Strategy · 4 min read
Choosing a North Star Metric your whole team can move
One metric that captures the value customers get, broken into inputs each team owns. How to pick it and avoid the common traps.
When every team optimises its own numbers, growth work pulls in different directions. Marketing chases sign-ups, product chases features, sales chases deals. A North Star Metric gives everyone the same target.
What makes a good North Star
It reflects value delivered to customers, not just revenue captured. It leads revenue rather than lagging it. And it can be moved by the teams that look at it every week. Completed bookings per week, active learners or repeat orders are typical examples.
Avoid vanity metrics such as downloads or page views. They can rise while the business gets worse.
Break it into inputs
A North Star is only useful when it is broken into the inputs that drive it: new customers, activation rate, frequency, retention. Give each input an owner, and the experiments in each team's backlog will start to line up.
Review it weekly
Put the metric and its inputs on one page and review them in the same weekly meeting where experiments are decided. If a change does not move an input, question whether it belongs on the roadmap at all.