Book SummaryScaling People, by Claire Hughes Johnson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Scaling People

Fast-growing companies often focus on scaling key aspects of their business, such as their sales, marketing budgets, and manufacturing process. But, according to management veteran Claire Hughes Johnson, they often forget to focus on their greatest resource: their people. In Scaling People, Hughes Johnson outlines the four key processes you should implement to successfully manage employees in a high-growth environment.

As a former executive at Google and chief operating officer at Stripe, Hughes Johnson has years of experience managing employees that she distills into accessible tips throughout Scaling People. As a faculty member at Harvard Business School, she also has a great deal of experience teaching younger, more inexperienced managers how...

Scaling People Summary Process #1: Setting the Foundation for Long-Term Success

Hughes Johnson’s first process for managers involves setting the foundation for long-term growth, both in your company and in your employees. In this section, we’ll examine two of the key steps for building this foundation: codifying your company’s guiding principles and developing your company’s operating system (the set of norms that outline how your company functions).

Codify Your Key Principles

To ensure that your company has a clear identity to guide its business model from the beginning, Hughes Johnson recommends that you codify your company’s key principles in a set of guiding papers. She says that these guiding papers should include four components: your company’s mission, long-term targets, key values, and team charters.

Component #1: Company Mission

First, Hughes Johnson recommends drafting a mission statement—that is, a concise statement outlining why your company exists. She clarifies that such statements should be unique to your company and ambitious—unique because they lose value if other companies can repeat your mission verbatim, and ambitious because they need to propel your company’s growth over the long term. For example, a coffee...

Scaling People Summary Process #2: Hiring the Right People

Having seen how to lay a promising foundation to support your company’s long-term growth, the next process is to hire individuals who can propel you toward this growth. In this section, we’ll examine Hughes Johnson’s recommendations about developing a thriving recruiting pipeline to draw top talent to your company and then hiring the best candidates from that pipeline to fill your teams.

Build Your Recruiting Pipeline

The first step to hiring the right person, Hughes Johnson explains, is to build a recruiting pipeline that attracts talent to your organization. She offers an array of strategies for developing this pipeline, of which we’ll discuss three: Write transparent job descriptions, evaluate previous applicants, and use referrals.

Strategy #1: Write Transparent Job Descriptions

According to Hughes Johnson, it’s tempting to write job descriptions that attempt to win over applicants by painting a warm picture of your company. But she argues that such descriptions are often counterproductive, as they obscure the aspects of the job that allow you to attract the right applicants. She contends that **job descriptions should offer a transparent picture of the...

Scaling People Summary Process #3: Building and Sustaining Thriving Teams

Hughes Johnson recognizes that the work isn’t finished after you’ve hired the best candidates to round out your team. On the contrary, you must take active steps to integrate these new employees successfully into the team. In this section, we’ll examine three of the steps that Hughes Johnson recommends for building—and sustaining—effective teams: evaluating your team members, developing a healthy environment, and deciding when to delegate tasks.

Step #1: Evaluate Your Team Members

Hughes Johnson relates that the first step toward creating a thriving team involves assessing your team members to see whether they’re capable of meeting their goals. To do so, she advises that you utilize Max Landsberg’s skill-will matrix to assess team members along two dimensions: their competency for completing their tasks (skill) and their drive to do so (will).

(Shortform note: Landsberg first presented his skill-will matrix in The Tao of Coaching, a guidebook for managers and leaders looking to become more effective teachers. In his book, the skill-will matrix is one of a handful of simple techniques that, according to...

Scaling People Summary Process #4: Mentor Your Employees

Hughes Johnson recognizes that management’s work doesn’t end upon the formation of a thriving team. On the contrary, she holds that managers should continue to develop the skills of their employees through active instruction. In this section, we’ll discuss her informal approach to helping employees through inquisitive coaching and her formal approach of using official performance reviews.

Approach #1: Inquisitive Coaching

Hughes Johnson relates that one approach that has proven effective for her is hypothesis-based coaching—which we’ll call inquisitive coaching—in which you informally share your observations of your employees to guide them to better performance. Inquisitive coaching has three steps: First, observe your employees carefully; second, identify any persistent shortcomings; and third, share these findings tactfully with your employees.

Step #1: Observe Your Employees

Before you attempt to provide any feedback, Hughes Johnson advises you to carefully observe your employees’ performance in various situations. She explains that, because different strengths and weaknesses will emerge in different circumstances, waiting until you’ve seen your...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on the Mentorship Process at Your Company

Hughes Johnson writes that mentoring your employees requires both inquisitive coaching—which involves observing your employees, observing their shortcomings, and sharing your thoughts—as well as a formal review process. In this exercise, reflect on the mentorship process at your company, whether as a mentor or a mentee.

What does the mentorship process look like at your company? For example, how do managers conduct formal reviews, and how do they implement continuous feedback throughout the year?