Notes on Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson

I recently finished reading Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson and loved it. I also subsequently watched her talk on running effective meetings.

I really liked the book and learned a lot from it. I enjoyed hearing a kindred perspective from a fellow COO and startup person. It was also really cool getting a sneak peek into some of Stripe's internal processes and documentation and how they have scaled and grown successfully.

This book reminded me of other similar comprehensive tomes on company management like The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary and Principles by Ray Dalio (both of which I loved as well). Claire's book has a strong emphasis on the people side (recruiting, managing, feedback, etc.), and the 120 page supplement has so many amazing resources in it as well.

My main notes and takeaways are below. I highly recommend this book to any founder/COO/leader or people manager who wants to improve and learn.

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Intro
Need processes and structures
State the obvious. Need to make implicit structures and beliefs explicit
To perform better, need to set pace a bit ahead of where you are to keep pushing yourself faster
Core frameworks
Planning for goals and resources
Hiring
Team development
Feedback and performance
Standard approach for product launches

1 essential operating principles
Build self awareness to build mutual awareness
Understand your underlying value system
Go meta
Have conversation about the conversation
What I care about is x because I want my value y
Identify your unique preferences for work style and decision making tendencies
Introvert or extrovert
Do you talk to think or think to talk
Do you like to define processes
Task or people oriented
4 quadrants of introverted/task oriented
Analyzers
directors
Promoter
Collaborator 
Frameworks 
Insights discovery
Disc
Mbti
Big 5
Be clear about own skills and capability gaps
What can you do well
What can you improve in
Capabilities higher level
Portfolio of experiences on team
Say the thing you think you cannot say
Fine tune your filters
Be honest
Share your feelings
Be measured
Separate the person from the idea or task
Distinguish between management and leadership
Leaders set vision
Managers run teams to execute on goals in operational cadence
Some should be leaders in non manager roles
Technical problems have solution and managers can solve
Adaptive problems never done and require leaders
Leadership is disappointing people at a rate they can absorb 
Leadership is about change. Management is about stability. 
New ideas require change
Come back to your operating system
Have people think inside the box you create
Build trust through honesty

2 foundations and planning for goals and resources
Founding documents
Why you exist
How you operate
Mission
Why you exist 
Specific to your company 
Aspirational and never done
Company mission flows down to division mission which flows to team mission 
Long term goals
Objectives
Values
Principles
Artifacts
Assumptions
Share culture doc at onsite stage to applicants
Team charter doc
One page long
Responsibility of team
Key metrics
Dashboard link
Metrics
Accountability Systems
Operating system
Shared system
Communicates results and how to achieve
OKRs
Strategic and financial plan
Strategy should hurt to you or your customers because it means you focus
Long term planning
Current source of growth, nascent source of growth, undetermined source of growth
Financial model for next 3 years
Shorter term plan for next 6-12 mo including financial 
Resource allocation 
People and money
Ratio of functions like sales to support or engineers to sales
Benchmarks from other companies
Slowdowns as teams grow
First close group of engineers in one code base. Then experienced engineering managers and teams with separate areas of code and shared services loosely coupled but tightly aligned on goals. 
Need to keep improving operational efficiency
70% to core business, 20% to emerging, 10% to R&D
Invest in existential risks, security, paying tech debt
Invest in developer productivity 
Clear and consistent interfaces 
5-8% of engineers focusing on developer productivity
Annual and quarterly goals
Getting ready for public demo
Binary and ongoing goals
Say what percent of goals you expect to hit up front
Specify which goals committed and which aspirational
One or two individual goals for personal development 
How is important like what
Pyrrhic victory
Sustainable growth
Good goals
Goals define success
Start from end in mind
Focus on top priorities
Allow for autonomy
Goals should be easy for everyone to memorize
Objectively assess
Credible but stretch
User oriented not function
States not activities
Don’t start goal with verb. Focus on outcome
Mid and end quarter scoring
Use goals for daily planning 
Metrics that matter
Company targets
Financial outputs
Important inputs
Zero targets like outages
Employee engagement surveys for hr
Outputs per time for legal 
Great metrics 
Long term metrics
Short term metrics
Operating and input metrics
Dashboard for metrics
Weekly or biweekly metrics meeting
Owners of metrics on exec team
Accountability mechanisms
Snippets
Review meetings
Dashboards
QBRs
Report at all hands
Weekly team meeting
Weekly team metrics review
Monitoring and alerts for certain metrics
Internal communications 
Commit important info company docs
Meeting notes
After 150 people need strategy for internal comms
Long form writing
Writing policy
Pre reads and memos stored in public site wiki
Need good content management
Distinguish between evergreen and one time documents
Document quirks
Style guide
Writing classes
Assessing internal comms
Complete
Accessible
Reliable
Accurate
Transparent
Communicate important info at least three times in different ways
Communicate more in times of crisis or change
Make company wide meetings count
Use sparingly as grow
Celebrate things
Internal site to discover info
Internal site
Help people learn about each other
Search across docs
Operating cadence
Annual planning
Quarterly business reviews
Monthly all hands
Biweekly 1:1s
Weekly snippets
Weekly metrics reviews
Weekly team meetings
Daily standups
Owner for each part of cadence
Process
Watch out for defensive or cover your ass processes
Make ownership and accountability clear
Lightweight checks
Beware of stale processes
Allow for experimentation
Process doesn’t mean meetings
Project tracker
Email

3 comprehensive hiring approach
Recruiting
Educate candidates about company existence
Mine networks of employees
Write blog posts
Run coding challenges to find applicants
Recruiter and recruiting logistics coordinator
Hiring
Have everyone help
Recruiting commitments 
Keep calendar accurate
Know role and job description 
Interview training
Prepare 
Post notes
Know candidate and review profile
Follow up with candidates
Always be recruiting
Recruiter commitments
Respect calendars
Value referrals
Clear JDs
Transparent with candidates
Be clear about intentions
Shepherd through onsites
Moderate hiring discussions
Respect private info
Build insights about what success looks like in hires
Venn diagram: good at work, enjoys work, has good impact on company
List people who meet those at company and figure out what they have to be replicated
Autonomy, mastery, purpose
Clear expectations about role
We haven’t won yet. Not cushy job
Move with urgency and focus
Own your own career outcomes
Think rigorously
Referrals
Good gauge of employee happiness
Screening processes
Resume review
Coding assessment
Written project
Phone screen
Manager Screen 
Onsite interviews
New leader recruiting
Work yourself out of a job
See if others can answer emails besides you
Give away your job every 6 months when hyperscaling 
Determine what kind of leader you need
What is the work to be done
What does great look like
How do we assess someone
Must haves and nice to haves
Talk to companies past your stage
Questions to ask candidate or referrer
How is the role defined at your company
What are you held accountable for
Challenges in first year and how they overcame
Advice for finding strong candidates 
Anyone you should talk to
How do they round out the leadership team
Beware of experience trap and complacency
Hiring a coo
Business ops team 
Flexible roles
Promoting from within or hiring outside
Outside is risky
Takes 6 months and 25% successful
One third should come from within
Trade offs either way
One third from outside
One third toss up
Hiring 
Prep candidates for interviews
Send guide about interview experience
Maximum of 8 interviewers
Recruiting operations person
Interviewing education
Star method
Use rubric
Test self awareness
Ask how colleagues would describe them
Ask what they’ve done to improve
Situational, behavioral, skill questions
Written exercise
Onboarding 
Founder role in hiring
Founders should interview every hire before 100
No hire decision for people who seem just fine
Leadership
Rigorous hiring process even for leaders
Hiring is marketing and sales
Employee roles
Wide swath of potential interviewers
Amazon bar raiser program
Trusted interviewers with one per panel who can veto any candidate and run committee
Elevate interviewers
Analyze how interviewer assessments match ultimate performance on job
Will candidate act like an owner, are they rigorous, are they a learner
Leadership/founder reviews and approves every offer packet 
24 hour turnaround time for approvals by leaders
Dedicated slack channels
Job level selection
Level 1 entry level post grad
Level 2: 2-3 years of experience
Level 3: 3-4 years of experience, able to work independently 
Level 4: 8-10 years of experience, could be manager
Level 5: 15 years of experience, manager
Level 6: senior manager or director 
Ropes and knots
Level 1 entry, gets full guidance 
Level 2 developing, gets some guidance 
Level 3 career, complex knots, general or no instruction 
Level 4 advanced, knows rope making, coordinate other personnel
Level 5: expert, know more than anyone else, supervise others
Level 6: principal, knows more than others
Skills vs capabilities 
Based on level have salary band and target offer point
Candidate selection
Candidate review for job level and hire or no hire
Consistency and transparency
Bias control
Roles on candidate review team
Checking references
Must be strong not lukewarm 
Ask what percent of people they’ve ever worked with they were going from from top 50% to 1% (top 20% is not a strong reference)
Where do you see this person in 3 years
When was the last time you didn’t see eye to eye
What are ways you’ve seen them be helpful to others
Tell me about a time you coached them on something
How would you rate them on 1-10 scale and can’t say 7
What’s a skill you’ve seen them grow
What advice do you have for me as their manager to help them be successful in this role
Making the offer
Leadership sell chats to get them excited
Hiring process for leadership
Custom process
Transparency
Tell internally about the search 
Explain why layering someone
Decision making
Only by top executive
Change management process
Screen candidates by couple people before getting deep
Don’t exclude those who will be negative
Consultative meeting to get feedback not committee decision
Hiring internally
Lightweight and custom
Interview a few external to calibrate for internal hire
Interviewing 
Test level of curiosity and desire to learn
Was an example project successful, what specifically did they do
Hiring disagreements 
Have board and external folks also interview them
References and offers for leadership
Backchannel references
Ask for peers
Have someone who is not their manager or CEO negotiate the comp
Onboarding new hires
Why of company
What of business
How of behaviors
Monthly session with leadership
Stories not bullet points
Weeklong core curriculum for everyone
All prep work done asynchronously before onboarding starts
Internal mobility 
Survey person and new and old manager to see who initiated and why
Satisfaction rates with managers
Guide to working with me
Onboarding
Operating approach
Management style
Communication preferences and response times
New leader onboarding
Coach
Set of reading and actions
360 feedback
Peer mentor
Leadership personality assessment
Information quickly
Help them prioritize
First the facts and data points
Give good feedback
Shadow for n weeks then reverse shadow for n weeks
Daily 1:1s
Give feedback early and often
Close hiring loop whenever there are bad hires
Look at what missed
Track who are reliable interviewers 
Sentiment analysis
Net promoter score from candidates 

4 intentional team development
Structuring teams
Teams, working groups, projects based on scope and timeline
Code yellow to quickly solve existential risk and remove barriers
Number of direct reports 
Layering your team
Dotted line managers 
Headcount accounting 
Skill/will matrix
Dysfunctions of a team
Team reorgs
Comms plan
Delegating
Can under delegate and over delegate
Type 1 or 2 decisions
High or low impact 
Trap door outcome or adjustable outcome 
See one, do one, teach one
DRIs
Offsites 
Shared planning document 
Prework
Daily checkins
Icebreakers
Share personal photo
Share favorite book or concert
Purpose, agenda, time limit, actions for each session
Forming, storming, norming, performing
Communications and decision making
Team meetings
Meeting roles can be rotated
DRI
Facilitator
Note taker
Lay team groundwork
Meeting norms
Logistics on time and place
Rotate meeting times if international 
Pre reads
Action items
Electronics use in person or not
No topics undiscussable
Meeting purpose and structure
Establish purpose
Purpose, agenda, limit
Disagree and commit
Have parking lot and process to review
Action items with owners and timelines
Audit meetings every 6 months. Poll participants
Operator/manager mode meetings vs creative maker mode meetings
Running meeting
Share ahead of time purpose, agenda, limit, decisions to be made
Make engaging
Ask checkin and checkout from each person to get their quick thoughts from all
Work checkins
Personal checkins
What’s 1 thing you’ll take away from this meeting
One word checkout for how feeling
Decision frameworks
Autocratic
Democratic
Consensus
Consultative
Decision log of all past decisions
Monitor and remind about meeting norms and model for others
Praise publicly and criticize privately but criticizing ideas different from behavior 
Quick feedback
Leadership team meeting
Leadership offsites
Remote work
Coordination
More documentation
Cohesion
Give equal footing 
Slack channel for all to see
Participation 
Recording meetings
Forcing everyone to join video calls from separate location 
Make room for in person time
Quarterly meetings
International differences in work culture
Require conversations be in slack or email
Underperforming teams
Investigate root cause with probing questions
Discuss how to get back on track
Reset goals and document why
Working with other teams
Identify dependencies during planning

5 feedback and performance
No one should be surprised by their feedback
Don’t wait too long to offer coaching
Hypothesis based coaching
Intuition judgment then test
Gather data
Before promoting someone have them do the duties in that new role to see how they do
Giving hard feedback
Be an explorer not a lecturer
Ask open ended questions
Share an empathetic observation 
I noticed your last two projects missed their deadlines by two weeks. Is there something I should help with or something I should know?
Stating something as observation or theory
Create culture of informal feedback
Ask for feedback on 3 occasions and 3 different forums
Follow up on the feedback
Performance feedback
Peer reviews
Self assessment
Manager Review
Pre reading of review ahead of time
Focus on forward looking comments
Calibration to compare results across managers
Roll up process
Data analysis
Compensation 
Pay for performance
Benchmarks
Comp convos
Am I treated fairly
Am I recognized for my performance
Explain system and timeline
High performers
Pushers and pullers
Manage for potential not experience
Pre exit interview
Don’t wait to discuss performance issue
PIP
Managing out
Feedback documentation

Conclusion: managing you and your career
Press.stripe.com/scaling-people for resources and templates
Track your energy
Ask for help
Make lightweight changes first

References
Working backwards