1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
🛠️ The Problem with 0-1 Metrics
The Problem with 0-1 Metrics​Dear Reader,​ Welcome back! I hope you had (or still have) a relaxed or eventful (whatever your preference is) summer. I enjoyed the time off and being in places that filled me up. Among others, the baltic see. Which is where I captured one of my favorite summer shots: Before we jump into today's issue, I want to share three things from friends that I believe you should be aware of:
Let's get into this week's issue. ​​Outcomes over Outputs, but not at all cost​: It’s a powerful shift for product teams to use measurable changes in customer behavior (aka Outcomes) to prioritize work and measure progress. However, if that progress takes weeks or months to detect, these metrics are not as helpful as they should be. ​​As Ravi Mehta once said​, “The right goal depends on the team's understanding of what it is trying to accomplish.“ Whether a product team creates a new solution within a company or a newly founded startup, Measuring progress when you don’t have customer signals out of the gate can feel foggy. While you’re on your way toward improving customer behaviors, the feedback loops for your actions are simply not there. There’s not much to check in on a metric that hasn’t moved and, you know, won’t move for months. 0-1 efforts require more pragmatic Output or even Input metrics to measure your progress. Let’s look at an example: An analytics software wants to offer split testing functionality to increase the share of wallet and time spent with existing customers. The outcome to aim for would be the number of started or completed split tests by existing customers. But that metric would only begin to be measurable once the functionality is rolled out to a significant number of customers​—it’s lagging​ to help the team working on this initiative see if they’re on track. The team has to derive influenceable goals throughout the different stages of getting there. Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Do reply. It's motivating. I'm not a robot; I read and respond to every subscriber email I get (ask around). If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here. Thank you for Practicing Product, ​Tim​ Join my In-Person Workshops in BerlinI'm excited to bring my beloved in-person workshops back to Berlin in January 2025. You can choose between 1-day workshops on Product Strategy, Product OKRs, or Product Discovery OR get the full 3-day experience for you or your team.
(early bird pricing is available until Sep 21) What did you think of this week's newsletter? As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery. |
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
Product Practice #407 Your Goal Depends on Another Team — Now What? PUBLISHED May 7, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Your Key Result says to "Improve Conversion Rate by 7%," but you only control on-site search. You want to drive customer retention, but the marketing team is focused on new acquisition. Most teams respond in one of two ways: they water down the goal until it fits their scope (and lose the ambition), or they keep the big goal and quietly accept they can't move it. Both lead...
Product Practice #406 Why your Company's POV on OKRs matters more than Processes PUBLISHED Apr 30, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Before I talk with companies about OKR cadences, templates, or tools, I ask them: "What do you expect to change by using OKRs?" The answers take a bit of time. Not because they don't exist, but because OKRs have been treated as a solution without a problem to solve. OKRs haven't been treated as a product, but as a process without purpose. They've chosen a...
Product Practice #405 How to treat Prototypes as Decision-Making Tools PUBLISHED Apr 23, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO From Strategy Choice to Planned Experiments in One Workshop In my upcoming live remote workshop From Strategy to Discovery, I take you from sharpening your Product Strategy, to defining leading indicators for measuring progress, all the way to prioritized assumptions you need to derisk end-to-end. Three 4h Live Sessions - Lifetime Material and Recording Access - Real Results Join...