Auvik Adopts OKRs, Creates Company Alignment with Crews & co. and Hits Financial Targets
CLIENT
Auvik provides cloud-based IT monitoring and management software for computer networks and SaaS ecosystems.
CHALLENGES
Auvik was challenged to adopt OKRs company-wide with the goal of establishing company alignment and driving improved outcomes.
SOLUTION
Auvik partnered with Crews & co., where the Growth Method and Growth for All forged a new framework for achieving success—OKRs included.
RESULTS
- Working with Crews & co., Auvik goes from missing financial goals to consistently hitting its targets, achieving 45% revenue growth in two years.
- Auvik uses Crews & co.’s Growth Method and Growth for All systems to create whole-company alignment with OKRs, improving cross-functional collaboration among all departments.
- Auvik enjoys increasingly effective leadership by implementing tools that drive accountability.
Auvik: Taking the Hassle Out of Network Management
Auvik is a cloud-based IT management platform that helps IT departments proactively manage their networks, endpoints and SaaS applications. Across all industries, constantly changing IT environments require a unique toolset to remain agile. With full visibility and effortless automation, Auvik enables IT professionals at MSPs, state and local governments, and companies in the education, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing spaces to effectively manage infrastructure across widely distributed networks, thousands of endpoints, and an ever evolving SaaS landscape.
The rapidly growing company is home to more than 300 employees who perform wide-ranging services for the platform, including design, implementation, access control, troubleshooting, equipment replacement, and end-user experience management.
Challenged to Thrive
Despite being a global success story, Auvik nevertheless faced the familiar challenges that so many high-impact tech startups confront:
- Departmental silos. Auvik’s rapid growth inevitably led to a siloed organizational structure that prevented cross-functional collaboration and alignment. Lacking a collective sense of purpose, departments struggled to collaborate effectively, which slowed production and prevented progress.
Lacking a collective sense of purpose, departments struggled to collaborate effectively, which slowed production and prevented progress.
- Unclear priorities. Although Auvik had a clearly stated company vision, the company still needed a clear path of progress toward its goals. The leadership team was in sync, but that alignment failed to trickle down throughout the rest of the company. And synchronicity wasn’t a given, with each C-level leader seemingly engaged in a broken game of Telephone. From the boardroom to the front lines, Auvik lacked clear priorities, and senior leadership had been unable to develop a cohesive, collectively pursued series of goals-driven priorities.
- Less formal planning processes. With a non recursive rhythm of strategic planning, Auvik struggled with disconnected projects and reactive, disorganized goal setting.
OKRs: Promising or problematic?
Auvik’s challenges became exceedingly evident when a former CEO presented the C-level executives with a copy of John Doerr’s groundbreaking book Measure What Matters and directed the leadership team to implement OKRs.
Auvik COO John Astorino was nominated to oversee the OKRs rollout—a task that would loom larger than anyone could have anticipated.
John laughs, “Just like a true visionary, our CEO hoped that reading Measure What Matters was all it would take to align the C-team and get OKRs rolled out. But I looked around the table and told the team that if I was going to handle the OKRs rollout, I was going to do it the right way. And that meant putting OKRs on hold until I was confident of a successful implementation!”
“Just like a true visionary, our CEO hoped that reading Measure What Matters was all it would take to align the C-team and get OKRs rolled out. But I looked around the table and told the team that if I was going to handle the OKRs rollout, I was going to do it the right way. And that meant putting OKRs on hold until I was confident of a successful implementation!”
John specifically wanted to talk to other companies that had successfully integrated OKRs. How had they done it? What was the impact? But it would take John nearly 18 months to find a single company with an OKRs success story.
Solutions in Action
After a year-and-a-half of searching, John finally found what he’d been looking for: a business that had adopted OKRs and enjoyed measurable growth as a result.
“I eventually discovered that Mission Cloud, a fellow GHP portfolio company, was successfully leveraging OKRs,” John explains. “They were happy to talk with me about what makes the OKRs model work and what makes it fail.”
John was finally ready to move forward, but first, he approached the CEO with a request. “I explained that I needed a budget for an experienced consultant who could help us properly integrate OKRs. After I got the go-ahead, my first call was to Crews & co.”
“After I got the budget for an experienced consultant who could help us properly integrate OKRs, my first call was to Crews & co.”
Auvik partners with Crews & co. to integrate OKRs
Auvik’s first Crews & co. connection was founder and CEO Eric Crews, who initiated John and his team into Crews & co.’s proprietary business operating system, the Growth Method. A successful business owner himself, Eric pushed Auvik’s leadership to “think outside of our own cocoon,” John shares.
After six months of close collaboration between Eric and Auvik’s C-suite, John finally felt ready to expand the efforts company-wide. Crews & co.’s Ryan Villanueva came on board to drive Growth for All, the Growth Method’s complementary departmental initiatives.
John sees huge value in having two consultants engaging at all levels of the organization. “Eric was very good at helping us slow down and trust that we’d learn what we needed to learn in due time. He’s very blunt and honest, but he’s never condescending, and his approach worked really well with our C-level.”
“Eric was very good at helping us slow down and trust that we’d learn what we needed to learn in due time. He’s very blunt and honest, but he’s never condescending, and his approach worked really well with our C-level.”
With Eric focused on the executive level, Ryan became the departmental guide. “Ryan is very techie, very organized. He takes a more measured approach, which allows for plenty of beneficial conversation. His approach is perfect for the departmental level.”
Auvik expands cross-functional alignment with OKRs
As Auvik introduced OKRs company-wide, Ryan played a key role in tailoring OKRs to each department’s needs. “He advised that we build out OKRs starting with the people with fewer dependencies and then move to those people with more dependencies. Finally, everyone cross-references one another’s OKRs, identifies the dependencies, and asks questions. This is what begins building alignment,” John explains. “We're more aligned than we've ever been!"
“We're more aligned than we've ever been!"
Auvik develops strategic priorities
The company’s teams had long struggled to navigate the disruptions inherent to mid-quarter changes. Learning to shift priorities and realign cross-departmentally has been difficult but beneficial.
“We still take on too much,” John admits, “but we’re getting better at prioritization!”
By determining each department’s priorities in advance, teams have stopped stagnating in silos. Instead, they’re equipped to collaborate as needed with an aligned set of priorities that support company goals at every level.
Auvik implements rhythmic planning
“The biggest value we’ve extracted from our work with Crews & co. is finally having a planning rhythm and a rigorous planning process,” says John. “We take the extended leadership team off-site for two full days of OKRs prep before we meet with Ryan to review our upcoming goals and strategies.”
“The biggest value we’ve extracted from our work with Crews & co. is finally having a planning rhythm and a rigorous planning process.”
Today, Auvik holds six departmental meetings every quarter. To streamline the planning process, John is adding pre-planning prep days to the middle of each quarter. “Adding this step will prevent leaders from scrambling at the last minute to prepare,” he explains.
As for the C-suite, “Operating rhythm at the executive level is really good now,” John says approvingly.
When the company onboarded a new CEO, Douglas Murray, in October 2022, the Silicon Valley veteran had anticipated eliminating OKRs as a first priority. “He’s seen them fail elsewhere,” John acknowledges, “but now he’s fully bought into OKRs! He likes the way they work and that they’re flexible enough that we can adapt them to our needs.”
After getting full executive buy-in, Auvik was able to cascade OKRs into the entire organization. Some team members pushed back or tended to get stuck in the details. John says it’s an ongoing effort to educate the team about OKRs. “The process isn’t about rules and formulas. It’s about knowing who’s responsible for what and who’s accountable for the results. We have to remind people, ‘Just come with your issues. The rest will work out.’”
Undeniable Results
- Achieve financial targets. “Before partnering with Crews & co., we were seeing revenue growth, but we were falling short of our financial targets,” John shares. “Once we onboarded the Growth Method and Growth for All, we not only maintained our growth trajectory, but we also hit our financial targets four quarters in a row!” Auvik has increased revenue 45% over two years of engagement with Crews & co.
- Plan more purposefully. “Not enough companies invest in an operating system like the one we now have. All businesses should run a planning process like this one,” John says. “The rigor and rhythm of the planning process are invaluable to me.”
- Leading effectively. “I now have a tool that functions without the proverbial stick or carrot—a tool that allows me to drive outputs and outcomes that I had no influence over before,” John explains. “Now, it’s all about following the process. The team decides; the team agrees; and that alignment drives accountability from top to bottom.”
The Bottom Line: “We’re big fans!”
Auvik has gained both immediate improvements and long-term advantages through implementation of Crews & co.’s Growth Method and Growth for All.
“The Growth Method has made me a more effective driver of outputs and outcomes,” John shares. “Auvik now has a rigorous planning rhythm that we didn’t have before, and OKRs are the output of that process.”
“Auvik now has a rigorous planning rhythm that we didn’t have before, and OKRs are the output of that process.”
At Crews & co., we’re most honored when clients like John tell others about our solutions. “I talk about this process to all my COO groups,” John reveals. “I’m pretty sure you already have new clients because of Auvik’s success! We’re big fans of the work Crews & co. is doing.”
