Scaling People is a practical book about what really breaks as organisations grow, and how to fix it without slowing the business down. Written by Claire Hughes Johnson, former Chief Operating Officer of Stripe, the book draws on first-hand experience of scaling a high-growth technology company from a small team into a global operation.
Rather than offering abstract leadership theory, the book focuses on the operating decisions that determine whether a business scales with clarity or collapses under its own complexity. For leaders, managers, and anyone involved in governance, risk, or execution, it is highly relevant because it shows how accountability, decision-making, and trust must evolve if a business is to grow without losing control.
Highlights
Themes
- Decision rights and clarity of ownership
- Operating cadence and rituals
- Controls without bureaucracy
- Culture as a control system
- Levels and ladders
- Mutual ownership & not sitting in hierarchy
Clips
Pick up the phone and ask for advice 📺
Timestamp: 10'14"
Claire talks about when she was at Stripe, she realised she hadn’t picked up the phone enough in her earlier career to ask for advice, and see how others had done it before.
Who have you talked to? What have you read?
Find the person who’d done that before.
Seek out knowledge from others.
We’re all just learning all the time.
Getting operational structures right 📺
Timestamp: 1160"
Get product market fit right first (Zero to One)
But early after this, start to work on operational structures (what this book is about) .. “building the company” part.
Claire’s Personal operating principles 📺
- Build self awareness to build mutual awareness
- Say the thing you think you cannot say
- Distinguish between management and leadership
- Come back to your operating system 📺
Being an explorer, not a lecturer 📺
Similar to idea of giving coaching, rather than direction, as popularised in the GROW model