Draft OKRs

To the Onboarding Squad:

Thanks for putting these together. I’ve rewritten our OKRs for leadership. Before I explain why, please note HR’s rule: our bonuses are now tied directly to our OKR scores. That means our OKRs must be about outcomes, not output, and they must tightly align with the company goal.

Here is what I changed:

1. Dropped the "feature laundry list." Draft 1 listed outputs (checklists, dark mode, 50 bugs). If we ship all those and week 4 retention doesn't budge, leadership fails us—and our bonuses drop. We need to focus on what happens to the user, not what we build.
2. Anchored on the Company Goal: Leadership wants week 4 team retention up from 34% to 40%. Our entire quarter must serve this.
3. Used our Data: Our data shows a massive retention cliff: teams where 3+ people join in week one retain at 58%, versus 21% for everyone else. Right now, only 29% hit that 3+ threshold. Furthermore, the median time to a shared note is 3 days—too slow.

Here is the finalized version going to leadership on Friday:

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Q3 Onboarding Squad OKRs

Objective: Get new teams collaborating faster so they stick around.

• KR 1: Raise the share of new teams with 3+ active members in week 1 from 29% to 40%. (Directly attacks our biggest retention lever).
• KR 2: Reduce the median time from sign-up to the first note opened by a second team member from 3 days to under 24 hours. (Accelerates "time-to-value" and teamwork).
• KR 3: Raise the share of new teams still active in week 4 from 34% to 40%. (Our direct contribution to the company goal).

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What this means for us: Features like the checklist, templates, AI summaries, and invite flow redesign are still our tools to hit these goals, but we’ll prioritize them based on whether they actually drive team invites and fast collaboration. Let’s crush this.

Objective: Help new teams reach shared value quickly and make Fieldnote their place to get started.

Key results 1. Increase the share of new teams still active in week 4 from 34% to 40% (shared with the company goal). 2. Increase the share of new teams with three or more people joining in their first week from 29% to 40%. 3. Reduce the median time from sign-up to the first note opened by someone else from 3 days to 1 day.

Candidate initiatives: Test an onboarding checklist, templates, invite-flow changes and onboarding emails. Use interviews and support feedback to guide the work; treat bug fixes as necessary reliability work, not OKRs.

Note to the squad

I replaced launch counts and broad activity goals with measurable outcomes tied to the company’s week-four retention goal. The data suggests teams that bring in three or more people early are more likely to stick around, and getting a note opened by someone else is a concrete sign of shared value. The feature ideas may help achieve these results, but shipping them isn’t success by itself.

I left out NPS, dark mode, AI summaries, bug counts, interviews and help articles as KRs because they don’t directly show whether onboarding is working. They can still be useful work or learning activities. Since OKR scores affect bonuses, let’s agree on cohort definitions, measurement and ownership before the quarter starts—and review progress against the same definitions throughout.

Proposed onboarding OKRs — next quarter

Objective: Help new teams experience shared value quickly and keep collaborating.

The targets for KRs 2 and 3 are proposed, pending a feasibility review before leadership approval. They are not forecasts of retention impact.

Measurement and quality guardrails

• Freeze cohort eligibility, “active,” membership, and shared-note definitions before the quarter starts. Use consistent definitions for baselines and results.
• Score week-4 retention only on cohorts that have reached week 4; report immature cohorts separately.
• Reconcile the data before approval: the supplied segment figures imply approximately 32% overall retention, rather than 34%. Confirm whether they use different cohorts or definitions.
• Track onboarding reliability alongside these KRs. Critical onboarding defects are release blockers, not a bug-count target.
• Improve collaboration through genuine value—not forced invitations or changes that artificially inflate membership.

Candidate initiatives — not scored key results

Prioritize the checklist, invite-flow improvements, a small set of useful templates, and lifecycle emails according to their expected contribution to these outcomes. Use interviews and funnel analysis to choose and refine experiments.

Defer dark mode and AI summaries unless evidence shows they address a major onboarding barrier. Publish help content where research identifies a specific need.

Note to the squad

I replaced three broad objectives and a shipping checklist with one focused objective and measurable user outcomes. Launches, interviews, articles, and bug fixes are ways to make progress; completing them does not prove that onboarding improved.

Early team participation is our strongest available signal: teams with three or more people joining in week 1 have much higher week-4 retention. That is correlation, not proof of causation, so we’ll test whether our changes improve retention rather than assume invitations alone will do it.

I also narrowed the scope for our five-engineer, one-designer squad. NPS is too broad to diagnose this onboarding problem, while dark mode and AI summaries would compete with the core work.

Because OKR scores now affect bonuses, I want targets, scoring rules, guardrails, and shared ownership agreed before the quarter—not adjusted afterward. We should review the bonus linkage with leadership and HR so it does not reward metric manipulation or discourage honest experiments.