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Key metrics. these are the key indicators of whether your approach is working. Think about what metrics indicate progress toward your vision.What metrics will you measure to know if each element of your RDCL strategy is working?Hypotheses. Your hypothesis identifies the connection between what you deliver and the metric. You can write a hypothesis using the following Mad Libs statement: If [experiment], then [outcome], because [connection].Activities to set up the experiment. In this section of the template you can identify the tasks needed to set up your experiment. If you’re using an Agile development process, these activities drive your Agile Sprint.Align on what you’ll measure.Create a safe environment to discuss metrics.Manage progress through regular feedback.
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Chapter 6. Execution and measurement
Taking action
Your product may seem successful when you track popular metrics such as daily active users, how likely your users are to recommend your product (Net Promoter Scores), and revenues. But each of these popular metrics comes with assumptions that may not hold true for your business. A vision-driven product is not justified in itself; because it’s a mechanism to create the change you envision, it’s successful only if it’s bringing about that change. This is why in the RPT way, instead of measuring popular metrics, you have to measure what’s right for your organization.
When you use this template, you can think about what metrics would indicate progress toward your vision and strategy. When you think about your vision as a hypothesis, you can measure progress by asking, “What metrics would indicate whether we’re bringing about the world we describe in this vision?” Similarly, each element of your strategy represents what you think will work. Your experiments and metrics will validate that. For each element of your RDCL strategy, you’ll want to test your approach through an experiment and track metrics that indicate whether your actionable plan is working. Remember to go back and update your RDCL strategy as you learn from your iterative execution and measurement.
When you use this template, you can think about what metrics would indicate progress toward your vision and strategy. When you think about your vision as a hypothesis, you can measure progress by asking, “What metrics would indicate whether we’re bringing about the world we describe in this vision?”
Similarly, each element of your strategy represents what you think will work. Your experiments and metrics will validate that. For each element of your RDCL strategy, you’ll want to test your approach through an experiment and track metrics that indicate whether your actionable plan is working. Remember to go back and update your RDCL strategy as you learn from your iterative execution and measurement.
Using Radical Product Thinking with iterations
Hypothesis-driven execution shows that Radical Product Thinking pairs well with feedback-driven execution methodologies such as Lean Startup and Agile. A hypothesis-driven approach means starting with the mindset that your vision and strategy are hypotheses. Radical Product Thinking helps you define and communicate what you’re building and why. Lean and Agile help you execute, learn, and iterate under uncertainty. As you learn from your hypothesis-driven execution, you’ll go back and refine your strategy, and possibly your vision, based on these learnings.
To avoid becoming iteration-led, you must ensure that your Lean and Agile activities are driven by your vision and strategy.
Usie the RPT approach for execution and measurement to communicate your hypothesis and the experiment you were running, what you learned, and how it’s shaping the next set of experiments you’re going to run. You can also use the RPT approach to prioritization as you plan what you’ll build in your next increment—you can use the two-by-two vision-fit-versus-survival rubric to balance progress toward the vision and short-term business needs as you prioritize tasks and features.
As you learn from the experiments, you may discover the need to course correct or change your direction more dramatically. You could formalize this communication by setting up a regular cadence for reviewing your vision and RDCL strategy—for example, you may consider doing this every month as an early stage startup or every six months for a more mature product.
The danger of setting goals for product metrics
When you are building products, setting goals for product metrics is particularly contraindicated. The process of building a product is filled with uncertainty where there are few right answers. Studies have found that on a complex task where a correct strategy wasn’t obvious and when performance was more a function of strategy than of task effort, do-your-best instructions led to better results than specific goals. In such cases, they found that specific goals may discourage experimentation and adaptive behavior and ultimately limit innovation.
Another problem with setting goals for a few product metrics is that it narrows the focus to optimizing just those few metrics. To build successful products, you may have several hypotheses on what you could do better for your user, and as a result, you may be measuring and analyzing a large number of metrics. But OKRs are designed to get you to focus on just a few key metrics. Employees may optimize for those narrow measures of success, but this may come at the expense of other KPIs that you’re not measuring. OKRs may be helping you reach the local maximum instead of the global maximum. In fact, researchers found that when individuals were given specific, challenging goals, it inhibited their learning from experience and degraded their performance compared to being given the simple instruction “do your best.”
The case against goal setting becomes even more damning when it comes to stretch goals. Studies have found that the use of goal setting for “management by objectives” creates a focus on ends rather than means. Researchers found that people who were given specific goals were more likely to engage in unethical behavior than people who were told to do their best. Even more importantly, they found that the relationship between goal setting and unethical behavior was particularly strong when people fell just short of reaching their goals.
Ironically, setting performance goals and OKRs can drive pursuits of local maxima and distract us from finding the global maximum. It’s time to abandon the approach of using product metrics to set performance goals. It’s time for a more radical approach.
Measurement the RPT way
The RPT approach to measurement is designed as a collaborative approach to help your team to continuously learn and improve your product in an ethical manner. This means aligning the team on what metrics indicate whether your product is creating the change you intended and then managing progress through regular feedback.
The RPT approach to crafting a vision gives teams a clear picture of the world you’re collectively bringing about, and the RDCL strategy helps you translate that vision into an actionable plan. You can use the vision and strategy to align the team on the direction and magnitude of the change you want to bring about. By running these cocreation sessions as group exercises, you’ll have the team’s participation and buy-in on where you’re going. Once you have a clear vision and strategy, you can list the key metrics that would indicate progress—just refrain from setting targets. Periodically you’ll need to review whether these metrics continue to be the right ones to measure.
Managers can give teams regular feedback on metrics instead of managing progress by setting goals for what the team should achieve. You’ll need to develop a joint understanding of the baseline metrics today and talk about what improvements you want to see, how fast you want to see those improvements, and how that affects priorities. While goal setting and management by objectives are analogous to an end-of-the-year exam, regular feedback cycles throughout the year create opportunities for continuous learning.
Key takeaways
The execution and measurement template includes three elements:
Setting goals for product metrics is tempting, but you must resist.The RPT way is a collaborative approach to measure and learn as a team.
To align your team on metrics and replace goal setting through OKRs, you can take these three practical steps:
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