The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary
- Lars Christensen
- 5 hours ago
- 12 min read
I finished this book in March 2025. I recommend this book 9/10.
Why you should read this book:
If you are thinking about starting your own company, this is the book for you. The author is the most successful CEO coach from Silicon Valley and he shares all his insights in this book. From energy audit and inbox zero, to hiring and firing, team meetings scripts, and selling and marketing.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
If you think you want to start a company, read this book.
Understand where to spend your energy.
Interview and onboarding best practices.
📝 My notes and thoughts
P18. If you check your email incessantly, multiple times an hour, you are wasting hours of productivity. Instead, batch your time and clean out your entire inbox at those times. I recommend checking your inbox only twice a day (once in the morning, once in the afternoon). The best way I have found to do this when using Gmail is to implement the method described in Andreas Klinger's blog post "Don't Drown in Email! How to use Gmail More Efficiently." Andreas explains how to use Gmail's Multiple Inbox features to create an inbox for Next Actions, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe, and Reference. You can set the system up in Fifteen minutes.
P20. It is critical to be on time for every appointment that you have made or to let the others involved in the meeting know that you will be late as soon as you realize it. This is a common decency, yes, but it has a greater importance. There is someone else on the other side of your agreement to start the meeting at a certain time. They have stopped what they are working on to attend the meeting on time. If you do not show up on time, they cannot start the meeting, but they also cannot leave because they don't know if you'll show up the next minute or not.
P22. Whenever you find yourself saying something for a second time (to a second audience or in a second situation), it is highly likely that you will end up saying it again and again in the future. To vastly improve the quality of the communication and reduce the amount of time that you spend communicating the information, write it down. Then, the next time you need to communicate that message, you can simply share it in written form. If it is something that all members of the team should know and remember, it is in the company-wide wiki (see Chapter 19). If it is truly seminal to the organization, post it on the wall for all to see.
P25. In a First Round Review article titled "How to Become Insanely Well-Connected," Chris Fralic of First Round Capital says that her reserves one hour each week for follow-ups and outreach, most of which include appreciation. I recommend that you do the same. Just as with gratitude, giving appreciation should be as specific as possible, as in this example: "John, I appreciate you for writing down our sales process and adding it to the wiki. Thank you."
P26. It is important to maximize your energy. You perform best when you are doing things that energize you. Your goal should be to spend most of your time (75-80 percent) doing things that energize you. If you do, magic will occur. Get two highlighters, pens, or pencils of different colors (red and green are ideas, but any will do). Print out the last weeks of your calendar when you were working. Go through each workday hour by hour and ask yourself, "Did that activity give me energy, and highlight in red those that drained your energy. When finished, look for patterns of where and how your energy is drained. Now, think of ways to outsource or eliminate those activities.
P27. Energy audits are the single most powerful tool I know for creating joy and engagement in the workplace. They are meant to be an ongoing practice, not a one-shot action. Continue doing them until the results are mostly green. And then do them once a quarter as a spot check.
P46. Whenever you choose to use Method 3, remember that in order to get full buy-in, you will have to elicit people's truest thoughts. But as a CEO, you will have the "loudest voice in the room." Once people hear your perspective, some percentage will naturally alter their own views to more closely match yours. This percentage is much higher than you might imagine. People assume that, as CEO, you have more information than they do, and therefore, your perspective is probably more correct. Later, these same people will not feel fully bought into the outcome because, internally, they will know that their true thought was not actually heard. So, in order to get the full benefit of your team's knowledge and to make sure that they get to full buy-in, be careful not to tip your hand before all others have shared theirs. The most effective way to do this is to have people write down either their vote or their thoughts before you share your perspective. Or, have everyone give a simultaneous thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote. Peter Reinhardt, CEO and co-founder of Segment, says, "Apparently, at Amazon, they require the most junior people to speak and ask questions first. [This] also becomes a great way to show off junior talent, give more senior folks a chance to observe and give feedback, etc."
P64. At every quarterly off-site meeting that I facilitate for team bonding, we do the following exercise:
I ask all team members to open a document that only they have access to and write down their thoughts about the company when they source their joy, excitement, sadness, anger, and fear.
For their thoughts of anger and fear, each person writes:
Fact. This is what a video camera captured. There is not judgement or opinion here, only physical action that have occurred that no one would dispute. Keep it short.
Story. These are all the thoughts, opinions, and judgments that you have on the facts above.
Proposed solution. These should be very specific action items with DRIs and due dates.
While they are doing that, I create a document with those headings and give access to all.
Then I ask everyone to copy and paste their writings (which no attribution under the correct heading in the group document.)
We will read the document.
The writings of joy and excitement make us all feel inspired and renew our feeling of group success.
The writings of sadness allow us to feel bonded over shared loss.
The issues and solutions posted in anger and fear give us an issues roadmap to be unpacked and resolved one by one in the weekly leadership meetings over the course of the upcoming quarter.
P113. Each meeting needs to have a designated meeting lead, who is sometimes, but not always, the group's manager. This person is responsible for making the meeting run well. Therefore, their tasks are as follows:
Publishing the agenda, hoped-for outcomes, and attendee list of the meeting to all participants.
Ensuring that all meeting participants submit their updates and issues in writing in advance and show up on time.
Ruthlessly sticking to the timeline during the meeting and, whenever something off-topic comes up, noting it but scheduling the discussion for another time.
P115. Run One-On-One Meetings according to the following template:
Accountability (goals and actions)
Last week
For each of your stated actions from last week, did you get them done—yes or no?
If no, what blocked you?
What habit can you adopt so that you don't encounter that obstacle again?
Next week
For each of your OKRs, what one action can you take to advance toward each of them?
Coaching (issues and solutions)
Show your OKRs in traffic-light fashion (green, yellow, red).
Show your KPIs in traffic-light fashion.
Show any pipeline that are relevant (recruiting, sales, customer success, engineering roadmap, etc.)
If I were to dig into these updates, what would I discover in your department that is:
Good?
Not good?
Please describe the issue in detail, as well as your proposed solution. This proposed solution should include:
What you can do to solve the issue
What I (your manager) can do to help unblock you
What is the issue?
What is your proposed solution for correcting the issue?
Many people will say that they do not know what the solution is and want guidance. That is fine. But the discussion will be much more fruitful if they declare definitively what they think the solution is, even if they have very little confidence in their proposal
Please list any other issues that you see in the company, with peers, with the product, in your own life, etc.
For each, please list your proposed solution. Even if you are unsure of what the right course of action is, take a stab at a definitive roadmap. It will help advance the conversation.
Transparency (feedback)
What did you like that I did as a manager?
What do you wish that I would do differently as a manager?
Please think of the feedback that you are afraid to give me because you think that will hurt my feelings. Please give me that feedback.
P118. During the leadership team meeting, here is what each attendee should do:
Report whether they accomplished their declared actions from the previous meeting. This should be a simple yes or no. If no, they should also write why they didn't do the action and what habit they can adopt to make sure they never encounter that obstacle again. Here is an example:
Get feedback from Joe. No
Why? I forgot about it and, therefore, didn't ask for feedback when I met with Joe.
Habit? Create an agenda list. Look at this list each time I meet with someone
Report their department updates.
Show:
Link to traffic-lighted KPIs
Link to traffic-lighted OKRs
The written update should be a deep dive into these metrics to share what has happened that is:
Good
Not good
What is the issue?
What is your proposed solution for correcting the issue?
Many people will say that they do not know what the solution is and want guidance. That is fine. But the discussion will be much more fruitful if they declare definitively what they think the solution is, even if they have very little confidence in their proposal
Declare what action they will do until the next meeting
Actions toward their OKRs
Action as part of proposed solution
Provide feedback to the team leader and peers in the "like" and "wish that" format.
Peer to peer
Each peer gives feedback to one other peer per meeting (on a rotating basis).
Reports to manager
If these were done in the one-on-one, then it is good to show them in the leadership meeting
Manager to reports
Do this only if the company is practicing radical transparency; otherwise, this remains in the one-on-one.
P119. The agenda for the leadership team meeting then looks like this:
Updates from each team (1,2 and 3 from above)
Discussion of issues and proposed solutions
Time-box each issue
If a solution is agreed on in that time, turn it into action items with DRIs and due dates.
If a solution is not agreed on, turn the issue into a RAPID
Feedback to each other (write and review)
P121. The CEO open office hour (which I highly recommend) can be scheduled anytime in the day. Each manager should set aside one hour each week for an open office hour, during which anyone can come introduce an issue. This ensures that all employees feel that they can be heard but limits the amount of time required to a predictable level for the manager.
P123. To create the ten-year company vision, imagine it is ten years from now. You are the dominant company in the industry. Ask yourself:
What industry do you dominate?
Who is your customer? (This should be a real live human being, not a corporate entity.)
What pain are you solving for the customer?
What is unique about your solution that causes the customer to choose you over the competition?
What asset (human or physical) do you control that makes it difficult for any competitor to copy your solution? In other words, what is your moat?
P131. Here is a template for providing good feedback, adapted from the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshal B. Rosenberg.
As for permission. Give the receiver a little heads-up of what's coming. It can be enough to say, "I have something to communicate to you. Is now a good time?"
State the trigger behavior or event (fact). Try to be factual ("When you are late to meetings...") as opposed to interpretative ("When you disrespect me...").
State how that trigger behavior makes you feel in terms of anger, sadness, and fear (feeling). This is perhaps the hardest part for many founders to do. Talking about your feelings might not be something you are used to, so it might be challenging at first. However, doing so is crucial for the other person to truly understand where you are coming from and to take your feedback to heart.
State the thoughts, opinions, and judgment (story) you have about this situation.
Make request of what you would like to see. Try to frame it as positive action ("Do x") rather than a negative ("Don't do y").
Ask if the person accepts the feedback and the request. If yes, hold them accountable to doing it.
P135. The traditional method is when you pitch an investment firm with your story, most often with a slide deck that describes the customer problem and your solution, market size, unit economics, financial projections, competition, team members, traction, go-to-market strategy, and so on. (Should I create this deck?)
P150. The hiring manager will assign someone to conduct the first screen. If the candidate passes, the hiring manager will do the second screen. Here's a sample script for the screening interview:
"Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I'd like to spend the first ten minutes of our call getting to know you. After that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have about us. Sounds good?"
"What are your career goals?"
If the candidate's goals sound like an echo of your company's website or they don't have any, screen them out.
"What are you really good at professionally?"
Push the candidate to give you eight to twelve positives, with examples, so that you can build a complete picture of their capabilities. You are listening for strengths that match the scorecard.
"What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally?"
Push the candidate for real weaknesses, five to eight of them. If they don't respond thoroughly, call them out on it. If they still don't, then say, "If you advance to the next step in our process, we will ask for your help setting up reference calls with your bosses, peers, and subordinates. What do you think they will say are some things that you are not good at or not interested in?"
"Who were your last three bosses, and how will they each rate your performance on a 0-10 scale when we talk to them?"
Press for details of why each person would give them such a rating. We are looking for consistent 8s to 10s. A 6 is actually a 2. But ask why it's a 6.
Throughout the interview, get curious. Ask follow-up questions that start. with "What," "How," and "Tell me more."
"What do you mean?"
"How did you do that?"
"How did that feel?"
P164. Many of the people you are spending time with during recruiting will not become team members, whereas 100 percent of the people you spend time with during onboarding are already team members. Focus your energy there! Write a checklist of all the information a team member would need to be fully effective. Write all this information down, and make a video of it. Share this checklist, the written and video information, and the ninety-day roadmap with each new team member as early as you can, even before they start. On their first day at the office, have them come in two hours after the normal start of the workday so that plenty of people are there to greet the new team member. Assign each new team member a buddy with whom they'll check in each day for fifteen minutes for the first two weeks. These fifteen minutes are for the new team member to ask questions that arise and for the buddy to ensure that the new team member is actually going through the checklist. The key thing to remember in onboarding is to give it just as much if not more, time than the recruiting process. This is worth repeating: many of the people in the recruiting process will never work at the company, while everybody in the onboarding process will.
P182. The greatest risk a startup is not that they moved too slowly in dominating the entire marketplace, but rather that they spread their scarce resources too thin and ended up securing few or no customers at all. Every customer already has a legacy solution in place, and those legacy providers are far larger with more resources than you. They have deep and long-lasting relationships with their customers. Even if your product or service is better, it needs to be ten times better than the legacy solution for a customer to switch. A good analogy is the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II. The Germans held the whole coastline. The Allies could have chosen to spread their invading force along the entire shore. The Germans pillboxes would have slaughtered each and every Allied soldier who landed on the French beach. That, of course, is not what the Allies did. Instead, they studied the coastline and found the beach that was the least well-defended (Normandy). They concentrated all their forces on that one target beachhead and so were able to overwhelm the German defenses there and secure the toehold they needed. From there, the Allies were able to bring in more resources, expand our, and eventually spread throughout Europe. Do the same. Study the marketplace. Segment it into different customer types. Determine which segment is the least satisfied with their current solution and for whom your solution is the best fit. Concentrate all your sales and engineering efforts toward this segment. Land a few of these customers. Continue to focus on this segment until you dominate it. Only then expand to other customer segments (or add other products).