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.

Onboarding squad OKRs, next quarter

Objective 1: New teams get their teammates in during week 1, and stay (supports the company goal: make Fieldnote the place new teams get started)

• KR1: Raise the share of new teams with 3+ people in week 1 from 29% to 45%.
• KR2: Cut the median time from sign-up to the first note someone else opens from 3 days to 1 day.
• KR3: Raise the share of new teams active in week 4 from 34% to 40% (shared with the company KR).

Planned bets, not KRs: onboarding checklist, invite flow redesign, 5 templates, onboarding emails. We'll drop or swap any of them if they aren't moving KR1 and KR2.

Objective 2: Keep the product dependable while we change onboarding

• KR1: Zero open P1 bugs at quarter end, and no P1 open longer than 5 days at any point.

Backlog, not this quarter: dark mode, AI summaries, NPS target, help articles.

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Note to the squad

Thanks for the draft. Here's what I changed and why.

1. Outcomes, not deliverables. Most of the draft listed things we'd ship. We could ship all of it and leave week-4 activity flat. The checklist, invite redesign, templates and emails are now the bets we make to hit the KRs.

2. One clear line to the company goal. Teams where 3+ people join in week 1 are still active in week 4 58% of the time, versus 21% for everyone else, and only 29% of teams reach 3+ today. So KR1 is about getting more teams to that point. Reaching 40% overall probably needs about 45% of teams there, assuming the relationship holds. KR2 measures how quickly a new team sees value from a teammate.

3. Cut and moved. Dark mode, AI summaries and the NPS target have no clear link to the company goal, and NPS isn't something onboarding alone can move. They go to the backlog, not the bin. User interviews and help articles are useful, but as activities inside Objective 1, not KRs. "Fix 50 bugs" rewarded volume over impact, so it became a P1 guardrail.

4. Two caveats to settle before Friday. - The data implies a week-4 rate of about 32% (0.29×58% + 0.71×21%), not the 34% in the company KR. Likely a definition or timing difference, but I'll confirm which baseline we're using. - The 58% vs 21% gap is correlation. Teams that invite people quickly may already be more committed, so the real lift from nudging invites will probably be smaller. That's why KR3 sits next to KR1, so we'll see whether the outcome really moves.

5. The bonus link. Since scores now affect everyone's multiplier, the safe play is to pick easy, output-style KRs. I've deliberately not done that. KR1 and KR2 are stretch targets, and I'd rather be upfront about it than quietly sandbag. Before Friday I'll ask leadership and HR how scores convert to multipliers, and I'll push for 0.7 on stretch KRs to count as a good result. I'll share the answer as soon as I have it. If you think a target is unrealistic, tell me before Friday so we can adjust it openly.

Please reply with objections or number challenges by Thursday noon.

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.