Case Study: How Seagate used OKRs to bring focus at a time of crisis
Seagate is a leading American company that has played a key role in global data storage since the late 1970’s. However, their longevity didn’t protect them from the recent downturn in the tech industry and Seagate found themselves working through significant revenue losses and layoffs. Crisis times may not sound like the best time to introduce a new goal-setting framework but that’s exactly what the leadership team at Seagate did. They deployed OKRs explicitly for their ability to focus the organization on the most important things the company needed at this crucial moment. Here’s how they launched their OKR journey and used it to get the company back on track.
Implementing OKRs for Strategic Decision Making
As Seagate began to feel the impact of the tech downturn, the leadership team realized they needed a way to focus the organization on the most important things required right then to deal with the crisis. In addition, they were looking for a tool to help create positive energy amidst the morale impact of the layoffs while at the same time empowering leaders and teams alike to improve the precision in their decision making. Finally, Seagate leadership needed a refined way to provide clear motivation to continue the company’s work. The common thing to do in a crisis is to retreat into known patterns and behaviors. Why try something that was untested in the organization at this critical time when instead you can deploy tools from the past?
The team at Seagate opted to do the opposite. They decided that redefining the company’s goals and culture of work with Objectives and Key Results was how they were going to empower the entire organization to right the ship together. Their thinking was that by defining a finite set of organizational objectives and key results the rest of the company would be able to align themselves around those goals – rather than through prescribed tasks and efforts.
Changing culture at a large company through the power of conversations
OKRs, besides being a goal-setting framework and a way of working, are also a cultural change. Among other things, they require an environment conducive to productive, bi-directional conversations between staff and leadership. In Seagate’s case, leaders were made accountable for their business units’ OKR goals. These leaders were not only encouraged but empowered to have candid, clear conversations with their teams about what they were working on, why they were working on it and how they were progressing. Leaders and teams had to justify their choices and decisions with clear links to each business unit’s key results.
The OKR cycle Seagate implemented quite literally created the space for these discussions. Quarterly check-ins with teams to assess progress towards key results, learning from the previous quarter and next steps teams were considering helped facilitate the kind of honest conversations OKRs need to succeed both as a team-level idea and also at scale. The OKR cycle created a forum for these conversations at the leadership level which enabled teams to emulate these same activities at the program and team levels, including permission to adjust OKRs in-flight if they no longer supported company objectives in Seagate’s fast-changing business environment
Conversations are critical, particularly in times of crisis. Seagate’s leaders, despite years of conditioning and historical inertia, realized they needed to move away from prescribing work to their teams and instead create an environment that allows teams to figure out the best way to overcome their current challenges using their OKRs as the lens for progress and course correction. If their work moved the needles in the right direction, the teams kept working. If not, the conversations turned to how best to pivot or move on to a new idea.
The team leading the transformation had to have discussions with the C-suite to expressly give these leaders permission to be vulnerable during these conversations and, despite previous expectations, not to feel pressured to have all the answers. They stressed the importance of trust and vulnerability in leadership – something crucial to the success of OKRs and yet so rarely practiced or even discussed in leadership circles. This effort wasn’t without its struggles of course but the fact that this came directly from the top gave it the support needed for change at scale to succeed.
Launching at scale
One critical and starkly different aspect of Seagate’s OKR rollout is the fact that they implemented the new framework at scale from day one. The crisis they were facing didn’t provide the time to test and learn their way through a series of increasingly larger rollouts. They had to go big from the get-go. This goes against most advice for any kind of significant change (including what we advise in our new book on OKRs). Normally, organizations will run a pilot team on a new way of working, assess progress and learning and decide if and how best to scale it to other teams.
Seagate decided to go big on this change due to an existential crunch. They started with putting together the right transformation team. This team then went on to do their research on the best way to navigate out of the crisis. When they presented their OKR proposal to the leadership team and eventually to the rest of the company they led with “why” this system was going to help Seagate win. Rather than simply prescribing a new way of working, the transformation team made it clear that OKRs provided the framework for focus, decision making and, most importantly, agile course correction. Incredibly, Seagate pulled off this entire launch process in a matter of a few months.
The leadership team at Seagate didn’t have the luxury of time for a less risky approach to an OKR rollout. Instead, with top-down direction and support, they took advantage of the turmoil of the crisis they were facing and bucked the norm with an all-in approach. They started by implementing a conversation-generating system to ensure alignment at the C-level, which then cascaded to the rest of the organization. A small team of trusted, properly placed influencers facilitated impactful conversations with the CEO’s direct reports, and then laterally with each other. Their goal was to set clear targets at the organizational level, fully nested within the corporate objectives, as they navigated their recovery.
This same team would then follow up with the C-suite at the end of each quarter asking the same four questions, which were then also used to drive conversations at every level in Seagate:
What is the status of the Key Results?
What is the confidence level in achieving each one through the financial year?
What are the blockers to each key result’s success?
What are the required actions/next steps to address the blockers?
The output of these check-ins at the corporate level was then shared with all VPs and above. This drove lateral conversations across the organization that gave each vertical and function a clear sense of where this quarter’s priorities were. Leaders at every level could (and were encouraged to) adjust their OKRs to match the current needs of the company and to directly help address the blockers cross-functionally. As teams were increasingly successful at driving the results the C-suite had prioritized, their success was shared internally with all employees, highlighting their contribution to Seagate’s overall success. This ensured every Seagate employee could see how their hard work directly mattered to Seagate’s recovery and success.
OKRs as a way to navigate out of crisis
When faced with revenue loss and layoffs Seagate moved quickly. They used OKRs to drive focus and direction but they still had to learn how this new way of working would impact not only their ways of working but culture as well. The initial quarter for setting OKRs was shortened from three months to two, allowing for quicker adjustments and more agility. To ensure their staff was prepared for the change, the transformation team realized the importance of training and providing tools for employees to effectively use OKRs. They recorded videos, coached staff and provided OKR champions across the organization to ensure org-wide adoption was as painless as it could be.
What’s left to do? The Seagate team is still refining their processes. They’re also ensuring that teams understand that, just like the work they choose to do, their OKRs are also variable when presented with evidence that contradicts them. There is still work to do here. However, the company has turned a corner and can point directly to their unorthodox, company-wide launch of OKRs as one of the reasons for their continued longevity and success.
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