North Star Workshop Facilitator's Template

This document is a step-by-step guide for facilitating a 2-hour workshop to define your product's North Star Metric (NSM) and build the foundation of its metric tree.

Facilitator's Note

The goal of this workshop is not to leave with a perfect, finalized metric. The goal is to leave with strong, well-reasoned, and aligned-upon hypotheses that can be validated with data after the workshop. Your role is to guide the discussion, ensure all voices are heard, and keep the team focused on the principles of a good NSM.

Pre-Workshop Checklist

✅ Participants (Invite 4-5 Key Stakeholders)

• [ ] Product: [Name of Product Leader]
• [ ] Engineering: [Name of Engineering Lead/Manager]
• [ ] Design: [Name of Design Lead]
• [ ] Analytics/Data: [Name of Data Analyst/Scientist]
• [ ] Marketing/Sales/CS: [Name of Lead from GTM team]
• [ ] Facilitator: You! [Your Name]

✅ Preparation Artifacts (Share with participants 24 hours before)

• [ ] Link to the company's mission and product vision statement.
  • Link: [Insert Link Here]
• [ ] Link to the high-level product roadmap.
  • Link: [Insert Link Here]
• [ ] Link to user personas or target audience overview.
  • Link: [Insert Link Here]
• [ ] Link to a user journey map.
  • Link: [Insert Link Here]

Workshop Agenda (2 Hours)

Part 1: Opening & Alignment (15 mins)

Goal: Ground the team in a shared understanding of the "why" behind the workshop and the core principles of the North Star Framework.

Facilitator Script:

"Welcome, everyone. Thanks for being here. The goal of this session is to align on a single, powerful metric that will guide our product strategy—our North Star. A good North Star Metric helps us make better, faster decisions and ensures we're all pulling in the same direction.

Today, we're not aiming for a final, perfect answer. We're aiming to generate strong hypotheses that we can then validate with data.

Let's quickly review what makes a good North Star Metric. It should:

1. Express customer value.
2. Be a leading indicator of revenue.
3. Be actionable by our team.

Any questions before we dive in?"

Part 2: The Game We Play (30 mins)

Goal: Focus the brainstorming by identifying the fundamental nature of the value your product delivers.

Facilitator Script:

"To help us focus, let's define the 'game' our product is playing. Most successful products win in one of three ways. I'll describe them, and then we'll discuss and vote on which one best fits [Your Product Name]."

• The Attention Game: Success is measured by the time customers spend in the product. (e.g., Netflix, TikTok, Spotify).
• The Transaction Game: Success is measured by the number of commercial transactions that occur (e.g., Amazon, Uber, Airbnb).
• The Productivity Game: Success is measured by how efficiently and effectively a user can accomplish a task (e.g., Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce).

Facilitator Script:

"Let's discuss for 10 minutes. Which of these games best describes the core value we provide? After our discussion, we'll do a quick vote."

(Run discussion and vote. Announce the winning "game" to frame the next activity.)

Part 3: Brainstorming & Selection (45 mins)

Goal: Generate and converge on 1-2 strong candidates for the North Star Metric.

Facilitator Script:

"Great, we've aligned that we're playing the [Chosen Game] game. Now, let's brainstorm some potential North Star Metrics."

1. Individual Brainstorming (10 mins):

   "Everyone, please take the next 10 minutes to silently write down 3-5 potential NSM candidates on your sticky notes. Remember our checklist and the 'game' we're playing."

2. Group & Theme (15 mins):

   "Okay, time's up. Let's go around and have everyone share their ideas as we place them on the board. We'll group similar ideas together."

3. Dot Voting (5 mins):

   "Now that we have our clusters, everyone gets three votes. Place your dots on the metric candidates you believe are the strongest contenders for our North Star."

4. Debate & Refine (15 mins):

   "The votes are in. Our top candidates are [Top Voted Metric 1] and [Top Voted Metric 2]. Let's spend the next 15 minutes debating these. Let's use the NSM checklist to guide our discussion. Can we refine the wording to make them even stronger?"

Part 4: Building the Tree (30 mins)

Goal: Begin decomposing the top NSM candidate into actionable inputs and identify critical counter-metrics.

Facilitator Script:

"This has been incredibly productive. Let's focus on our top candidate: [Primary NSM Candidate]. A North Star is an 'output' metric. To make it actionable, we need to identify the 'input' metrics our teams can actually influence. Let's use the Breadth, Depth, Frequency, and Efficiency framework to brainstorm some Level 1 inputs."

• Brainstorm Inputs (20 mins):

  • Breadth: How many users experience value? (e.g., # of active users)
    • Ideas: [Brainstorm here]
  • Depth: How much value do they experience? (e.g., # of features used)
    • Ideas: [Brainstorm here]
  • Frequency: How often do they experience value? (e.g., # of sessions/week)
    • Ideas: [Brainstorm here]
  • Efficiency: How quickly do they experience value? (e.g., time to value)
    • Ideas: [Brainstorm here]

• Brainstorm Counter-Metrics (10 mins):

  "Finally, let's think about guardrails. If we focus obsessively on [Primary NSM Candidate], what could go wrong? What critical metric could we harm unintentionally? Let's list 2-3 critical counter-metrics to monitor."

  • Ideas: [Brainstorm here]

Post-Workshop Next Steps

Facilitator Script (Closing):

"This has been a fantastic session. We've aligned on our 'game,' identified strong candidates for our North Star, and started building out the metric tree.

The output of this workshop is a set of hypotheses.

The next step is for the product and data teams to take these hypotheses and validate them with historical data. We need to see if changes in our proposed inputs have actually correlated with long-term retention and revenue.

Thank you all for your focus and valuable contributions."

✅ Action Items

• [ ] Owner: [Facilitator Name] - Clean up and share the workshop board/document with all participants.
• [ ] Owner: [Data Analyst Name] - Begin correlation analysis on the proposed NSM and input metrics.
• [ ] Owner: [Product Leader Name] - Schedule a follow-up meeting in 2 weeks to review the data validation and make a final decision on the NSM.