“Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building” is an indispensable resource for anyone needing guidance on managing people and scaling organisations. Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe, offers valuable insights and tactics for scaling organisations and developing people. Her approach to leadership and management is grounded in four core operating principles:

1. Build self-awareness to build mutual awareness – Understanding your values and work style preferences helps you understand how your approach might fit or clash with your colleagues.
2. Say the thing you think you cannot say – To be open and constructive, separate the person from the idea or task. Focus on the “it”, the task or issue being discussed.
3. Distinguish between management and leadership – “Leadership is ultimately about driving change, while management is about creating stability” is a great quote from Marty Linsky. Management is about human-centric execution (creating stability) whereas leadership is about setting a vision and direction (introducing change).
4. Come back to the operating system – Hughes Johnson advocates for having a repeatable operating system for every team you manage. Even if your organisational context changes, you still have the same operating system components to rely on (e.g. clear team missions, stated goals and meaningful metrics).

“Scaling People” covers a range of people-related topics, but two aspects stood out as particularly helpful – goal setting and managing low performers:

Goal setting – There are two kinds of goals: binary tasks (for example, “build a new checkout flow”) and ongoing metrics (“increase retained revenue by 10 percent”). Company goals should ladder down to departments, then teams, and finally individuals. Each goal should have FOCUS(S):

Focus on the most important things – Your goals should help avoid distractions.

Objectively assessable – Everyone on the team should have the same understanding of what success looks like and what it doesn’t.

Challenging but possible – Your goals need to be credible and feasible.

User-oriented – Focus on the customer problem you’re solving and set your goals as close to the customer as possible.

States, not activities – Focus on specific outcomes you want to achieve, not on the specific activities that might get you there.

Sensitivity and specificity – Your goals should allow for the outcomes that you’d consider successful, and should rule out unsuccessful outcomes.

Managing low performers – Hughes Johnson offers practical guidance on performance management, breaking the process into clear phases:

Phase 0: Your one-off feedback becomes a pattern; form a hypothesis on the outcome (less than three weeks).

Phase 1: Get aligned about the performance challenge (one to three conversations, two weeks).

• Share your observations about the pattern
• Communicate that the employee isn’t meeting expectations for their role
• Document your discussion

Phase 2: Agree on next steps (one to two conversations, one week).

Phase 3: Create an action plan (one to three months).

• Potential outcome 1: Follow a performance improvement plan; the employee’s performance improves
• Potential outcome 2: Move the employee to another team
• Potential outcome 3: Employee leaves the company

The book includes helpful examples of conversations to have with underperforming employees and performance improvement documentation templates.

Main learning point: “Scaling People” is a practical handbook that bridges the gap between management theory and day-to-day leadership challenges. Hughes Johnson’s emphasis on repeatable operating systems and structured approaches makes this essential reading for anyone managing people or scaling teams.

Related links for further learning:

1. Claire Hughes Johnson on Building Great Teams, Managers, and Self-Awareness with Prof. Scott Galloway
2. Stop Overcomplicating It: The Simple Guidebook to Upping Your Management Game with Russ Laraway
3. 5 steps to fix any problem at work by Anne Morriss