4 Lessons From The Most Successful CEO Coach You've Never Heard Of

Read Time: 4 minutes.

I got to spend Thursday with Matt Mochary.

If you haven't heard of him, you've heard of his executive coaching roster:

• Sam Altman, OpenAI

• Naval Ravikant, AngeList

• Brian Armstrong, Coinbase

• Steve Huffman, Reddit

• Jason Citron, Discord

And he's given away his entire methodology in a single google doc and wrote an abbreviated version of it in his book, The CEO Within.

So why would I spend money and time to work with him directly when everything he teaches is freely available?

The Discipline of Action

I wanted to see him in action. As a coach, how will I improve if I don't expose myself to proven people who approach it differently than I do?

For example, when a problem arises, and he's taken the time to write out his process for addressing it, he asks the executive to read it.

Not eventually. Right now. While he sits there.

And the follow-up is, "Will you do this?"

The only possible responses are for the executive to ask questions or commit. And if they commit, it doesn't end there.

The next step is to take action.

• If all it takes is a quick note, you send it now.

• If it requires more, you schedule a time to do it.

Simple and profound.

Most leaders fail their organizations because they don't convert and commit fully to action. And by doing this with the leaders he coaches, he's also teaching them how to do the same with their leaders.

Injecting not just a bias for action but the discipline of action is the foundational block for building high performance.

Key Takeaway:

Putting something on your to-do list is different from moving it forward.

The 1:1 Meeting Debate

The other reason I also wanted to go deeper on some topics. Matt has seen certain practices implemented far more times than I have, heightening his institution about what's essential vs. distracting.

And no topic might be hotter right now than eliminating 1:1 meetings.

It started with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, who has 50+ direct reports and doesn't do them. Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, mentioned he had sworn them off as well.

This was music to every "founder's mode" founder's ears, finally granting them permission to stop doing them, too.

But as someone who led teams for two decades, my 1:1 meetings are the last meeting I could cut out. Especially with AI helping me out.

What I found is that most leaders were doing them wrong:

• They owned them instead of having their direct's own them

• They were for status not making progress

• They canceled them regularly

But what if I was the one with a blind spot. Maybe there was more to this. Perhaps a way to get the goodness from the 1:1s with a lighter meeting footprint.

And that's what I learned. While they don't have 1:1s, they replaced them with other interaction models that work better for them in less time.

Some use daily standup meetings with their direct reports. I used these when leading agile development teams.

With everyone literally standing (to keep the energy up):

• What did you deliver yesterday? (transparency)

• What are you delivering today? (accountability and coordination)

• Where are you stuck? (support and problemsovling)

15 minutes 5 days a week meant we could stay in tighter alignment and solve problems immediately versus storing them up for a later date.

It sounds like others do group 1:1 meetings (which sound a lot like rebranded and well-run team meetings to me).

• The direct report still decides their part of the agenda

• There's fast-twitch problem-sorting and problem-solving

• And peers stay attuned to what adjacent teams are up to

Key Takeaway:

And now it makes more sense to me. Yes, some leaders can walk away from the 1:1s, but fundamental interactions need to appear somewhere.

Single Threaded Leaders (STL) and Mission Aligned Teams (MAT)

My biggest aha from Matt came when discussing organizational focus.

He kept using two acronyms I'd never heard before: STL and MAT. A quick Google search during our conversation revealed their origins:

• Amazon led the charge on Single-Threaded Leaders (STLs)

• Michael Abramovich of Super.com popularized Mission-Aligned Teams (MATs).

Most organizations still operate like industrial-age factories: functional teams grouped by skill set, with leaders trying to coordinate across boundaries. Marketing does marketing things. Engineering does engineering things.

Or worse, the dreaded matrix organization.

But more and more companies are rejecting the idea of institutionalized multi-tasking. They're building teams around missions, not functions.

A Single-Threaded Leader owns one thing. Not seven priorities, not three key initiatives. One clear mission with measurable outcomes. And they get whatever resources they need to deliver it.

Take payments at Stripe. Instead of having:

• A product manager in product

• Engineers in engineering

• Sales folks in sales

• Support in customer success

They have a Payments team. One leader. One mission. All the capabilities they need. No competing priorities or matrix management slowing them down.

This isn't just rebranding.
It's a fundamental shift in how work gets done.

Traditional:

• Functional teams with shared resources

• Matrix management and coordination overhead

• Competing priorities and constant negotiation

• Slow decision-making and diffused accountability

Mission-Aligned:

• Cross-functional teams with dedicated resources

• Clear ownership and decision rights

• Single priority and focused execution

• Fast decisions and clear accountability

But there's a catch. This only works if you can:

1. Commit to clear missions that don't overlap

2. Find leaders capable of true end-to-end ownership

3. Give them real authority and autonomy (not just responsibility)

Most organizations fail at one or all three. They either can't break down their business into clear missions, don't trust their leaders enough, or won't give up control.

Key Takeaway:

The future belongs to organizations brave enough to trust small, focused teams with big, clear missions.

What You Missed This Week

Our Saturday AM posts:

📌 11 Hidden Truths That Will Change Your Life (Dave)
📌  21 Harsh Leadership Truths (Mar)

And here are our most popular posts last week:

1. 7 Secrets For Making Better Decisions (Dave)

2.  The Subtraction Strategy (Mar)

3.  Leadership Lessons of NBA Legend Gregg Popovich (Dave)

4.  10 Habits Leaders Swear By To Scale Fast (Mar)

5.  5 Basic Tools For Leading Teams With AI (Dave)

📌 Did you miss last week’s MGMT Minute?

I shared how I use my Headline-to-Punchline Method to pull myself out of the weeds and communicate to leadership more effectively.

Our goal is to build a community of 1 million thoughtful, curious leaders.

You can help us by sharing anything that resonates with you.  

Thank you for reading. Appreciate you!

Dave & Mar

.