ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT It’s easy to become too reactive, and when that happens, you’ll inevitably start to make human resources mistakes, execution mistakes, prioritization mistakes. So whether you’re in that moment right before growth — or you’re on your way there — press pause. Read through Johnson’s list of questions, and make sure you’re answering them as you go. 1. Have we documented our operating principles? When you hit growth, a lot of unprecedented things start to happen, and you’ll feel like you have no guidelines to make good decisions. On top of that, many new people who were not there when the company started will need to make decisions too. They need a framework to help them do that. This is why you need to document core tenets describing the way you work. Once they’re written down, you need to repeat them constantly until everyone has internalized them. Stripe calls them “Operating Principles.” (Many companies have “values,” but Stripe wanted to distinguish philosophical beliefs from the concrete principles that should be applied to the day-to-day work of running the business.) Three of Stripe’s operating principles, as Johnson describes them, are: Users ifrst: “We always start with what our users need or would like, and then consider things like like infrastructure, internal constraints, partnerships, product roadmap, and so on.” Think rigorously: “We care about getting things right and it otfen takes reasoning from ifrst principles to get there. We work hard to detect the errors in received wisdom. Rigor doesn’t mean not-invented-here syndrome; we’re interested in the world around us and think that other companies, industries, and academic ifelds have a lot to teach us. But in many cases progress comes from taking paths less traveled.” Trust and amplify: “We want to work in a company of deeply good people who treat their colleagues exceptionally well. People should be committed to amplifying one another: to going out of their way to help each other in both the short- and long-term.” 66