The Management Algorithm Document
Write down how you decide, so people can decide without you in the room
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
Hinge's 'Guided by Principles' value, and the mechanism behind its culture book. McLeod started an open Google Doc that made his own decision-making explicit — what he believed, how he prioritised, how choices got made — originally so the company could hold him accountable, and so nobody could attribute a decision to 'that's just what Justin likes'. As Hinge passed 100 people the doc became the book 'How We Do Things'. The payoff is twofold: stated principles build trust because people understand the reasoning, and they let employees make aligned decisions independently, developing their own principles rather than waiting for the founder. Meetings at Hinge now open by stating the principles the group aligned on before getting into the work.
Origin
It grew out of McLeod's recovery from addiction, where honest self-assessment and constant self-reflection were the mechanism for getting better. He found tracking all the lessons in his head too arduous, so he started writing them into a shared doc — first as a personal management algorithm, later as the company's culture book.
Core principles
- 01If you keep making the same mistakes without honest self-assessment, you won't get better.
- 02Decisions attributed to a leader's taste don't scale; decisions attributed to principles do.
- 03Making reasoning explicit buys you trust and independent decision-making at once.
- 04Write it in the open so the company can hold the founder accountable too.
- 05State the principles before discussing the work, not after.
How to run it
- 1
Self-assess relentlessly and in public
After each significant decision or project, ask what went well, what didn't, and how you'd do it better — and seek feedback rather than waiting for it.
Pro tip McLeod carried this habit directly across from recovery into entrepreneurship.
- 2
Externalise it into a shared doc
Move the accumulated lessons out of your head into an open document that captures how you make decisions, how you prioritise, and what you believe.
Pro tip Make it editable and visible so employees can hold you to it — accountability is the point, not documentation.
Watch out Kept private, it becomes a diary; the value is entirely in it being open.
- 3
Convert it into named company principles
Once past roughly 100 people, distil the long list into a small set of named principles in a culture book that tells the story of the lessons learned.
Pro tip Write it as the mistakes you made and how you got it wrong — it lands better and gives people permission.
Watch out A raw list of every principle stops scaling once the company is too big for everyone to read the founder directly.
- 4
Open the work with the principles
Start meetings by stating the core assumptions, beliefs and values the group has aligned on before getting into detail.
Watch out 'Because I said so' may buy compliance but it isn't scalable leadership.
- 5
Revise the principles as the company grows
Re-examine each principle at new scale and change or merge the ones that no longer hold.
Pro tip McLeod was merging 'Love the Leap' into 'Love the Problem' and walking back 'Radical Trust' at 300+ people.
Watch out Principles that worked at 50-100 people can actively misfire at 300; holding them out of loyalty is a mistake.
In the wild
Radical Trust pushed decision-making down to the front lines after the reboot, but at 300+ people McLeod found it produced silos and micro-optimisations — and realised the earlier version had worked only because he was informally coaching junior staff all day.
→ He moved to pulling decision-making in and coordinating strategy, while keeping decision-makers close to the work.
McLeod wanted it to be impossible for anyone at Hinge to conclude a decision was made simply because he or another leader preferred it that way.
→ Employees can reconstruct the reasoning and make aligned calls without him in the room.
Common mistakes
Assuming culture emerges on its own
At 30 people McLeod didn't think about culture at all, assuming it just formed around the founder — which meant it drifted uncontrolled as the company grew.
Inventing a culture on a wall
Once an organisation is big you can't declare the culture is suddenly X, Y and Z; it will be so inauthentic to what's happening on the ground that nobody follows it.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders passing 30-100 people who are still the bottleneck on every non-obvious decision.
Not ideal for
Very small teams where the founder is in every conversation and the overhead outweighs the clarity.
From the transcript
“if you keep making the same mistakes over and over again and you're not having an honest self-assessment about where you are and how things…”
“I started putting them in that Google Doc so that everyone at the company could hold me accountable to this like management algorithm I was…”
“no one should ever think well, that's just cuz Justin likes it that way”
“my job primarily is is building and fostering the culture that makes good decisions”
From the episode
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Justin McLeod