People Ops: Lessons in Culture and Leadership From Building Startups

Learn how to deal with difficult employee demands, what candidates actually think about recruitment processes, how to navigate layoffs, address the gender pay gap, and protect your time and wellbeing. People Ops is a collection of candid lessons, stories, and principles in leadership, people, and culture from startup environments. It reveals the hard truths and sometimes uncomfortable realities that we all know exist but struggle to articulate.

For decades, business and HR leaders have struggled to navigate the complexities of managing people and teams within startups and scaling companies, instead relying on the broad rhetoric of management theory to tackle these challenges or leaning on their networks of leaders who have encountered these challenges before. In parallel, the HR industry has been undergoing a transformation with the growth of People Operations. It’s a distinct field in HR that relentlessly focuses on engagement, culture, automation and putting people at the heart of all business operations. At the intersection of startups and people operations is an increasingly ambiguous business challenge for how startups can apply leading people practices to drive their growth, rather than in spite of their growth.

People Ops is a tactical companion for business and People Operations leaders designed to support them in their roles, spark inspiration and challenge conventional thinking. It supplements author Patrick Caldwell's own experience across multiple startups with stories and examples from his network of investors, CEOs, Founders and C-Level HR executives.

What You'll Learn

• Lessons from a path walked building People Operations in a startup environment
• Uncomfortable truths around the complexities of managing people
• The key components of a People Operations strategy within a small business

Who This Book Is For

Those in small-mediumsized businesses, especially startups, where the reader is in a position of responsibility for people and culture. They’ll likely hold business leadership positions such as Founder, CEO, COO, VP and Director, or they’ll be directly within the HR and People Operations space with titles such as CHRO/CPO, Head, Director, Business Partner or Advisor

About the Author

Patrick Caldwell is a multi-startup People & Operational leader with experience in leadership teams and Boards across Australia, the USA and the UK. Pat’s journey has taken him through diverse roles such as Chief People Officer at Send, a leading InsurTech startup; Chief Operating Officer at FundApps, an award-winning B Corporation; VP People & Operations at Metomic, an innovative cybersecurity startup; and board member of ImpactEd, a leading social enterprise and EdTech using evidence and research to create positive outcomes for young people.