KLA CORPORATION: MANAGING THE KLA OPERATING SYSTEM
KLA Corporation piloted its Managing the KLA Operating System program for one U.S. business unit with 15 managers in 2023. In 2024, it expanded to two cohorts with 70 managers representing four U.S. business units. In 2025, the program expanded globally to six cohorts, including those in California, Michigan, Singapore, India, and Europe.
The program aims to help participants leverage the KLA Operating System to more efficiently run their organization. Beneath this broad-based performance objective are hundreds of performance objectives that are covered in the 10-month program. These objectives consist of everything from writing goals that tie to balanced scorecard objectives to customizing KLA’s enterprise competencies and creating engagement action plans.
Program Details
Initially improvised by a senior leader at headquarters for a specific group of managers, the original content was developed through live facilitation—simply asking, “What are your challenges today?” Attendees raised issues that were most often tied to events occurring during the company calendar cycle within the Operating System.
In year two, the KLA Learning Team knew it could predict much of this content, so it created a framework that was defined as “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP). This MVP consists of one hour on a monthly theme. For example, if the theme is “Team Performance,” one hour will feature a company leader speaking on one of KLA’s 10 leadership competencies (such as managerial courage), and another hour will address a relevant component of the KLA Operating System (i.e., KLA’s talent management process).
The Learning Team created 10 modules around this MVP framework, meaning that a session anywhere in the world could be as short as three hours, or as long as eight hours, if the core was delivered. Various cohorts ran from five to eight hours, with many cohorts spending more than the minimum amount of time on core subjects while adding supplemental subjects of value to that location.
This modular approach also enabled heavy use of guest speakers, which, in turn, allowed KLA to maintain topic consistency while providing global flexibility with language, culture, and content. This also reduced the load on facilitators globally.
Despite growing the program from 15 participants to more than 300, there was unanimous agreement that KLA should maintain live in-person delivery over the course of a calendar year.
This entailed training seven facilitators for six cohorts in five locations:
- The India cohort was run monthly with 10 eight-hour sessions.
- The Singapore cohort was run monthly with 10 five- to seven-hour sessions.
- The Milpitas, CA, cohorts were run monthly with 10 five-hour sessions.
- The Ann Arbor, MI, cohort was run every other month with two eight-hour sessions to accommodate facilitator schedules.
- The Europe cohort was run quarterly with four two-day sessions hosted at KLA’s four manufacturing sites. These events also included factory tours to build a stronger cross-Europe management team. This approach allowed KLA to maintain its calendar cadence while reducing the travel burden on the managers who were attending from more than 10 countries.
In addition to the live delivery, digital content resides in the company’s KLA Operating System Digital Companion course and can be used in sessions, assigned as pre-work, and provided as supplemental material.
Senior leadership is key to this program and is involved at all phases:
- General managers (GMs) of the sponsoring business unit define participant selection and approve subject matter. Beyond the core curriculum, there is significant room for customization to specific business needs.
- More than 20 hours of digital video content features senior leaders, including KLA’s CEO, CTO, and other senior leaders.
- KLA vice presidents, GMs, and other senior leaders often build their own content and deliver the sessions.
- Sponsoring general managers host graduation, which is attended by the guest speakers and participants’ managers.
Program reinforcement includes:
- Homework/follow-up is scheduled between every session.
- Digital companions are provided, and attendees are strongly encouraged to walk their teams through the content.
- “Make-up sessions” are conducted by reaching out to a colleague and scheduling a walkthrough of the session content; writing a recap; and sending it to the colleague, the sponsor, and the facilitator.
- Because the program is built around the KLA Operating System calendar, most of the performance objectives are self-reinforcing, for example, writing performance goals during goal-writing season, doing engagement activities during the engagement cycle, doing a SWOT assessment during strategic planning season.
- Because sponsors also attend, much of the content is reinforced through all-hands meetings, staff meetings, and one-on-ones.
Results
- KLA’s overall engagement score for 2025 increased over 2024, as KLA leapt into the top 10 percent of benchmarked companies in the technology sector.
- Every manager-related score in the 2025 engagement survey increased by 3 to 5 points over 2024.
- KLA’s “success story” was chosen to be presented at the 2025 Workday Rising conference in San Francisco.
Furthermore, the structure has enabled attendees to push back on parts of the Operating System that were limiting them—this has led to more than 20 improvements in the Operating System.
