Draft OKRs

Onboarding squad OKRs, next quarter (draft for Friday)

Objective: Make Fieldnote the place new teams get started.

• KR1: Raise the share of new teams still active in week 4 from 34% to 40%. (Company KR, shared with leadership.)
• KR2: Raise the share of new teams with three or more members joining in week one from 29% to 50%.
• KR3: Cut the median time from sign-up to the first note opened by a second member from 3 days to 1 day.
• Guardrail: Zero open P1 bugs at quarter end, with no new P1s in onboarding flows.

Delivery plan (tracked, not scored): - Invite flow redesign and onboarding emails first, since they target KR2 and KR3. - Onboarding checklist next, then the five templates. - Ten user interviews with teams that stalled after sign-up, to learn why people didn't invite others. - Dark mode, AI summaries, and the four help articles are paused. If leadership has committed to any of them, let's discuss before Friday.

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Note to the squad

Hi all. I reworked the draft before it goes to leadership. Here's what changed and why.

1. One objective, tied to the company goal. The draft had three objectives, and several items (dark mode, AI summaries) didn't connect to the week-4 number. Everything now points at one goal: new teams getting started.

2. We're targeting the lever the data points to. Teams with three or more people joining in week one stay active at 58% in week 4. Everyone else stays at 21%. Only 29% of new teams get there today. Getting more teams to that threshold is the biggest lever we can see. It's correlation, though, not proof. Teams that invite friends early may already be more committed. The invite flow work is our test of whether the link is causal, so we'll watch it closely.

3. Outcomes over outputs. Since bonus multipliers now depend on the OKR score, I want the score to measure whether we moved the number, not whether we shipped things. A "ship 5 templates" KR scores 100% even if nobody uses the templates. The delivery plan still shows what we're building, and it has no bearing on the score.

4. Fewer KRs. Ten KRs across three objectives meant spreading five engineers and a designer very thin. Three KRs plus a guardrail give us a clear focus.

5. Bugs stay in as a guardrail. I cut "fix 50 bugs" because a count rewards small fixes over important ones. Zero P1s is the real bar: we shouldn't trade quality for onboarding speed.

6. Targets I'd like your pushback on. The 50% figure for KR2 is my estimate of what would move week-4 activity toward 40%, based on the 58% and 21% split. If the link is weaker than it looks, that target may be wrong, and I'd rather find out in week three than week twelve. Likewise, the one-day target in KR3 is a judgment call. Tell me if the invite flow can't realistically get there.

Thanks for the work so far. The draft's raw material was solid. It just needed one thread running through it. Let's review progress at week six, and I'll bring any changes to the team first.

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.

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.