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第三章 出发：开始运作一个北极星工作坊=

目录

In this chapter, you will learn:

  • Suggestions for conducting your own North Star workshop
  • Who should participate in your initial North Star workshop
  • Several activities you can complete as a team
  • What you should expect to accomplish by the end of the workshop

在这一章中，你将学到:

  • 关于举办你自己的北极星工作坊的建议
  • 谁应该参加你最初的北极星工作坊
  • 作为一个团队，你可以完成的几个活动
  • 在工作坊结束时，你应该期望完成的工作

Running your Own North Star Workshop

运作你自己的北极星工作坊

In just an hour or two, teams can run their own North Star workshop to identify candidates for their North Star Metric and Inputs.

在一两个小时内，团队就可以运行他们自己的北极星工作坊，以确定备选的北极星指标和输入。

In a focused, collaborative North Star workshop, colleagues from different parts of the organization come together, participate in generative activities, and produce some pretty incredible results. With just a little preparation, you can run your own North Star workshop to kick off your North Star journey.

在一个重点突出、合作性很强的北极星工作坊上，来自组织不同部门的同事聚集在一起，参与这个创造过程，并可以产生一些非常不可思议的结果。只需要一点准备，你就可以开始你自己的北极星工作坊，开始你的北极星之旅。

A North Star workshop doesn’t need to be overly complex. We’ve run many successful workshops in just 60-120 minutes. At the end of this workshop, your team will develop strong candidates for your own North Star Metric and Inputs.

北极星工作坊不需要过于复杂。我们在60-120分钟内举办了许多成功的工作坊。在本次工作坊结束时，你的团队将分析出你自己的北极星指标和输入要素，或者至少是它们的靠谱备选项。

Some teams then conduct additional workshop sessions to precisely define their North Star metric and Inputs, to strengthen the connection between their North Star and their strategy, or to align the North Star to their existing development processes. Other teams address these deeper topics outside of workshops. Whether you do this deeper work in additional collaborative workshop sessions or in smaller subteams, we suggest you start together in a focused workshop session.

A typical agenda for a 120-minute North Star workshop:

  • 15 minutes: Opening discussion on the reasons for the North Star
  • 15 minutes: Activity: Identify the game you are playing
  • 15 minutes: Discussion and activity: What makes a good (and bad) North Star
  • 15 minutes: Discussion: The structure of the north star and Inputs
  • 15 minutes: Activity: Identify a North Star for another product
  • 30 minutes: Drafting your own North Star and converging

然后，一些团队会举办额外的工作坊，以准确界定其北极星指标和输入要素，加强其北极星与其战略之间的联系，或使北极星与其现有的发展进程保持一致。其他团队在工作坊之外讨论这些更深层次的话题。无论你是在额外的协作工作坊会议中还是在较小的子团队中完成这项更深入的工作，我们建议你先一起开一个聚焦的北极星工作坊会议。

120分钟北极星工作坊的典型议程如下:

  • 15分钟: 开始讨论北极星的原因
  • 15分钟: 活动: 确定你正在玩的游戏
  • 15分钟: 讨论和活动: 如何做一个好（不好）的北极星
  • 15分钟: 讨论: 北极星的结构和输入要素
  • 15分钟: 活动: 为另一个产品找到一颗北极星
  • 30分钟: 为你自己的北极星列出草稿并形成方案

Who to Include

包括哪些人

North Star workshops are most successful when the team has the following characteristics:

  • A skilled facilitator. Someone on the team will need to serve as an unbiased facilitator for the workshop. The facilitator will set the agenda, organize the meeting, lead discussions, and guide the team through activities.
  • Familiarity with the framework. The team certainly doesn’t need to be an expert on the North Star Framework. We’ve seen successful workshops where none of the participants had ever worked with the framework before. However, at the very least, the facilitator should familiarize himself or herself with the framework’s structure, connections, and implications. We suggest the facilitator read this entire playbook before the workshop and distribute it to workshop participants.
  • Diverse group of experts. Participants should cover the fundamental areas of your product and business: engineering, finances, design, product management, analytics, sales, and marketing. This should also include key decision-makers and organizational influencers.
  • Data and Insights. Colleagues with key insights about customer needs and behavior, market data, and other qualitative and quantitative insights are vital. You should also include people who frequently interact with your users and customers and can represent their point of view.
Qualitative insights are as important as quantitative data

Don’t neglect qualitative research. Remember, your quantitative data is a reflection of what people do with your product now. To create an effective North Star, discover how people want to use your product and describe their needs and priorities. Stories are as important as statistics.

  • Systems thinkers. Recruit colleagues who are comfortable with using conceptual models, understanding dynamic behavior, recognizing interconnections, identifying feedback, and creating simulation models. See Krystyna Stave and Megan Hopper’s What Constitutes Systems Thinking?: A Proposed Taxonomy for more on systems thinking.
Create safety by reiterating the purpose of the North Star Framework

One common trap is confusing the North Star Framework with a cascading goal framework to track employee performance. Remember, the North Star Framework’s purpose is to use metrics and Inputs to guide a product’s ability to satisfy customers and contribute to business success, not to monitor employee performance.

Psychological safety is an important part of building a successful team because it allows people to speak their minds, raise objections, or make mistakes without fear of punishment or loss of status. You can foster a psychologically safe environment by openly pointing out your own mistakes, celebrating challenges to decisions, and fostering an environment where team members can safely take risks.

Why is this important? Often, the first big hurdle is fear that this new model will be used to measure or even control employees. When viewed that way it can be pretty threatening.

A safer approach is to emphasize that the team is accountable for one thing: iterating on the model and ensuring it reflects reality. Often, that language and perspective is enough to quell people’s fear.

当团队具备以下特征时，北极星工作坊最为成功:

  • 一个熟练的控场者。团队中的某个人将需要作为工作坊的无偏见的主持人。主持人将设置议程，组织会议，引导讨论，并指导团队完成活动。
  • 熟悉框架。这个团队当然不需要成为北极星框架的专家。我们已经看到了一些成功的工作坊，在这些工作坊中，没有一个参与者曾经使用过这个框架。然而，至少，主持人应该熟悉框架的结构、连接和含义。我们建议主持人在工作坊之前阅读整个剧本，并将其分发给工作坊参与者。
  • 不同专家组。参与者应该涵盖你的产品和业务的基本领域: 工程、财务、设计、产品管理、分析、销售和市场营销。这也应该包括关键的决策者和组织影响者。
  • 数据和洞察力。拥有关于客户需求和行为、市场数据以及其他定性和定量洞察力的关键洞察力的同事是至关重要的。你还应该包括那些经常与你的用户和客户进行交互并能够代表他们的观点的人。
定性的见解和定量的数据同样重要

不要忽视质性研究。记住，你的定量数据反映了人们现在如何使用你的产品。要创建一个有效的北极星，发现人们想如何使用你的产品，并描述他们的需求和优先权，这些用户故事和统计数据一样重要.

  • 系统思考者。招募那些熟悉使用概念模型、理解动态行为、识别相互联系、识别反馈和创建模拟模型的同事。看看克里斯蒂娜 · 斯塔夫和梅根 · 霍珀的《系统思维的构成》 ？ : 一个关于系统思考的分类建议
通过重申北极星框架的宗旨来创造安全的沟通环境

一个常见的陷阱是混淆了北极星框架和追踪员工绩效的层叠式目标框架。请记住，北星框架的目的是使用指标和输入要素来指导产品的能力，以满足客户和促进商业成功，而不是监测员工的表现。

心理安全是建立一个成功团队的重要组成部分，因为它允许人们畅所欲言，提出异议，或犯错误，而不用担心受到惩罚或失去地位。你可以通过公开指出自己的错误，庆祝对决策的挑战，以及培养一个团队成员可以安全地承担风险的环境，来营造一个心理安全的环境。

为什么这很重要？ 通常，第一大障碍是担心这种新模式会被用来衡量甚至控制员工。从这个角度来看，它可能是相当危险的。

更安全的方法是强调团队对一件事负责: 迭代模型并确保它反映现实。通常，这种语言和观点足以平息人们的恐惧。

How many people should be included in your workshop?

你的工作坊应该包括多少人？

While you want diverse representation, avoid including too many people in your initial North Star workshop. According to Stanford Business professor Robert Sutton, 「larger teams place often overwhelming ‘cognitive load’ on individual members.」 Sumatton, who studies the composition of effective teams, says people are most effective when working in groups of 「seven plus or minus two.」

当你想要多样化的表现形式时，避免在你最初的北极星工作坊中包含太多的人。斯坦福大学商学院教授罗伯特 · 萨顿说: 「大型团队往往给个体成员带来压倒性的‘认知负担’。」 苏马顿研究高效团队的组成，他表示，人们在「七个正负两个」的小组中工作时，效率最高

Our guideline: keep your group as small as possible, provided you include representation from each critical discipline in your company. Eventually, you will end up building a broader network of advocates, but for now, you’re selecting key contributors to help you get the North Star off the ground.

我们的指导方针是: 保持你的团队尽可能小，只要你包括你公司每个关键领域的代表。最终，你最终会建立一个更广泛的拥护者网络，但是现在，你正在挑选关键的贡献者来帮助你让北极星起飞。

Workshop Opening Discussion

工作坊开幕讨论

Ground your team in shared understanding about the North Star Framework.

让你的团队对北极星框架有共同的理解。

We like to start a North Star workshop with a healthy discussion about the reasons we’re gathering, the problems we’d like to solve, or the changes we’d like to make.

我们喜欢以健康的讨论开始北极星工作坊，讨论我们聚集在一起的原因，我们想解决的问题，或者我们想做出的改变。

Here are some questions to pose during your opening discussion:

  • What would it look like if we had a greater sense of impact in our work? Do we all clearly understand our product strategy? What prevents us from having clarity?
  • What does it mean to be product-led?
  • How is our investment in product now connected to future business performance? What’s the relationship between product work and our financial results?

以下是你们在开场讨论中要提出的一些问题:

  • 如果我们在工作中有更大的影响力，那会是什么样子呢？
  • 我们都清楚地了解我们的产品策略吗? 是什么阻止我们有清晰的认识？
  • 以产品为导向意味着什么？
  • 我们现在对产品的投资与未来的业绩有什么关系？ 产品工作和我们的财务结果之间有什么关系？

Workshop Discussion: Identify the Game You are Playing

工作坊讨论: 识别你正在玩的游戏

Your company is likely playing one of three games. Understanding which one can help you identify your North Star.

你的公司可能正在玩三个游戏之一。了解哪一个可以帮助你识别你的北极星。

Based on our research of products at over 11,000 companies and analysis of three trillion user actions, Amplitude has categorized digital products into one of three possible games.

基于我们对超过11,000家公司的产品的研究，以及对3万亿用户行为的分析，Amplitude 将数字产品归类为三类。

image holder

  • The Attention Game
    How much time are your customers willing to spend in your product?

  • The Transaction Game
    How many transactions does your customers make in your product?

  • The Productivity Game
    How efficiently and effectively can someone get their work done?

  • 注意力游戏
    你的客户愿意在你的产品上花费多少时间？

  • 交易游戏
    你的客户在你的产品中进行了多少交易？

  • 生产力游戏
    一个人如何高效地完成他的工作？

At your workshop, you should discuss these games. The question for participants: which game is our business playing?

在你的工作坊上，你应该讨论这些游戏。参与者的问题是: 我们在玩什么游戏？

While you might think you are playing all of these games, we’ve found that encouraging workshop participants to pick a single game is most fruitful.

虽然你可能认为你在玩所有这些游戏，但我们发现鼓励工作坊参与者确定是某一个游戏是最有成效的。

For example, if you are playing the Productivity game, you must understand that your user chooses your product because she has a job to do. She wants to do it efficiently and without errors. In fact, a measure of success may be that she’s using your product less.

例如，如果你正在玩生产力游戏，你必须理解你的用户选择你的产品是因为她有工作要做。她希望做得有效率，没有错误。事实上，衡量成功的一个标准可能是她减少使用你的产品。

This is very different from the game of Attention, where time spent in the product is more likely to indicate satisfaction. You know you are successful when your user is absorbed in your product and using it more.

这与注意力游戏非常不同，在游戏中，花费在产品上的时间更有可能表明满意度。当你的用户专注于你的产品并且更多地使用它时，你就知道你是成功的。

If you’re playing a Transaction game, on the other hand, you have a different set of challenges: helping customers find the right product for their needs, enact transactions effortlessly, and track production and delivery.

另一方面，如果你正在玩一个交易游戏，你有一系列不同的挑战: 帮助客户找到适合他们需要的产品，毫不费力地进行交易，并跟踪生产和交付。

Stay focused on value exchange

The game should be tied to the event that creates value. For example, I’ve worked with the app team for a major sports league. In their app you can consume free content but also buy different variations of a season pass for premium content, including broadcasts of games. Their initial reaction to a North Star discussion was that they’re playing the transaction game because the user is purchasing a season pass. But a user could buy the pass, never see a single game, and stop their subscription. So that’s not quite right. Instead, their game is attention. That’s the value exchange.

If you’re not certain which game you’re playing, ask yourselves which of these sets of statements most closely corresponds to your product, or which of these products is most similar to yours.

专注于价值交换

确定自己在玩哪种游戏的时候，应该多想想你的产品在哪些事件和场景下最能创造价值。例如，我曾与一个大型体育联盟的应用程序团队合作过。在他们的应用程序中，你可以使用免费内容，也可以购买不同版本的季票，包括比赛转播。对于北极星的讨论，他们的第一反应是他们在玩交易游戏，因为用户正在购买季票。但是一个用户可能买了票，但是从来没去看过比赛，后来就停止订阅了。所以把交易当成他们的业务类型并不完全正确。相反，他们的游戏是关注。这就是价值交换。

如果你不确定你在玩什么游戏，问问你自己这些陈述中哪些最接近你的产品，或者哪些产品最接近你的产品。

You are playing the Attention Game… If you find yourself saying this:

  • Our business benefits directly if customers spend more time with our product.
  • We want customers’ mindshare.
  • Customers use our product to read, watch, listen, and play.

Or your product is similar to this:

  • Facebook (social networking)
  • Netflix (online video)
  • Atlanta Journal
  • Constitution (newspaper)

Example of an Attention oriented North Star Metric:

  • Company: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (newspaper)
  • North Star Metric: Regular readers
  • Definition: Number of subscribers consuming more than 7 articles per month

你在玩注意力游戏.. 如果你发现自己这样说:

  • 如果客户花更多的时间在我们的产品上，我们的业务会直接受益
  • 我们希望得到客户的关注
  • 客户使用我们的产品来阅读、观看、收听和播放

或者你的产品和这个类似:

  • Facebook (社交网络)
  • Netflix (在线视频)
  • 亚特兰大日报
  • 宪法(报纸)

以注意力为导向的北极星指标的例子:

  • 公司: 亚特兰大宪法报报纸
  • 北极星指标: 定期读者
  • 定义: 每月消费超过7篇文章的订阅者数量

You are playing the Transaction Game… If you find yourself saying this:

  • Our business benefits directly if customers participate in the economy using our product.
  • We want customers’ wallets.
  • Payments and commerce are important to us.
  • Customers use our product to purchase, order, measure, transact, and track.

Or your product is similar to this:

  • Amazon (retail and logistics)
  • Walmart (discount retail)
  • Progressive Insurance (personal insurance)

Example of a Transaction oriented North Star Metric:

Company: Walmart (discount retailer) North Star Metric: Full Carts Definition: Number of monthly purchases that contain over a certain number of items.

‌你正在玩交易游戏.. 如果你发现自己这样说:

  • 如果客户使用我们的产品参与经济活动，我们的业务将直接受益
  • 我们需要顾客的钱包
  • 支付和贸易对我们很重要
  • 客户使用我们的产品来购买、订购、测量、交易和跟踪

或者你的产品和这个类似:

亚马逊(零售和物流) 沃尔玛(Walmart)(折扣零售) 进步保险(个人保险)

一个交易导向的例子北极星指标:

公司: 沃尔玛(折扣零售商) 北极星指标: 购物车满车率 定义: 订单额超过一定阈值的订单数量

You are playing the Productivity Game… If you find yourself saying this:

  • Our business benefits directly if customers efficiently accomplish tasks using our product.
  • Efficiency and achievement are important to us.
  • Customers use our product to make, work, complete, configure, and build.

Or your product is similar to this:

  • Salesforce (business & customer management software)
  • Adobe (design and publishing software)
  • LexisNexis (legal research)

Example of a Productivity oriented North Star Metric:

  • Company: LexisNexis (legal research)
  • North Star Metric: Actionable Searches
  • Definition: Percentage of searches that return results selected by users within the first five results.

你正在玩生产力游戏.. 如果你发现自己这样说:

  • 如果客户能有效地使用我们的产品完成任务，我们的业务将直接受益
  • 效率和成就对我们很重要
  • 客户使用我们的产品制造、工作、完成、配置和构建

或者你的产品和这个类似:

  • Salesforce (商业和客户管理软件)
  • Adobe (设计和发布软件)
  • Lexisnexis (法律研究)

以生产力为导向的北极星指标标准的例子:

  • 公司: LexisNexis (法律研究)
  • 北极星指标: 可操作的搜索
  • 定义: 返回用户在前五个结果中选择的结果的搜索百分比

Workshop Activity: What Makes a Good (and Bad) North Star

工作坊活动: 什么构成了一个好的/不好的北极星

Review the characteristics of a good North Star—and try to identify a bad one.

回顾一下好的北极星的特点ーー并试着找出一个不好的。

During your workshop, spend some time reviewing the North Star checklist. Ask yourselves how this checklist applies to your own product. For example, discuss what it means for a metric to be aligned to your product vision, or what a common vanity metric might be at your organization or in your industry.

在工作坊期间，花些时间回顾一下北极星清单。问问你自己这个清单是如何应用到你自己的产品上的。例如，讨论一个与你的产品愿景相一致的指标标准意味着什么，或者在你的组织或者行业中一个常见的虚荣指标是什么。

One activity we’ve found fruitful is to spend a few minutes brainstorming what would be a terrible North Star for your company. These anti-examples free participants’ thinking, and they can set boundaries that will be helpful when you are actually defining your metric and Inputs later on.

我们发现一个富有成效的活动是花几分钟时间来思考对你的公司来说什么是一个可怕的北极星。这些反例激发参与者的思考，他们可以设置界限，这将有助于你实际定义你的指标和输入要素以后。

Workshop Discussion: The Structure of the North Star and the Product Formula

工作坊讨论: 北极星的结构和产品配方

You can think of the North Star Metric and its Inputs as a kind of formula or equation.

你可以把北极星指标及其输入要素看作是一种公式或方程。

It’s important that workshop participants understand the basic structure of the North Star Framework, including the metric and Inputs. Initially, participants might focus on determining a metric only, when in fact the relationship between the metric and the Inputs is critical. It’s the Inputs that are the actionable factors that, in combination, contribute to the North Star Metric. We like to think of the Inputs as the causes that are likely to produce an effect.

重要的是，工作坊参与者了解北极星框架的基本结构，包括指标和输入要素。最初，参与者可能只关注于确定一个指标，而实际上指标与输入要素之间的关系非常关键。输入要素是可行动的抓手，有助于北极星指标的达成。我们喜欢把它们看作是可能产生效果的原因。

Think About Your North Star as a Formula

把你的北极星看作一个函数公式

To determine your metric and Inputs, think conceptually about your North Star as a formula or equation (though few North Stars and Inputs act as true, mathematical functions). As you do, consider the things that you, the product team, can truly influence. The North Star Metric is a function of a handful of factors. How would you define those factors? While this formula approach oversimplifies all the stuff that makes a business succeed, it’s a helpful metaphor for isolating the most important and actionable factors.

为了确定你的指标和输入要素，可以从概念上把你的北极星当成一个函数(尽管很少有北极星指标和输入要素真的是数学公式)。当你这样做的时候，考虑一下你，产品团队，能够真正影响的事情。北极星指标是一系列要素的函数。你如何定义这些要素？ 虽然这种公式化的方法过分简化了所有使企业获得成功的因素，但它却是一个有用的隐喻，可以将最重要和最可行的因素隔离开来。

把北极星当成一个函数

为了确定你的指标和输入要素，把北极星从概念上抽象成一个函数方程。

A Common Input Pattern: Breadth, Depth, Frequency, and Efficiency

一个常见的输入要素模式: 广度、深度、频率和效率

One heuristic that we have found helpful when teams are coming up with Inputs is considering Breadth, Depth, Frequency, and Efficiency. The Inputs to a North Star Metric often follow this pattern, which can easily be adapted to different contexts.

For example, a somewhat straightforward North Star Metric for a high volume e-commerce business like Instacart is 「total monthly items received on time by customers.」 Using the breadth, depth, frequency, and efficiency heuristic, the Inputs for this North Star Metric could be:

  • Breadth: number of customers placing orders each month
  • Depth: number of items within an order
  • Frequency: number of orders completed per customer each month
  • Efficiency: Percentage of orders delivered on time
  • No matter the industry you’re in or the game you’re playing, you can often adapt Breadth, Depth, Frequency, and Efficiency to fit your product.

当团队提出输入要素时，我们发现一个有用的启发式方法是考虑广度、深度、频率和效率。北极星指标的输入通常遵循这种模式，这种模式可以很容易地适应不同的环境。

例如，对于像 Instacart 这样的大规模电子商务企业来说，有点直接的 North Star 指标是「按月客户按时收到的物品总数」 使用广度、深度、频率和效率启发式，北极星指标的输入可以是:

  • 广度: 每月下订单的客户数量
  • 深度: 订单中的项目数量
  • 频率: 每个客户每月完成的订单数
  • 效率: 按时交付订单的百分比

无论你在哪个行业，或者你在玩什么游戏，你都可以通过调整广度、深度、频率和效率来适应你的产品。

Workshop Activity: Build a North Star for Another Product

工作坊活动: 为另一个产品打造北极星

To free your thinking from constraints, warm up by coming up with your own, hypothetical examples of North Star Metrics for products you are familiar with.

为了让你的思维从束缚中解放出来，你可以为自己熟悉的产品想出一些假设性的北极星指标。

For example, pose this challenge to your workshop participants: 「Many of us have used OpenTable to book reservations at a restaurant. Let’s think of a good North Star for OpenTable.」 Then break into small groups, imagining you are on the OpenTable product team.

OpenTable Product
OpenTable allows people to discover restaurants, read reviews, and make online reservations.

OpenTable Business Model

  • Free for diners
  • Restaurants pay a base platform subscription fee, and a per-reservation flat fee

例如，向你的工作坊参与者提出这个挑战: 「我们中的许多人都使用 OpenTable 来预订餐厅。让我们为 OpenTable 想一个好的北极星。」 然后分成几个小组，想象你是 OpenTable 产品团队的一员。

OpenTable 产品
允许人们发现餐馆、阅读评论和在线预订

Opentable 商业模式

  • 免费供食客使用
  • 餐馆需要支付基本的平台订阅费，以及每次预订的固定费用

Each group should:

  • Identify the game you are playing.
  • Determine your Product North Star Metric.
  • Break down the North Star into key Inputs that you can use as building blocks for a product growth model.

每个组别应:

  • 识别你正在玩的游戏
  • 确定你的产品北极星指标
  • 把北极星分解成关键的输入要素，你可以用它作为产品成长模式的基石

This worksheet can help teams work through this challenge.

这个工作表可以帮助团队应对这个挑战。

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You also can show teams a completed worksheet for another product, like this worksheet for Spotify.

你还可以向团队展示另一个产品的已完成的工作表，如 Spotify 的工作表。

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Keep the following cheat sheet handy if teams have any trouble.

如果团队遇到任何麻烦，请准备好下面的小抄。

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At the end of the exercise, everyone should share their worksheets and discuss why they chose the metric and Inputs for this other product.

在练习的最后，每个人都应该分享他们的工作表，并讨论为什么他们选择这个其他产品的指标和输入要素。

Workshop Activity: Collect Candidates for Your Own North Star

工作坊活动: 为你自己的北极星搜集备选项

Everyone on the team should define their own candidate for your North Star Metric and Inputs.

团队中的每个人都应该提出一个他自己觉得靠谱的北极星指标和关联的输入要素，这就是备选项。

All the initial discussions and warm-up activities should help you with the most significant activity of the workshop: working on your own North Star. Start by getting candidates from your participants.

所有最初的讨论和热身活动都会帮助你完成工作坊中最重要的活动: 确定你自己的北极星。首先从你的参与者那里获得备选项开始。

Rather than everyone collaborating aloud, we like to use a silent brainstorming technique for this. Ask everyone on the North Star team to spend 5-10 minutes in a silent brainstorm with the blank worksheet used in the OpenTable activity above.

我们喜欢使用一个沉默的头脑风暴来完成这部分，而不是让大家大声交流和协作。让北极星团队的每个人用上面的空白工作表进行5-10分钟的安静的头脑风暴。

To help the participants, you might share the checklist of criteria on a screen, so everyone can think about what makes a good North Star Metric.

为了帮助参与者，你可以在屏幕上分享标准清单，这样每个人都可以思考什么是好的北极星指标。

Why Silent Brainstorming?

Typical brainstorming sessions tend to be dominated by a handful of vocal quick thinkers—the introverts and deliberators are stifled. Secondly, teams quickly start building on the first few ideas suggested and don’t give enough consideration to entirely different approaches.

We prefer silent brainstorming, where teammates are given time to quietly consider a problem on their own, and then they each share their ideas in pairs or small subgroups and build on them, before sharing with a larger group. Silent brainstorming works especially well with fill-in-the-blank templates or other simple constraints.

为什么沉默的头脑风暴？

典型的头脑风暴会议往往由少数敢于直言的思考者主导ーー内向者和深思熟虑者被扼杀。其次，团队很快开始构建建议的前几个想法，而没有充分考虑完全不同的方法。

我们更喜欢安静的头脑风暴，队友们有时间自己静静地思考一个问题，然后他们分享自己的想法成对或小分组，并在这些想法的基础上，再分享给一个更大的团队。无声的头脑风暴在填空模板或其他简单的约束条件下尤其有效。

Pair and Share

结对与分享

After spending time in silent reflection, it’s great to pair up with a partner. Partners can share their ideas with each other, refining each other’s concepts.

经过一段时间的沉默反思后，和队友一起合作是很棒的。大家可以相互交流想法，提炼彼此的概念。

Finally, share candidates with the group. Evaluate them against the checklist and look for differences and commonalities. Some teams prefer a more formal process with voting, ranking, and sorting (e.g. Bubble Sort), or scoring each candidate metric against each item in the Criteria for a Good North Star checklist. That’s fine, but keep in mind that it is the conversations that really count.

最后，与小组分享自己的备选项。根据检查表评估它们，寻找差异和共同点。有些团队喜欢更正式的流程，包括投票、排名和排序(例如冒泡排序) ，或者根据「好北极星标准」中的每个项目对每个候选指标进行打分。这很好，但是请记住，真正重要的是对话。

Rachel Bethany, Amplitude’s manager of APAC Customer Success and workshop veteran, remarks, 「Teams always seem surprised or concerned when there is debate and disagreement generated by the North Star presentation, but I usually think those are the best moments. It makes it so clear—so quickly—where teams are not well aligned and what the impact of that is.」

Apac 客户成功经理和工作坊资深人士雷切尔 · 贝瑟尼评论道: 「当北极星展示引起争论和分歧时，团队总是显得惊讶，但我通常认为那是最好的时刻。这让问题变得如此清晰——如此迅速——哪些领域的团队不协调，以及这会带来什么影响。」

Just Get Some Candidates on the Table

If you and your team are stuck, get a handful of candidates on the table. Don’t worry about being 「right.」 Throw in some terrible North Star Metrics for fun and contrast. You’ll find that some candidates make more sense than others, and that talking through options can help surface implicit beliefs.

You also can develop options quickly with the help of a fill-in-the-blank template.

Here’s one we like:

「I would be more confident that our current product strategy was working to set us up for sustainable long-term growth, if I observed an increase in (insert customer characteristic behavior or characteristic) , which we could measure by (insert formula and tactics for measuring).」

For example, here is a completed template for a hypothetical company:

「I would be more confident that our current product strategy was working to set us up for sustainable long-term growth, if I observed an increase in customers thoughtfully reflecting on our content, which we could measure by the number of posts made in ‘reflections’ discussion board after viewing a film.

A trap to watch out for is getting bogged down in the specifics of the definition (for example, ‘should it be users with 5 or more actions in 3 days, or 7 or more actions in 4 days?’) before coming up with a metric concept that is powerful and engaging.

把备选项亮出来，别担心

如果你和你的团队陷入困境，那就找几个备选项。不要担心。然后再加上一些糟糕的北极星指标来增加乐趣和对比度。你会发现有些备选项比其他更有意义，并且通过谈论选择可以帮助理清表象背后隐含的信念。

你还可以借助填空模板快速开发选项。

下面是我们喜欢的一个:

如果我观察到(插入客户特征行为或特征)的增长(插入公式和测量策略) ，我会更有信心地认为，我们当前的产品战略正在努力为我们建立可持续的长期增长。

例如，下面是一个假设的公司的完整模板:

我更有信心的是，我们目前的产品战略正致力于让我们实现可持续的长期增长，如果我想知道顾客对我们的内容进行深思熟虑的思考有多少，我们可以通过观看一部电影后在‘评论区’讨论板上发表的帖子数量来衡量这一点。

需要注意的一个陷阱是陷入定义的细节中(例如，「是用户在3天内有5个或更多的操作，还是4天内有7个或更多的操作? 」) 在提出一个强大而吸引人的指标概念之前。

Conclude the Workshop by Converging

以收拢作为工作坊的总结

During your workshop you’ve had generative discussions and likely developed a wealth of ideas. Conclude by converging: coming to agreement and confirming and documenting your decisions. What game are you playing? What are your strongest candidates for a North Star Metric and inputs? If you don’t have one or two leading candidates, what can you eliminate? And, what additional information will you need to finalize your decisions?

在你的工作坊上，你已经进行了生成式讨论，并可能形成了丰富的想法。通过聚合来结束: 达成一致，确认和记录你的决定。你在玩什么游戏？ 对于北极星指标标准，你最有力的候选者是什么？ 如果你没有一个或两个领先的候选人，你能排除什么？ 还有，你需要什么额外的信息来最终确定你的决定？

Some teams are able to dive right into defining the metric at the end of just one workshop. Often, though, this happens through follow-up discussions (see Chapter 4: Defining Your North Star for helpful facilitation tips). Whether you do it now or later, the next step will be precisely defining your North Star Metric and its Inputs.

有些团队能够在一个工作坊结束时直接定义指标标准。然而，这通常是通过后续的讨论来实现的(参见第4章: 定义你的北极星以获得有用的指导建议)。不管你是现在还是以后，下一步将精确地定义你的北极星指标和它的输入。

Chapter in Review

本章回顾

  • You can conduct your own North Star Workshop in 1-2 hours.
  • A small, cross-functional group is a good structure for a North Star team.
  • To align a team and uncover assumptions, identify which of three games you are playing: Transaction, Attention, or Productivity.
  • Before working on your own North Star Metric and Inputs, discuss another product as a warm-up.

  • At the end of the workshop, collect candidates for your own metric and Inputs, pair and share, and then converge on the decisions you’ve made.

  • 你可以在1-2小时内举办你自己的北极星工作坊
  • 对于北极星队来说，一个小型的、跨职能的团队是一个很好的结构
  • 为了调整团队并揭开假设，确定你正在玩的三个游戏中的哪一个: 交易、注意力还是生产力
  • 在开始你自己的北极星指标和输入之前，先讨论一下另一个产品作为热身
  • 在工作坊结束时，为你自己的指标和输入收集备选项，结对和分享，然后在你做出的决定上达成一致

North Star in Action: Netflix and the North Star

北极星在行动: Netflix 和北极星

Fifteen years ago, Netflix wasn’t the media giant it is today. High-speed streaming technology wasn’t yet widely available, and Netflix still was battling traditional video retailers to satisfy the movie-watching public through its innovative distribution model of DVDs mailed to consumers.

15年前，Netflix 还不是今天的媒体巨头。高速流媒体技术尚未普及，Netflix 仍在与传统视频零售商展开竞争，通过其创新的 dvd 发行模式，将 dvd 邮寄给消费者，以满足观看电影的公众。

At the time, retention was a challenge for Netflix. Notably, the first month retention for new members, during their critical free trial period, was 88%, which meant that 12% of members were abandoning the service after just one month. There was plenty of room to improve retention of new members, and improving it could significantly affect Netflix’s business performance.

当时，留存对 Netflix 来说是一个挑战。值得注意的是，在关键的免费试用期，新会员的第一个月留存率为88% ，这意味着12% 的会员在一个月后就放弃了服务。还有很大的空间可以留住新会员，而且改进会显著影响 Netflix 的业务表现。

Gibson Biddle, then the V.P. of Product at Netflix, knew that improving retention would require patience, and he realized that retention was a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. He needed to identify a leading indicator metric that his team could directly influence. He needed a North Star.

当时还是 Netflix 产品部副总裁的 Gibson Biddle 知道提高员工保留率需要耐心，他意识到员工保留率是一个滞后指标，而不是领先指标。他需要确定一个他的团队可以直接影响的领先指标指标。他需要一颗北极星。

So Gibson and his team dug into their data and customer patterns and discovered a characteristic that proved to be a leading indicator of retention for new members: the number of DVDs in a new member’s queue. They learned that if a customer had multiple movies waiting in their queue, that customer had become a more engaged user of the service and was thus far less likely to unsubscribe. So they chose to focus their product work on a very specific metric: the percentage of members who added at least three DVDs to their queue in their first session with the service.

因此，吉布森和他的团队深入研究了他们的数据和客户模式，发现了一个被证明是留住新会员的领先指标的特征: 新会员加入自己观看队列伍中的 dvd 数量。他们了解到，如果一个顾客有多部电影在他们的队列中等待，那么这个顾客已经成为一个更积极的服务用户，因此不太可能取消订阅。所以他们选择将他们的产品工作集中在一个非常具体的指标上: 在他们使用该服务的第一次排队中添加至少三张 dvd 的会员的百分比。

「At Netflix, we knew that improving retention was the critical metric to improve—it would improve both customer and shareholder value. But retention is very hard to move and A/B tests for retention require lots of time to see a meaningful difference,」 said Gibson. 「So we developed more sensitive proxy metrics. Our ‘Percentage of new members who add at least three titles to their queue during their very first session with the service’ is a good example.」

「在 Netflix，我们知道，提高留存率是关键指标，提高它将提高客户价值和股东价值。但是留存率的提高是非常复杂和困难的事情，通过简单的 A/B 测试需要大量的时间和工作才能看到有意义的差异。因此，我们开发了更敏感的代理指标。我们认为第一次使用该服务时，在队列中添加至少三个目标的新成员的百分比就是一个很好的代理指标。」

At the time, only 60% of Netflix’s customers had three or more DVDs in their queue during the first month, which left a large portion of customers for Gibson and his team to focus on. They honed in on ways to make their product work increase the percentage of customers who put three or more DVDs in their queue, and most of their work focused on making the service simpler.

当时，只有60% 的 Netflix 用户在第一个月里有三张或更多的 dvd 在他们的队列中，这使得吉布森和他的团队需要关注很大一部分用户。他们致力于寻找方法使他们的产品发挥作用，从而增加了排队购买三张或更多 dvd 的顾客的比例，他们的大部分工作都集中在简化服务上。

That single metric, the percentage of new members with at least three their queue, became their obsession, their North Star. They were able to prototype and deliver a number of innovative product features and user experience improvements that both simplified and encouraged users to build their queues.

凭借这个单一的指标 —— 拥有至少三张 dvd 的新会员的百分比 —— 作为他们的北极星，Netflix 团队能够原型化并提供一些创新的产品功能和用户体验的改进，来简化用户建立队列的流程，和鼓励用户建立队列。

Over time, Netflix increased this North Star Metric from 60% to 90%, where 90% of customers had at least three DVDs in queue. And this directly influenced first month retention. According to Gibson, an improvement of just two percentage points in first month retention (from 88% to 90%) had a significant influence on Netflix’s business results and profitability. Netflix has been able to repeat this approach with other key strategies, including their streaming service.

随着时间的推移，Netflix 将北星指标从60% 提高到90% ，其中90% 的客户至少有三张 dvd 在排队。这直接影响了第一个月的保留。根据吉布森的说法，第一个月的留住率仅仅提高了两个百分点(从88% 提高到90%) ，就对 Netflix 的业绩和盈利能力产生了重大影响。Netflix 已经能够通过其他关键策略重复这种方法，包括他们的流媒体服务。

北极星的魅力

因为有了「队列中超过3个 dvd 的用户数量」作为北极星，Netflix 团队能够原型化并提供一些创新的产品功能和用户体验的改进，来简化用户建立队列的流程，和鼓励用户建立队列。

It’s no exaggeration to say that the careful, customer-centric implementation of a North Star Metric and the North Star Framework, combined with a disciplined focus on innovation and execution, fueled Netflix’s ability to become the cultural behemoth that it is today.

毫不夸张地说，以客户为中心的北星指标和北星框架的谨慎实施，加上对创新和执行的严格关注，推动了 Netflix 成为今天这个文化巨兽的能力。