Guest: Claire Hughes Johnson, author of Scaling People and Corporate Officer at Stripe
Former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson’s new book, Scaling People, is not your typical business book: Informed by her experience scaling one of the most valuable private companies in the world, it’s a tactical reference manual, “almost like a textbook,” aimed at helping managers wrestling with a variety of problems. And one of the big uniting themes is that, to solve anything, they’re going to have to look inwards. “Leadership does not start with the other people in the room,” she says. “It starts with you ... if you don’t know yourself, you are not gonna be very successful, because you have to understand your work style preferences, your habits, your blind spots.”
In this episode, Claire and Joubin discuss in-demand books, Google pre-IPO, headcount as a proxy for success, paranoid mentality, self-driving cars, honoring commitments, the illusion of time, customer insights, “act like a founder,” asking for feedback, prioritizing and saying no, “steady Eddies,” imposter syndrome, fruit on the counter, layering titles, and making time for family.
In this episode, we cover:
- Who should read Claire’s new book, Scaling People, and how she expects them to read it (00:57)
- The challenges of building Stripe in its early days: “It was just consumed by it” (04:51)
- Why she left Google to become Stripe’s COO, and what she did for them as the business was starting to take off (12:34)
- How Stripe hired the best people — including Claire — and how they could have done it even better (17:25)
- Leadership starts with self-awareness (26:05)
- Honest criticism that rocks your world, and taking feedback well (29:43)
- The “unauthorized guide” to working with Claire (36:18)
- Getting hired at Google by Sheryl Sandberg, and why Claire didn’t follow her to Facebook (40:26)
- “Pushers and pullers,” a framework for working with top talent (46:43)
- What entrepreneurs can learn from Condoleezza Rice about impact, passion, and ability (58:33)
- Putting your (imperfect) expertise out into the world (01:02:03)
- Implementing Stripe’s first performance feedback process, and why it still doesn’t “do” titles (01:07:06)
- Having a life outside of work, and the “clarifying moment” of a surprise birthday party (01:15:26)
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