ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT 4. Do we have a 5-year plan? Johnson is a big believer in companies writing down a long-term plan. But the key point is: it shouldn’t be long. It shouldn’t be some monumental, time-consuming ordeal. It should be as simple as three to ifve paragraphs brielfy describing the biggest, macro goals the company wants to make sure it’s pursuing over the next ifve years or so. For Stripe, this document includes: “Arming online companies of all sizes with the infrastructure they need to build their businesses and compete in the global economy.” That’s something that we can continually ask ourselves, ‘Is what we’re doing right now in alignment with that goal?’ Johnson worked on the ifrst dratf of this document with Co-founder Patrick Collison. The entire leadership team workshopped it for a few weeks, and then it was published to the whole company. “Your startup deserves constitutional documents to guide your actions as you grow,” says Johnson. “Once you’ve deifned how you want to work, the best structure for your company, the type of employees you want to work with — this document outlines what you’re harnessing all of these resources to accomplish.” As part of developing the plan, the executive team got together away from the oiffce and designed a day that was entirely focused on the task at hand. “I ifnd that a lot of people talk about achieving ‘lfow state’ as an individual — that feeling of being so at one with your work that you’re able to be more creative and develop new ideas,” she says. “Very few people talk about how to get into lfow state as a group. But they should. When we do planning, that’s what we try to get to — a shared sense of purpose, with all our brains trained on one outcome.” She recommends this approach to companies looking to develop a longer-term approach. Also important: the plan you publish should be stored somewhere central where it can be easily referenced. And it should be core to new employee onboarding, alongside your operating principles. It may be tweaked over the years as you learn about your business or customers, but ideally, the goals you enshrine in it should be so intrinsic to why you founded the company that they don’t change much. “When making product decisions, you want people to reference the plan — ‘Is this new idea or feature serving our overarching objectives?’ Or ‘should we launch this thing even if it doesn’t serve any of our 5-year objectives?’ Your constitutional document empowers people to ask and answer these questions so your company doesn’t get distracted from the things you absolutely believe you must do to succeed.” 71