Most CEOs think they’re better than they actually are.

Especially founders who inherited the title on day one. But when you ask what a CEO does day-to-day, most can’t give you a clear answer. I couldn’t either when I first got started.

Many years later, after working with literally hundreds of CEOs, I’ve realized that failure in the role:

• Is not a vision thing (usually)
• Is not a skill thing (usually)
• Is not a leadership thing (usually)

They simply don’t understand the role of a CEO!

The same thing happened to me. The founder-to-CEO transition kicked my ass. I had to learn the hard way what being a CEO means.

Now when I coach young CEOs, I start with the role itself. By definition, the CEO is the highest-ranking person in a company. Its leader. In startups, its almost always one of the founders who takes on the role in the beginning. They’re thrust into the role with zero training. Most have never even managed a team before. The learning curve punishes you, and most founders don’t survive long.

But I believe more founders can become great CEOs than they realize. The key? Understanding the CEO responsibilities at a deep level.

This article lays the blueprint for how to become a great CEO. I dive into seven core responsibilities that separate the top 1% from everyone else. Nail this list and you’ll be on your way to legend status.

Builder vs. Scaler Mindset

Before diving into CEO responsibilities, its essential to understand two distinct leadership mindsets: Builder and Scaler.

Builder mindset dominates early startup days when you’re hunting for product-market fit. You’re hands-on, scrappy, doing whatever it takes.

Scaler mindset kicks in after product-market fit. You have a product customers want. You’re ready to push growth. This happens around $1M revenue, though it varies by industry.

Most startup CEOs excel as a builder. Founders know how to get shit done and figure things out. They’re scrappy and relentless.

But their early success creates false confidence. They never build the right team and systems. They become the bottleneck of their own business. The company stagnates. The board replaces them.

But let me be clear up front. Adopting a scaling mindset doesn’t mean you stop building entirely. Far from it. You just spend more time building the future than executing the present. This distinction is important to keep in mind as we go through the seven core responsibilities of a CEO. Rather than doing everything yourself, you’re creating the right conditions for your team to able to crush it without you.

Surviving the transition: Going from founder to CEO is so challenging that I'm now helping other founders get through it successfully. I'll give you all the same playbooks I used to grow into a highly successful CEO myself. Learn about it here and apply here (takes 1 minute). 

The 7 Core Responsibilities of a CEO 

1. Provide Absolute Clarity

Great CEOs get their team rowing in the same direction. No exceptions.

To do this, they focus on, and masterfully communicate these three things:

• Purpose – Why are we here?
• Direction – Where are we going?
• Progress – How we’re doing?

This is the PDP framework: the three most essential questions every CEO should be able to answer (and her team should be able to answer, too!). This foundation matters whether you’re a scrappy startup or Fortune 100.

This is so foundational, yet most CEOs fail this test. And if you polled their teams randomly, everyone would give different answers. In other words, the team is rowing in different directions, completely out of sync with one another. Even small misalignment can become a big problem.

If the CEO can’t answer these three questions, how can their team be expected to perform at a high level? It’s like asking them to find a target in a pitch-black room. The PDP turns the lights on.

Try this simple exercise: Have your team answer these three questions privately. Share responses. Large gaps mean you lack clarity and need to tighten things up. Do this a couple times a year and you'll drive massive alignment across the team.

Your Company’s Northstar

Once you have your PDP answers dialed in, it’s time to build your company’s Northstar. By this, I mean fully defining the following:

1. Mission
2. Values
3. Vision
4. Goals
5. Metrics

Here’s the Northstar template we use in my leadership program, Highland:

We named it the “Northstar” because it’s your most important tool for providing absolute clarity. Notice how each element ties back to the three fundamental questions of the PDP.

Get the Northstar Template (free): Your company's Northstar is used in everything from annual planning, to team meetings, to fundraising. To get the Northstar template for your own team, just click here.

Vision is a critical component of your Northstar. It helps answer the PDP question ‘where are we going?’. But traditional vision statements are mostly useless. Instead, notice how the Northstar includes vision “steps”: 3-year, 5-year, 10-year, and 20-year. Each step builds on the previous one, showing sequence and strategy. This framework is called the vision ladder and you can get the template here, then incorporate it directly into your Northstar.

The team should spend ~80% of their time executing against the 3-year vision, and ~20% preparing for the future. This percentage shifts by role. For example, an accountant spends most of their time in the present, and very little time contemplating the future. However, the CEO will spend more time defining the future as they mature in the role. This work creates the guardrails for the rest of the company to operate within.

2. Create a Reliable Operating Rhythm

Companies are chaos. Your job as CEO? Create order. CEOs must build predictability in unpredictable environments. This means establishing an operating cadence the whole company follows.

The operating rhythm connects your vision to daily operations. Without this bridge, your vision floats aimlessly in the sky and never translates into action. Top CEOs create a reliable operating rhythm across three horizons:

• Annual Rhythm: your 12-month calendar with key annual activities
• Quarterly Rhythm: your quarterly calendar with key quarterly activities
• Monthly Rhythm: your monthly calendar with key monthly activities

Monthly layers on top of quarterly, which layers on top of annual. Key activities include things like:

• Goal setting
• Financial planning
• All-hands meetings
• Leadership team meetings
• 1 on 1 meetings

Done right, the operating rhythm creates massive alignment and accountability at every level of the organization. It provides natural checkpoints to ensure goals are achieved and standards and upheld.

Here’s an example of the quarterly operating rhythm I teach in Highland:

Your goal-setting framework matters (a lot)

The best CEOs install a company-wide goal framework to create focus at every level of the organization. Annual goals are the connective tissue between your 3-year vision and daily execution. Your goals help answer two important PDP questions: ‘where are we going?’ AND ‘how are we doing?’.

But most goal-frameworks have major flaws. I find OKRs to be especially problematic. It’s why we simplified legacy systems, like OKRs and EOS Rocks, to create the WhyGo goal setting framework:

• Why – why this goal is a priority
• Goal – what we are trying to achieve
• Outcome – how we measure success

WhyGos force ruthless prioritization, exactly what a goal system should do. Set them annually, track them quarterly and monthly. Each team and individual creates their own WhyGos that ladder up. Unlike OKRs that restart quarterly (administrative nightmare), WhyGos provide stable direction with tactical flexibility.

WhyGos patched the holes left by OKRs and helped us scale into the hundreds of millions. After we sold to GoFundMe, I started advising and teaching WhyGos to other startups. You can learn about them here for free. Or join Highland and I'll walk you through them personally.

3. Set Cultural Standards

What does “great” look like to you? As CEO, you define and defend standards across four critical areas:

• Brand – How we present ourselves to the world
• Product – The quality bar we never cross below
• Performance – What excellent work looks like here
• Leadership – How we show up every day

These aren’t suggestions. They’re non-negotiables that define your company’s DNA. They make you, uniquely you.

Brand Standards determine how customers perceive you before they buy. Every touchpoint (website, emails, sales calls, etc.) must meet your bar. Sloppy brand signals sloppy company. Set the bar high.

Product Standards separate good companies from great ones. Steve Jobs returned defective products to engineers’ desks. Jeff Bezos leaves empty chairs for “the customer” in meetings. Your product standard becomes your company’s reputation. Never lose touch with product.

Performance Standards define baseline excellence. Not everyone needs to be a superstar, but everyone must clear your bar. Be explicit: What’s acceptable? What’s exceptional? What gets you fired? Write it down. Communicate it constantly.

Leadership Standards set the tone for how people show up every day. They define how we communicate, handle conflict, make decisions, and support one another. Early on, culture spreads by watching the founders in action, but that doesn’t scale. As you grow, you must spell it out. What’s encouraged, what’s unacceptable, and how leaders at every level should act.

CEO is the Guardian of Standards

I first thought to define (and protect) our standards after reading Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. This book is a masterclass in culture.

In the book, Yvon lays out Patagonia’s eight “philosophies”:

1. Product Design Philosophy
2. Production Philosophy
3. Distribution Philosophy
4. Image Philosophy
5. Financial Philosophy
6. Human Resource Philosophy
7. Management Philosophy
8. Environmental Philosophy

Each one defines exactly how Patagonia sees the world. This guidance is invaluable for all current and future employees. It shapes and protects their culture over time. Long after Yvon left as CEO.

We were so inspired by this approach, we did the same at my company Classy (now part of GoFundMe). But we boiled them down to four (brand, product, performance, team) and called them cultural standards. My job as CEO was to hold the line as we grew. It gets harder the bigger you get. You’ll face investor pressure, customer pressure, employee pressure. But you can’t back down. That’s your job as CEO.

Write down your company’s standards. Communicate them regularly. Model them yourself. And, don’t compromise! This is how you scale without losing your soul.

4. Build a High Performance Team

Jim Collins nailed it: “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

He’s exactly right. As CEO, it’s your job to assemble the RIGHT team that can execute your vision. Don’t hand this off to HR. It’s your responsibility to personally recruit key hires, set hiring criteria, and continuously redesign the org chart as growth demands new skills. You don’t need to interview every person, but you must design the selection and filtration process. This is one of the highest-leverage activities you have as CEO.

Once you have the right people, the next challenge is sustaining high-performance quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year. Every company will have its own spin, but over the last 20 years I’ve found high-performance teams share ten essential ingredients, with five standing above the rest:

1. Shared purpose
2. Clear direction
3. Aligned incentives
4. Merit-based recognition
5. Leadership development

Do these well, and you’ll turn a group of talented individuals into an unstoppable force.

Developing Leaders is Key

The greatest skill of any leader is developing other leaders. Yet most CEOs don’t spend enough time on it. They outsource leadership development to HR, buy a generic “leadership training” package, and hope for the best. That’s not enough. You need to own the leadership standard (see #3, Standards) and a company-wide training program you personally believe in and champion.

As the CEO its your job to identify what makes someone succeed, or fail, at your company. An A-player in one environment can be a C-player in another (and vice versa). This happens all the times in sports. A player gets traded and has a breakout season. Why? Because they were a better fit. Business is no different.

For me, I look for traits that win in any stage, but are especially suited for startups:

✓ Shares our values
✓ Doesn’t give up easily
✓ Has a high quality bar
✓ Never stops learning
✓ Adapts to change fast
✓ Lifts everyone around them

These people won’t always have the perfect resume. That’s why your hiring process should be built to uncover the unique traits that work best for your company.

Example Interview Questions: This article will help you design an interview process that screens for character traits that matter most. I've included my own as examples, but you should adapt them to fit what success looks like at your company. 

5. Find & Optimize Cash

Here’s the golden rule: Never run out of money. Many argue this is the CEO’s #1 job. Cash is the lifeblood of business, so its hard to disagree.

In the early days it’s about survival. Most startups have less than one-year of cash runway. Every dollar counts. I recommend bootstrapping for as long as you can to the founders in Highland. It creates constraints that forces product focus and financial discipline. Once you reach product-market-fit, then its time to really accelerate.

But bootstrapping isn’t feasible for every company. And, at some point, most companies will seek equity or debt financing. It’s the CEO’s responsibility is to lead this process which includes:

1. Selecting the type of financing (equity, note, traditional debt, etc.)
2. Finding the right investment partners (angels, VCs, PE, banks, etc.)
3. Pitching the business (deck, financial forecast, etc.)
4. Leading due diligence (financials, corporate docs, etc.)
5. Managing investor relationships (see #6, Managing Stakeholders)

We bootstrapped Classy for many years but eventually raised over $200M from angels, venture capital and private equity before selling to GoFundMe. In today’s world you can scale a software company with less money. But if you’re trying to build a category defining brand, it usually takes some financing.

If you’re interested in my fundraising lessons (and mistakes), I wrote about it here:

⤷ My Top 7 Mistakes Raising $200M from Investors

Cash optimization goes well beyond fundraising though. It starts with strong expense management. Salaries are typically your largest expense. To keep costs down, stay lean and implement a performance-based compensation model. Everyone gets reasonable base salaries, but are paid more when the company achieves its goals. Usually a lot more. I wrote two articles that will help you design your own performance-based model:

⤷ The Perfect Bonus Plan for Any Company
⤷ The Ideal Compensation Package for Any CEO

Interestingly enough, the most significant financial levers usually aren’t expense-related. For example, in B2B SaaS, getting customers to pay their annual subscription upfront in cash (vs. monthly or quarterly) is one of the greatest levers you can pull. Top CEOs find these cash generating opportunities in their business model, and design the systems and incentives to align the company behind them.

Managing the Financial Plan

Top CEOs view the company’s financial plan as their numerical map to success. It’s a detailed roadmap (typically a spreadsheet) that models the financial outcomes your organization expects to achieve over a 12-month period (or longer). The financial plan forecasts revenue, expenses, profit and cash flow for the fiscal year, then breaks it out into months and quarters.

Here are the financial planning steps I take as the CEO:

1. Establish annual company goals (also see the WhyGo framework).
2. Meet with senior leaders to review their plans & resource needs.
3. Align with sales and marketing on the sales forecast.
4. Collaborate with finance on the expense forecast, using inputs from all leaders.
5. Draft first version of the financial plan, ensuring alignment with goals & forecasts.
6. Review with senior leaders, gather feedback, refine.
7. Present to the Board of Directors for final approval.

Then, each month and quarter, the finance team updates the financial plan with “actuals” (how you actually did in that period). The CEO analyzes the “why” behind any hit or miss and makes the necessary adjustments moving forward. 

Financial Plan Template: I teach an entire Masterclass on financial planning, complete with financial plan templates that all of the CEOs in Highland now have access to. Want the entire bundle? Apply here (takes 1 minute).

6. Manage Key Stakeholders

The CEO has many stakeholders it needs to keep happy, excited, and supportive in its journey to scale the organization. A few of the major ones include: 

1. Employees 
2. Customers 
3. Partners
4. Board of Directors
5. Banks & Lenders 

Average CEOs pass these relationships off to others (or ignore them altogether). Top CEOs prioritize these stakeholders and understand that strong relationships increase the probability of their long-term success. 

They also realize that each stakeholder is involved with the company for different reasons and requires unique levels of communication, information, motivation, and reassurance to stay on track. They proactively design touchpoints with each to keep things on a high note.

But inevitably, each stakeholder relationship will have its low points. When the relationship is trending downward, it’s the CEO’s job to lean in and get it back on track. They are the #1 relationship manager and need to own that role. Top CEOs don’t run from conflict. 

Since the CEO reports to the Board of Directors, this is an especially important relationship to manage correctly. Top CEOs keep the Board in the loop on all major decisions and business activities – but they also don’t let the Board get too involved in the day-to-day operations. There is a fine line here, and expectation setting is critical. 

Proactive communication is key, especially when you have bad news to share. But always remember to come to the table with a proposed solution. Your Board (and all stakeholders) will appreciate the transparency and ownership.

7. Manage Yourself as the Leader

I used to run myself into the ground as CEO. Always sprinting. This is the fastest path to burnout, trust me.

Then I started thinking like a professional athlete. Your personal performance impacts every decision, relationship, and strategic move. When you’re burned out, distracted, or operating from scarcity, it shows everywhere.

My CEO self-care formula isn’t rocket science, but it is effective:

• Eat well: Your brain needs proper fuel for complex decisions
• Exercise regularly: Physical fitness improves mental clarity and stress resilience
• Optimize sleep: Critical decisions require mental sharpness, not exhaustion
• Get a non-work hobby: Creates mental space for breakthrough thinking

The small habits, done consistently, will keep you in peak form. Do I break these sometimes? Yes, of course. We are all human. The key is calibrating back to center when you start to slide.

Energy Management

Think of your energy as a gas tank. If you go full speed without breaks you’ll stall out.

• Take real vacations
• Schedule breaks between meetings
• Practice saying “no” to non-priorities
• Delegate ruthlessly as you build your team

Finding mentorship & coaching: Every CEO should have a mentor or a coach. Find someone who's built companies at your stage and beyond. This is exactly why I started Highland. Learn about it here and apply here (takes 1 minute). 

Conclusion

These 7 responsibilities define how to be a top CEO at any stage, and in any industry. Master these responsibilities to join the top 1% of CEOs on the planet.

The role of CEO shouldn’t be a mystery. Anyone can learn it. Use this article as your blueprint.

Start with clarity. Build a reliable rhythm. Maintain high standards. Assemble the right team. Optimize resources. Manage relationships. Take care of yourself.

Your future self, and your company, will thank you.

How I can help you… 

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Here are three ways: 

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