I’ve had some success in my career as a CEO, which led me to think about what I could do to help out fellow CEOs as well as aspiring ones. This blog is part of that effort, as is the CEO course I teach every year and the book I’m publishing this fall. As I often say, the CEO role is the most unique but least prepared for job in business. CEOs rarely get the training they need unless they’ve been specifically groomed for the post. Even then, I don’t know of a good methodology or system that exists for CEOs.

I mean, HR people have a system (e.g., Workday), sales people have a system (e.g., Salesforce.com), marketing people have a system (e.g., Eloqua, Marketo), etc. But CEOs have what? Calendaring, e-mail, spreadsheets? This lack of a formal system is one reason I think many CEOs are not doing as well as they hoped. They cannot align the day-to-day activities and priorities of their people to the corporate goals, especially as they grow. In fact, many CEOs feel powerless due to lack of influence, lack of timely information to address problems, and lack of employee engagement. Can a system fix all that?

I think so, which is why I started my new company Khorus that we are officially launching today. Khorus is a business management system we developed specifically for CEOs to run their companies. It’s a cloud-based software product based on a system I created and used in my previous companies. The product uses a cascading goals framework, but this is no ordinary goals system.

It’s a way to align every employee to the corporate goals and reinforce them on a weekly basis: Every week, employees provide their input on the quality and likelihood of achieving their goals in the quarter. Instead of backwards-looking, tactical information from different departments, CEOs for the first time get a normalized, relevant view into what’s driving – or inhibiting – the business. This way, they can see issues developing and act on them before it’s too late. In essence, the system helps answer the one question that I think CEOs agonize about most: “How likely is my company to meet its corporate goals?”

Check out the press release for more information.

Here’s a quick product tour:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqFtpbaE3W0&w=560&h=315]

I’m interested in your feedback about this, both in theory and execution. If you are a CEO – or even a VP or director of a large department – and want to know more about Khorus, feel free to reach out to me directly.