{"id":23433,"date":"2020-04-06T18:53:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T17:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=23433"},"modified":"2020-09-17T11:10:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T10:10:32","slug":"reading-list-people-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/reading-list-people-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading list: Lessons learned about people management"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the coming weeks, I, along with others on the team, will be selecting and sharing articles from the Inside Intercom archives that have proven helpful to our customers and visitors in the past.<\/p>\n

With so many of us looking for positive outlets for our increased time at home at the moment, we hope these articles can be helpful again. They may even prove a small distraction from what can seem like universally bad news right now. I\u2019m kicking things off by sharing some pieces that have helped me (hopefully) get better at managing people.<\/p>\n

People before product and profit<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

At Intercom we firmly believe that people are the most important thing \u2013 your product and ultimately profits will follow if you get the people thing right. (\u201cTake care of the people, products and profits in that order,\u201d being a phrase used by former Netscape CEO Jim Barskdale and subsequently popularized by Ben Horowitz in The Hard Thing About Hard Things<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n

So while Inside Intercom built its reputation as a source of advice on building great products, some of the most impactful lessons that have remained with me from helping colleagues publish their insights on this blog are all about people rather than product.<\/p>\n

“All behavior – good and bad – can scale”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If there\u2019s one person at Intercom who is synonymous with distilling actionable product insights it\u2019s our co-founder Des<\/a>. But at our 2017 Inside Intercom World Tour<\/a> he surprised a lot of attendees with a talk about the people aspects of running a fast growing company and the common problems you face as you add more people to your company.<\/p>\n

He shared insights such as how all behavior – good and bad – can scale<\/a> and how you can manage that as well as the need for hierarchy, even at an early stage. It\u2019s an honest and entertaining talk that anyone who manages people will benefit from. It\u2019s available as a video<\/a> (embedded below), podcast<\/a> or article<\/a>, so you can consume it in whatever format works best for you.<\/p>\n