Custom goals

Half the meeting goes on the metric. None of it should.

A goal is a number your whole company reads the same way. Define it once and every dashboard, alert, report and AI answer uses that definition — so the review starts at the decision instead of at whose spreadsheet is right.

  • Recomputed daily
  • Signups and logins built in
  • Replaces Geckoboard and Klipfolio
Sound familiar?

Everybody has the number. Nobody has the same one.

“Depends which dashboard you are looking at.”

Activation means one thing in the board deck, another in the growth dashboard and a third in a spreadsheet nobody owns.

“Are we on track?”

Somebody rebuilds the number by hand the night before the review, and the review starts by arguing about how they built it.

“Nobody told me it moved.”

The metric changed on a Tuesday and the people who own it found out at the monthly, by which point the cause is cold.

One definition

Four numbers.
Zero agreement.

Board deck

71%

Screenshot from last Monday

Growth dashboard

58%

Refreshed just now

Spreadsheet

≈ 60%?

Nobody remembers the formula

#growth on Slack

“I think it’s ~65”

9 replies, no resolution

Activated accounts · Q3Recomputed today

62%

of a 1,400-account target

One definition, read by every board, alert and agent answer.

Keep scrolling — they converge

What you get

Written once. Read everywhere.

One definition

The number everyone quotes, defined in one place.

Pick the events that count and the window they count in. Every board, alert, report and agent answer then reads that goal — so the meeting starts at the decision instead of at the metric.

  • Signups and logins are first-class goals with no bespoke tracking
  • Recomputed daily, so the board is never last week’s snapshot
  • The same definition the AI reads when you ask it a question
Activated accounts · Q3Recomputed today

70%

of a 1,400-account target

One definition, read by every board, alert and agent answer.

Pacing · “Slowed 8% after Tuesday’s release”
Pacing, with a cause

You can see it moving, and why.

The goal card draws where you are against where you should be by now, and opens the funnel it came from — so a number that slipped is a lead rather than a line on a chart.

  • Pacing against target, not just a raw delta
  • The step with the biggest fall-off, called out
  • One click from the goal to the funnel, and on to the recordings
Progress to targetLast 28 days
Target100%
This week63%

Biggest drop — 37% lost here · watch the friction sessions

Last week26%
Baseline6%
Why it stays true

A shared number only works if it cannot drift quietly.

Activated accountOwner · Dana R.

Definition

signed_up → used_feature within 14d
Progress to target71%

Change record

Unchanged since 12 June · agreed by 4 people

Illustrative — an edit is recorded, so a definition change is never mistaken for progress.

Owned by a person

A goal has an owner, and the owner is who gets told. Metrics without a name attached are the ones that drift for a quarter.

Changed on purpose

Editing a definition is deliberate and recorded, so a number that moved because the definition moved is never mistaken for progress.

Read by the agent too

Ask "are we on track" and the answer comes from the same goal your dashboard uses — not from a second interpretation of the same events.

Daily
Goal progress is recomputed on a schedule, so the number on the board is today’s number.
One owner
Every goal has a person attached, and that person is who gets told when it moves.
Built in
Account creation and return visits are goals out of the box, with no tracking to maintain.
In your words

What the review is actually asking.

  • Are we actually on track this quarter?
  • Does everyone agree what “activated” means?
  • Which campaign moved the goal, not just the traffic?
  • Who needs to know this number changed today?
  • What did we do differently in the week it improved?
Before you ask

The questions before you agree a number.