's not just about "I'm good at this" or "I suck at that" either. It's about understanding how your style affects the people you're leading, and how to adapt when you need to.
Then she gets into the difference between a leader and a manager. It's a distinction a lot of people don't really think about, but it's super important. A manager is all about making sure the day-to-day stuff gets done. They're in the trenches, making sure the team is on track. A leader, on the other hand, is more about setting the direction and the vision for the team. They're the ones looking at the big picture and steering the ship.
Finally, she talks about the "operating system" of a company. This is all about the processes and structures that make a company/team run smoothly. It's about things like how decisions get made, how communication happens, and how people work together. Johnson gives some practical advice on how to set up these systems, and how to tweak them as your company/team grows.
Then there's a part about hiring and recruiting. It's alright, but doesn't really bring anything new to the table.

I believe the book is kind of aimed at people who already have some leadership experience. If you're new to being a leader, you might be better off sticking with "The Making of a Manager".

So, all in all, "Scaling People" is a decent read. It's not gonna blow your mind, but it's got some useful advice and it's definitely worth a look if you're trying to grow your team!

[Anu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Claire has done a phenomenal job of distilling two decades of company building experience into insights and tactics that are easy to apply in different contexts. The content is greatly valuable for anyone building a high growth company, of course, but my favourite part of the book was how much Claire’s personality comes through. She’s an amazing leader that cares deeply about the people around her while being able to deliver on ambitious goals that only generational companies can achieve. And she does this with a refreshing modicum of humility and earnestness 🥰
“Say the thing that cannot be said” is my new favourite slogan 😄

Go get the book! Stripe Press has another winner on their hands.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akin to a business operations textbook. Claire Hughes Johnson is the COO of stripe and has led all sorts of shapes and styles of people across multitudes of teams. She also has specific expertise navigating founders, businesses going through rapid change, and organizations going from 0-1.

I feel like I’ve been searching for this book for a decade. So much of navigating startups is stumbling through the dark, implementing processes from prior work experiences that don’t fit cleanly or ignoring the organizational challenges until they become so hairy that they threaten the company’s growth. Claire leads through a full course of concerns/growth opportunities/management/working with others/influencing etc.

What’s even more amazing about this book is how her values are so incredibly intertwined to her management style. I have enormous admiration for someone who treats their own strengths and weaknesses as a product and then can actually articulate what that means for a working style and person values. Holy shit what a thing to aspire to do.

This book is a life changer for people driving through scaling organizations who know where they want to go but don’t know how to get there.

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Крепкая книга для COO по менеджементу людей, команд, в меньшей степени проектов и процессов. Вряд ли будет долгосрочной классикой, так как это скорее набор общеупотребительных практик на сейчас. Пока же читать стоит, если вы менеджер

[Jesse Gibson · Rating 1 out of 5]

It felt like reading a press release for Stripe. Maybe I'm not in a place to appreciate it. The presentation feels overly corporate. I imagine the author would describe breakfast as a "tactical nutrition import".

I picked this up to learn about designing effective teams. I will keep looking.

[Austeja St. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply loved it! Comprehensive, interesting and very valuable.

[Michelle T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great practitioner’s guide about business building, people management and self awareness, drawing upon Claire Hughes Johnson’s experience at Stripe and Google. The book is highly structured: (1) core frameworks, principles, (2) hiring, (3) team development and (4) feedback and performance mechanism. Some sections were rather intimidating while others prompted thoughtful questions and thoughts about performance optimisation, leadership and managerial skills. Great for anyone sitting in an operational seat.

[Sterling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually an effective book on scaling an organization that they don't teach you in b school. Actionable, well written girl boss Claire Johnson may have fucked up by not going public in 2021, but she is getting that bag with this book. Would recommend to anyone building an org that has PMF and 30+ people. The workbooks are bit of a meme, but I could see some decent upper level HR profs using them.

[Harry Harman · Rating 5 out of 5]

ANS (accepted not started) and BIS (butts in seats). Yes, these are actual standard company recruiting terms.

gubernatorial campaign

“I’m not going to tell you which processes you should put in place. But I will tell you that you need them, and you need them sooner than you realize.” When the person asked why, I said, “You know why playing a game is fun? Because it has rules, and you have a way to win. Picture a bunch of people showing up at an athletic eld with random equipment and no rules. Someone is going to get hurt. You don’t know how to play, you don’t know how to score, and you don’t know how to win.”

“What I think you’ve taught me most is how important it is to state the obvious.” Yes, it felt like a backhanded compliment. But what I think she meant is that I strive to make implicit structures and beliefs explicit.

We had promoted a lot of people into management internally, which is an eective way to reward high performers and build company scaolding, but we hadn’t invested enough in giving people the resources and the support they needed to be the most eective managers they could be.

a great manager can change someone’s trajectory. They can push employees to make career choices that leave them much more fullled. The role is both operational and managerial. To have a job that focuses on just one of these elements—delivering business results or producing personal impact—is already a big task. But to work in a job that does both?

The hardest parts of company building and management are done in private: designing your planning process, deciding who gets promoted, planning a reorganization, reducing the scope of a person’s role.

You can’t sit in on another manager’s 1:1s. You don’t get to observe how your colleague handled that termination conversation. You’re not privy to how your peers give their reports dicult feedback. You’re asked to y a very complicated aircraft, but you never get time in the practice simulator.

I believe that most people don’t neatly compartmentalize their home and work lives.

Nearly all of this material was created within Stripe.

introvert or extrovert? my favorite litmus tests is: Do you talk to think or think to talk?

DiSC (which stands for dominance, inuence, steadiness, and conscientiousness), 10 as well as the well-known Myers-Brigs Type Indicator (MBTI), 11 which helps identify 16 dierent personality types and is based on the work of Carl Jung. My personal favorite is Insights Discovery 12 because it’s more nuanced than the MBTI yet easier to understand

When I think about whether a capability is innate or not, I ask myself: Is doing this thing well as easy as breathing?

strengths can also be weaknesses

Teams become mirrors of their managers.

I’m still doing this. I put it in my calendar and call it ‘15minute thinking and meditation.’ I ask myself: If I start over today, what can I do dierently? Did I make any mistakes? Can I improve tomorrow? Sometimes I write down something important. But most of the time, the thinking is enough.” —Eric Yuan, founder and CEO, Zoom

Why don’t managers say what’s actually on their minds? be wary of over-filtering.

Fred Kofman explains why it’s so hard for us to say what we’re thinking. It’s because every conversation has three components:

• The “it”: the task being discussed
• The “we”: the relationship between the people having the discussion
• The “I”: your personal stance in the conversation

Everyone understands what it feels like to be worried or overloaded. If you say, “We didn’t hit our targets,” you haven’t oered any comment on the gravity of the situation. On the other hand, if you say, “We didn’t hit our targets, and I’m worried about the impact that this will have on our team and on the business,” the team will immediately understand that there’s a problem that needs fixing.

It’s more eective to explain why you feel that way. So rather than “The team is performing terribly,” you might say, “My impression is that the team isn’t communicating well right now, and I think deadlines are being missed as a result. Do you agree, or could it be something else?”

“Leadership is strategic, and management is more [about] implementation. Leadership is about setting direction, knowing where you want to go, convincing others to go with you, and explaining why you’re going there: setting standards, setting expectations, setting tone. Management is about implementing that: getting the processes right, getting the people right, getting the teams right.”

Great managers don’t initially have to be great leaders, but the more senior a manager becomes, the more important it is that they also develop leadership skills. Eventually, managers need to be able to set a vision and direction for their team—and potentially make the team uncomfortable with a bit of heat—or they’ll hit a ceiling in their careers.

When I take another of my favorite self-awareness assessment tests, the Big Five Personality Test, 17 I score as a classic great manager, high on conscientiousness and agreeableness. But great leadership often requires a person to be disagreeable and demand more.

for every team I manage. They each have the same components: clear missions, stated goals, metrics that matter, similar meeting structures, and weekly and quarterly cadences.

business frameworks, like Porter’s ve forces and the four Ps of marketing

Stripe’s mission became to increase the GDP of the internet.

Bill Gates once said, “Early on, Paul Allen and I set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home.

Google’s mission: “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

“The bigest mistake I made [early on] is we did not focus on writing [down] the company’s business principles. To delegate to other leaders, we need to write down our principles on hiring, on ring, on performance, on security, on many things.” —Eric Yuan, founder and CEO, Zoom

Stripe, early drafts of the principles were written by employees. Patrick reviewed the early work, then drafted his own version.

trajectory-altering impact

“Every day, you all choose where to put your time. My goal is to give you the information to make the best decision.”

for example, 10 engineers to 1 product manager, or 1 human resource business partner to 250 employees.

With an eye toward cash burn rate, founders want to be careful about adding more people. And when they do, they want to hold those people accountable for an output commensurate with the additional people power.

Google would devote 70 percent of its resources to the core business, 20 percent to emerging products, and 10 percent to research and development for future products.

John Tukey said, “Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question

Pyrrhic victory: a victory won at such a great cost that it was not worth the battle.

“what’s on the truck” revenue

Good communication is about providing timely and honest information, including being willing to acknowledge mistakes. People forgive mistakes, but they lose trust when information is hidden, false, or misleading, or when leadership says something but doesn’t follow through.

Dunbar’s number. At around 150 people, it becomes harder to remember everyone’s name, what team they’re on, and what they’re responsible for. by the time your company hits 150 people, you should have an internal company website, clear communication guidelines, and policies for what information gets stored, through what channels it’s communicated, and what information teams are responsible for maintaining. You should also formalize a means to deprecate out-of-date content. company wiki. Plan to communicate important information at least three times using dierent mediums or channels.

Examples of operating cadences include:
• Annual planning processes
• Quarterly business reviews
• Monthly all-hands meetings
• Biweekly 1:1s
• Weekly snippets and team meetings (with metrics reviews)
• Daily standups

I’m a big fan of experimenting with systems and processes. If you do experiment with your processes, make sure to:
• State how long you’re going to try the process for. • Determine when you’ll check back in to see how things are going.
• Set your evaluation criteria for whether to continue or revisit the process.

We aren’t wedded to how we currently do things

We will also deliver “table-stakes” security features

Is the metric relative, not absolute? (For example, instead of “Increase the number of users by 1,000,” explain the relative growth: “Increase the number of users by 20 percent, from 5,000 to 6,000.”)

Leadership understands what you need to accelerate and produce outstanding results.

In the early days, Stripe got creative about building its hiring pipeline. Because we built for developers, we were able to hire a few early users of the product, namely the ones who gave the most and best feedback. But soon enough, we added new tactics to our eorts to educate and dierentiate. These ranged from the founders posting on Quora or Hacker News and answering questions on Internet Relay Chat to writing blog posts on the Stripe site and using Twitter to share them.

One way the early team drove trac to Stripe and to our job postings was a competition called Capture the Flag: a series of coding challenges that created a buzz and, best of all, presented the company with participants who might be great job candidates.

once you’re past your initial team—say, 10–20 people—you should think about building a recruiting team with an experienced leader. Still, a recruiter should never be a substitute for a hiring manager, meaning the individual hiring for the role. There needs to be a tight partnership between the person responsible for the recruiting experience and the recruiting process and the person who will ultimately be accountable for the new hire’s work.

It’s natural, as a company gets larger and larger, to keep specializing and sub-specializing until recruiting becomes a silo, letting individuals on a team focus on their jobs and not on interviewing. But I would caution against this tendency, because eventually people become divorced from learning how to represent the company— the culture!—and from feeling responsibilities for their colleagues’ selection and success. hiring is not a side job but a core responsibility for everyone in the company.

Growth from 100 to 400 people happens quickly if you have real traction. I sometimes call hyperscaling “riding the dragon”: You need your dragon riders—your fearless leaders—before the beast takes o to still greater heights.

If your company is scaling, it helps to remember that your primary goal is to work yourself out of a job. I used to have a test at Google: When my team and I got an email from a leader with a question, I would refrain from writing back immediately and wait for someone else on my team to respond. I viewed it as a failure if I was the only one who could answer the question or take action.

“You have to give away your job every six months.” That’s especially true for leaders, particularly founders and CEOs.

One of my favorite stories from Google’s early days is about how the founders hired Omid Kordestani. Omid was Google’s 11th employee, and he built its business operations from the first employees and the rst dollar in revenue to over 12,000 employees and over $20 billion in revenue.

what’s the dierence between accounting and strategic nance?

Whether you promote from within or hire externally, you’ll want to be clear on three things:
• What is the work to be done?
• What does “great” look like?
• How will we assess people against that benchmark?

Stripe charged for its product from the beginning and monitored the P & L closely to avoid costs far outstripping revenue growth. The founders began taking a series of meetings with potential heads of sales, as well as some COO types.

One excellent concept I inherited when I joined Stripe was the idea of a business operations team: a team staed with folks who have a mix of consulting and entrepreneurial backgrounds, who thrive on new situations and on solving problems as Stripe scales. The members of the initial “biz ops” team, as we call it, were our first salespeople, and many of them were also our first product managers. Really, they were whatever Stripe needed them to be at the time—which is a lot like the COO job. Before you hire a COO, consider building a biz ops team and hiring a head of business operations who can proxy some of the COO’s responsibilities. Doing so can help you scale and figure out what you really need in a potential COO. Your business operations leader may even become your COO—I did join Stripe as chief of business operations, after all!

As the manager of a potential new leader, there’s one more element to consider for your rubric: complementarity with your existing leadership team. Some companies have all leadership candidates complete work style or personality assessments. Although we haven’t gone that far, Stripe did have our rst CFO candidate take the Insights Discovery assessment I described in Chapter 1, which presents ndings in a color wheel made up of blue, red, yellow, and green segments. I had an inkling that this hire would round out our team’s color wheel, adding someone in the blue quadrant, which tends to represent more introverted, analytical, and task-oriented people.

The more senior the role, the longer and more expensive the recruiting process: Expect to be searching for at least six months for senior leaders. After all that work, only about 25–50 percent of outside hires, especially senior ones, are successful. Whenever possible, start with the talent you know, develop them, and promote from within.

as your company gains traction, it will inevitably need to build a recruiting function. Most likely, your recruiters will be focused on the higher-volume hiring rather than on acquiring new leaders. The recruiters themselves are likely to be early in their careers and less experienced with leadership hiring. For senior roles, most earlier-stage companies rely on search firms. I’ve had mixed results with that path.

What he said, wistfully, stuck with me: “Don’t assume the folks who got you here will get you there.” Be constantly vigilant in answering this question: Do I have the talent I need now and for the next two to four years for my team or company to be a success?

Seek to have candidates only meet a maximum of eight people in the process. Studies at Google have demonstrated diminishing returns for additional interviews. If the role is more entry-level and very well understood, this could be reduced to four or ve people.

There are reasonably good training materials on interviewing and interviewing frameworks out in the market, such as the STAR (situation, task, action, result) method.

“It was my idea, but the credit goes to the whole team.” The less positive version of the answer is something like “I just did what everyone else decided.”

Although I find that at least one résumé-based question is a good way to break the ice and gauge the candidate’s experience, you’re better of getting them thinking about situational (“How would you handle this scenario?”) to behavioral (“Tell me about a challenge you overcame”) to strict competency (“Describe the last Excel model you built and how you approached the design”).

Once your company is big enough that leadership can no longer meet every candidate, I recommend establishing a program similar to Amazon’s Bar Raiser program. Bar Raisers are an exclusive group of interviewers who are considered good stewards of Amazon’s standards and culture.

Many companies have adopted something akin to the Bar Raiser program. At Stripe, for example, we had an “Elevate” interviewer who joined interview panels for other teams. Elevate interviewers were high performers and some of our best interviewers—they tended to conduct more interviews and had honed their skills.

We looked at historical feedback in our applicant tracking system, or ATS, which includes “denitely,” “yes,” “no,” and “not sure” responses on candidates. If we did hire the candidate, we looked at whether the interviewer’s assessments of “denitely” or “yes” compared favorably with how those candidates ultimately performed as Stripes.

I am increasingly of the belief that jobs should have set salaries, and that all compensation motivators should exist solely as bonus and equity vehicles.

“Would you say this person is in the top 50 percent of folks you’ve worked with?” If they say yes, ask, “Top 20 percent? Ten percent? Five percent?”

• Where do you see this person in three years?
• When was the last time you didn’t see eye to eye?
• What are some ways you’ve seen them be helpful to others?
• Tell me about a time when you coached them on something.
• How would you rate the candidate on a scale of 1–10? You can’t say 7!
• What’s a skill you’ve seen them grow?
• What advice do you have for me as a manager to help them be successful in this role?

An offer letter is a critical document, and any stock plan associated with an oer is a legal agreement. Sending an offer with the wrong salary or equity amount can be trust-destroying—or worse.

your best bet is to keep up the momentum and answer them promptly. As a sales leader once told me, “Time kills all deals.”

Introducing new leaders to an organization is like introducing a foreign substance into the body—it’s no wonder that companies anxiously try to avoid “organ rejection” of new leaders.

do the work to communicate the change—the promotion!— thoughtfully by telling those aected by the change rst and then making a wider announcement.

it’s best practice to run an internal selection process if you have even the slightest sense that there might be more than one potential candidate. The folks who participated in the search but were not selected may be disappointed, but they’ll also appreciate the chance to be considered.

make sure you message the internal hire thoughtfully. Explain what you were looking for, the process you ran, and why the person you selected emerged as the right choice.

Companies should seek to design the new-hire onboarding process in a way that feels true to the business.
• This should include: The “why” of the company, including the mission and the story behind it
• The “what” of the business, including current priorities and goals
• The “how” of company behaviors, including how people work together and the operating principles

I strongly believe that company leadership should take part in onboarding new hires, perhaps in a monthly session where leaders talk about company values and operating principles and, better still, share stories of those principles in action.

the entire curriculum should be thoughtfully designed to represent the fastest possible ramp to success for new hires.

essentially, translating the company operating system to the team level so that the new hire immediately understands how their work ladders up to the overarching plan.

You may have agreed or disagreed with the decision to hire the new leader. No matter the circumstances, it is crucial that you commit to their success. Everyone loses when a new leader fails. By denition, they have signicant responsibility at your company, so their failure means a failure for your division.

Ask them or discover what their most eective learning style is. Everyone learns dierently. It might be reading documents, watching presentations, whiteboarding sessions, chatting 1:1, or asking lots of questions.

If your new leader is also your new manager, it can be tricy to deliver dicult feedback when you’re just starting to build trust. In this case, it can be appropriate to give the data points to your manager’s manager and let them handle delivering the feedback.

Operating Principle 2: Say the thing you think you cannot say.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended from a colleague, I found this is a Good Business Book. Conversational tone, Best of the Best Practices, readily implementable frameworks and tools. Extremely pragmatic advice for business leaders.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excited to refer back to this throughout my career. Definitely more of a textbook-style book, but listening made it much easier to get through.

[Jaanus Tamm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mandatory for every startup manager if they want to scale.

[Franziska B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great approaches for managing team and running organizations.

[Rory Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Technically a DNF, but giving a review anyway. Claire Hughes Johnson seems to be an archetypal COO. The advice is all extremely straightforward and practical. The ideas here are all solid, but definitely didn't need 480 pages to review. ChatGPT summary is probably sufficient for this one. For context, I decided to read this book due to a career switch into management.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

How refreshing! This is a management trade book that thoughtfully addresses management and organization, concedes that management is difficult, and is not trying to sell a product for training or consulting purposes. The rating may by a bit high compared to the full range of books to read but for this genre, it is outstanding and these sorts of books should be encouraged. I was surprised when the Bartleby column in The Economist featured this book, but I certainly agree after working through it. The author is a veteran of top management at Google and Stripe, where she is currently a director and advisor. As a result, this book is especially relevant for technology-based firms or firms in high growth areas more generally.

The book is not one long narrative but a collection of topics that will be important for a manager today. By the way, she also include topics that are frequently omitted from more conventional book such as career development concerns, recruiting and onboarding, and other training related issues.

The Intellectual problem with any management related book is that as a topic it is both general and abstract on the one hand and highly specific on the other. The are some general ideas about management, organization, teams, work processes, and such that are worth knowing and thinking about. At the same time, any management situation si highly specific and concerns what is to be done here and now, by me or my colleagues, in this situation. That makes the problem one of combining the general and abstract principles at stake with the fine-grained reality of specific situations. The failure to do this is perhaps the major reason by management and business trade books either fail or underperform on a consistent basis. Ms. Johnson’s book excels at combining general points, with vignettes from her own experience or those of her acquaintances, along with a large group of small surveys, forms, checklists, etc. that readers may want to remember. It is quite striking.

By the way, “Scaling People”, talks about organization and team design - how to actually build and think about small and larger structures so that they can serve as tools for pursuing a strategy. This is very unusual in business trade books.

Not everybody will find the book interesting. If one is really interested in managing in growth situations, however, this book is a “must read”.

[Shahriar Shahrabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the best management books I have read. Def the most practical one. It covers a lot of down to earth fundamentals of managing, covering useful stuff like hiring, giving bonuses, dealing with low performers etc.

I was a bit worried at the beginning that the book might be useless for the context of smaller companies but I still took a lot of relevant learnings. All in all you probably shouldn't just copy the operating systems that work for her, more the mental model that leads to her constructing these operating systems.

[Lewis Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some great insights, among them:

Great leadership requires starting with self awareness.
Say what you don’t think can be said.
Teams get the job done, not individuals.
High achievers can be pushers that have ambition and a vision but can turn off team mates, and pullers who take on any task and will get them done on time but can burn out silently or end up taking all the good projects in the org.

[michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its a handbook for any manager/leader. While mostly concerning management day to day , it was a good reminder to operate from first principles and lay an operating framework as a foundation for strategy and tactics. Although none of it was novel concepts, it did underscore many of the ways I have become sloppy-from running 1-1s to large meetings. Claire is a powerhouse in my industry and admire her style and trajectory.

[Filippo Diotalevi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Summarizes most of the things that are wrong with management books. An extremely verbose collection of obvious remarks. It’s not that the content isn’t there, but none of it is new; page after page, incredible long descriptions of very obvious management ideas. Waste of time.

[George Burgess · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don’t make the mistake of attempting to read this book cover to cover. It would be most effective as a reference tool (or door stop).

Should you decide to follow the author’s guidance, you’ll spend your days (and weekends) writing agendas, memos, reports, and doing little else.

[Jo Oehrlein]

Recommended by Tyler Cowen in https://marginalrevolution.com/margin...?

[Jeremy Parkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of good language, tactics, frameworks and practical considerations on managing/developing people and growing teams. 👍

[Ze Shen Chin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember how I got this book recommendation, but whatever.

It's sort of a management handbook, for managers (obviously), and it talks about some principles of management and gives some practical tools for doing them. As the author, Claire Hughes Johnson, got a large part of her managerial experience from Google, I was pleasantly surprised that it's not all about typical management bullshit that you see from large corporations. Maybe being a manager at Stripe was the bigger part of this lack of bullshit in the book, I don't know.

So this book is split up into five sections, of which the first section talks about essential operating principles, followed by four core frameworks:

1. Foundations and planning for goals and resources
2. A comprehensive hiring approach
3. Intentional team development
4. Feedback and performance mechanisms

Some of the issues that are pointed out in the book seem to be straightforward chronic issues that big companies suffer from, and the book advocates against these. For example, it talks about performance being a multiplication of results and behavior (i.e. performance = results x behaviors), where hitting targets while fomenting unrest and backstabbing should get someone a 0 and not a 95 on hitting performance targets. And, companies should have clear communication policies so that there isn't a culture divided between those who have company context and those who don't. And so on and so forth.

Anyway, there are other things that I thought were a little different from the usual corporate culture that I'm more familiar with. One of it is about Stripe's culture for longform writing, where they see it as an equalizer - it provides context for people not in the room and even people who have yet to join the organization; and they also believe longform writing leads to higher quality thoughts. One of these longform writing in practice is a "working with me" document that one would write, which will serve as a guide on things like operating approach, management style, and communication preferences. Another one is to have a joint 1:1 document to track agendas, actions, goals, and updates between the two people.

Another thing that I thought was interesting is to have an informal org chart, separate from a formal org chart, which includes key decision-makers, domain experts, incentive structures, high performers, underperformers, etc. There's a few more points that were quite interesting, mostly around organizing meetings and managing staff, but I'm too lazy to list them out.

All in all, it's a fairly long but pretty decent read. You can probably treat it as a handbook, just skim through it for the first time, and come back to the book to read the parts you need to whenever you need to.

[Eric Nehrlich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book delivers on its promise: it's a highly tactical guide to the operations and processes and mindsets necessary to effectively grow a company and its people, drawing on her experience as a Google VP and as Stripe's COO.

It's a beast of a book (almost 600 pages), but she notes in the introduction that it's meant as a reference book rather than to be read straight through. For instance, I just finished skimming the hiring chapter, where she goes through every nuance of the hiring process, including nearly 60 pages of exercises and templates that you can use at your company, rather than starting from scratch. The same applies to performance management, unblocking and escalation, and even how to go about firing somebody.

As somebody who focuses on the inspirational and strategic parts of leadership, I appreciate that this book lays out the processes and operations that enable a company to run effectively while it grows. Check it out!

Disclaimer: I was fortunate to work with Claire for several months at Google back in 2012, when she was brought in to try to turnaround a struggling business unit (Google Offers, a Groupon competitor). Even though that business ultimately (and deservedly) failed, I still tell people about her clarity and focus as a leader; she first led a process to identify three "metrics that matter", and then held monthly all hands where she shared graphs of those metrics, and told everybody "If you are not working on improving one of these numbers, please come see me personally". I loved working with her for those few months, and have been excited to see her continued success since then.

[Sudhagar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book supposed to be a tactical level / "how-to-do-it" book rather than the usual, concept/theory based ones. That's the best aspect of this book as such books are a rarity.

However, the content itself, while very comprehensive and based from the author's practical experience, rather falls short.

Firstly, the author's own experience. Having just worked for Google and then Stripe doesn't give you the right to dish out advice to others. Both these companies are from very specific industries and at the very specific stage of their lifecycle. The author, at the very least, should have mentioned that these advices might not work for non-IT/non-startup companies. The author's experience is very limited as a leader and neither she has professional / academic qualifications to dish out advices. She did interview a few leaders including for example someone from the Economist magazine and from different industries. But many of these people have themselves limited leadership experience and much of their advices only expose their own inexperience.

As some with international business and leadership experience, I find this book to be rather useless. It is like reading a football training manual for the Premier League written by a minor league manager (to quote a football/soccer example).

[Lauren Burroughs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scaling People by CHJ is an insightful guide tailored for managers of managers, offering strategic advice on steering a company to success by prioritizing its most valuable asset: its people.

With experience at Google and Stripe, CHJ provides practical wisdom and examples for hiring, managing, and retaining talent in the face of rapid growth. This book delves into crucial aspects of running a company, covering founding principles, operational procedures, hiring strategies, team building, and performance metrics.

It stands out as one of the most practical business books, offering real-world advice applicable to high-level positions, especially in the tech industry. While the density may not appeal to everyone, the content proves relevant for those in top management roles within substantial or fast-growing companies.

CHJ's emphasis on process resonates throughout the book, underscoring the importance of structure for success. The inclusion of exercises and worksheets adds a hands-on dimension, providing tools for defining organizational foundations and effective hiring processes.

If you are at director-level or above, this book is a gold mine of good information. If you are not at that level, this book will probably put you to sleep. It is a dense compendium of information.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise handbook from the ex-COO of Stripe on seeking, managing, and cultivating good teams in high-growth environments. The book is part exercise part lessons-learned from building Stripe and their unique hiring processes, part tactical exercises e.g., interview qns. I enjoyed her distinction between being a good manager (culling roadblocks, trimming processes) vs being a good leader (vision, empowerment, goalsetting). And that you need both in orgs, sometimes not mutually exclusive.

As I start to shift into managing people there were a few takeaways that stuck w me:
1. High degree of self awareness is a nuanced differentiator as a leader (knowing your gaps, taking accountability)
2. Understanding unwritten parts of culture is a skill (observation and adaptation)
3. A company-wide operating system is key for alignment and speed (e.g., in knowledge systems, differentiating between evergreen, wip, and one-time documents) and she goes into some tactical details of what this could look like.

"Self-awareness has three components: understanding your underlying value system, identifying your innate preferences—your work style and decision-making tendencies—and being clear about your own skills and capability gaps"

[Nate Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Scaling People" is a book that presents a unique challenge for me to evaluate due to its targeted audience. The insights and strategies outlined within are specifically designed for organizations that have grown beyond the startup phase, catering to companies with 30 or more employees. Given this context, my ability to fully appreciate and apply the book's content is currently limited, as our company has yet to reach this particular size. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by the prospect of revisiting "Scaling People" once our company crosses this threshold, to potentially leverage its guidance during our growth phase.

I also harbor some skepticism regarding the author's background and the extent to which her experiences may have influenced the perspectives shared in the book. I'd describe the author as "one of the lucky ones," having been part of two startups that, in my opinion, were poised for success irrespective of the effectiveness of their operational and people management practices. My personal experience working at Google has provided me with firsthand insight into how a company's foundational business model—such as Google's advertising platform—can drive its success despite internal challenges, including suboptimal management decisions and internal politics.