Lessons from scaling Stripe | Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe)

**Claire Hughes Johnson** (0:00)
When I say to people at Stripe on our onboarding, I used to run a session. I was like, if you're not sure who the decision maker is, one, it's probably you, and I'd rather you act that way than not, because you're going to slow the whole company down, follow a process and get it done, and don't forget to actually make a decision. And if you don't know who the decision maker is and you're worried it's not you, just ask. Like, don't get stuck. Too many people get stuck, and it makes your work terrible.
Right? I mean, what do we all care about? Progress, impact, momentum.
I mean, if anything, I would say about, like, advice to people generally is be a force for positive momentum, and you will it will be actually a real career maker.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:50)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Claire Hughes Johnson. Claire was most recently Chief Operating Officer at Stripe for the past seven years, where she helped scale them from a small startup to the legendary company that it is today. Before that, she spent about 10 years at Google, where she was VP of Self-Driving Cars, VP of Global Online Sales, Director of Sales and Ops for Gmail, YouTube, Google Apps and AdWords. Before that, she was in Politics, she's also on the board of PupSpot and The Atlantic, and this week she's releasing an incredible book called Scaling People, which in my opinion should be and likely will be on every founder's bookshelf. In our conversation, we dig into many of the meaty topics that her book covers, including building your operational cadence, defining your company and personal operating principles, your company's operating system, also tons of tactical advice around saying things that you cannot say, building self-awareness, distinguishing management from leadership, so much more. I say this a couple of times in our conversation. If you enjoy my newsletter and podcast and the fact that it's very tactical and full of templates and frameworks, you will love Claire's book and you will love learning from Claire. I had such a good time chatting with Claire and I know you'll learn a lot from this conversation. With that, I bring you Claire Hughes Johnson after a short word from our wonderful sponsors.
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