North star metrics without the gaming
How to pick one number without letting the team quietly optimise the wrong thing.
A north star should express value received, not activity performed. "Weekly active users" measures whether people opened the thing; "weekly reports shared" measures whether it did something for them.
Every north star can be gamed, so ship it with guardrails: a counter-metric that must not degrade, one quality signal, and one cost signal. Sessions up while task completion falls is a regression, whatever the headline says.
One number, reviewed at a fixed cadence, with the guardrails on the same slide. If the guardrails live in a different dashboard nobody opens, you effectively don't have them.
The shape of it
- 01
Value delivered
The action where the user gets what they came for.
- 02
Counter-metric
The thing that must not get worse to achieve it.
- 03
Quality signal
Error rate, rework, complaint volume.
- 04
Cost signal
Unit economics — especially for AI features.
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