North Star Metric

A North Star Metric (NSM) is the single metric that best captures the core value you create. For an organization, it represents the ultimate outcome that all other metrics and OKRs should contribute toward. For example, Spotify's North Star is "time spent listening," Airbnb's is "nights booked," and Slack's is "daily active users."

The North Star Metric serves as a unifying measure across the organization. While different teams may have their own OKRs (product team, growth team, operations), all of them should ultimately drive the North Star. This prevents teams from optimizing locally in ways that hurt the overall business.

Choosing a strong North Star requires understanding what truly drives your business value. It should be: a leading indicator (predicts long-term health), a lagging indicator (captures outcome), easy to understand (not a complex formula), and directly influenced by team effort. The North Star should remain relatively stable for years, while OKRs change quarterly. If you're constantly changing your North Star, it's probably not fundamental enough.