Running a North Star Framework Workshop

How to run a North Star framework workshop: who to invite, a two-hour agenda, silent drafting, convergence, and the follow-up sessions after it.

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At a Glance

Overview

A North Star framework workshop is the session where a cross-functional group first drafts its North Star Metric and the inputs that produce it. The North Star Framework treats this session as the starting point of the whole model: the metric, the inputs and the link to everyday work all begin as sticky notes in one room. This skill covers how to plan, facilitate and close that workshop, and what to schedule after it, which is how most teams define a North Star metric for the first time.

Amplitude publishes the reference format. Its How-to Guide: Running Your North Star Workshop lays out a typical agenda of about two hours in eight parts, from an opening discussion to drafting and converging on candidates. The North Star Playbook says Amplitude has facilitated hundreds of these workshops and has run many successful ones in less than two hours.

Set expectations before anyone arrives. The workshop is designed to produce strong candidates for the metric and its inputs. The guide calls it phase one, and John Cutler warns in it that getting the North Star right can take a couple of weeks or months. A group that expects to leave with a final metric will either force a weak answer or leave disappointed.

A North Star metric workshop is also a stakeholder alignment workshop. Amplitude's Ted Clark says in the guide that even when teams do not leave with the North Star defined, everyone leaves much more aligned, "aligned in a way that they didn't even know they were misaligned before." Much of that comes from making beliefs and assumptions visible, which the agenda is built to do.

The output of this skill is a short record: the game the product plays, the strongest candidates for the metric and inputs, what the group eliminated, what information it still needs, and dated follow-up sessions. If you need to define the metric step by step rather than facilitate a group, Identifying Your North Star Metric covers the thinking in more detail.

How It Works

The agenda moves from shared context to individual ideas to agreement. The guide's eight parts are: an opening discussion on why the group is there; identifying the game the business plays; reviewing what makes a good and bad North Star; an optional abstract exercise; the North Star statement exercise; the structure of the metric and its inputs; a warm-up drafting a North Star for another company's product; and drafting your own North Star and converging (workshop guide). Most parts take about fifteen minutes, and the final drafting part gets about thirty.

The group is deliberately small. The guide asks for the smallest group that still represents each critical discipline, and lists engineering, finance, design, product management, analytics, sales, marketing and customer success. Cutler warns in the same guide that in a big organization, bringing in more than fifteen or twenty people gets hard and overwhelming, which is why the work is done in smaller groups and rounds. Mix lateral, messy thinkers who generate options with analytical people who push toward measurement.

The facilitator matters most. The guide asks for at least one unbiased facilitator, ideally with some positional authority, who sets the agenda, leads discussion and guides activities. It recommends that the facilitator work through the exercises beforehand, perhaps with a trusted colleague. Participants need only a baseline understanding of what a North Star Metric is; the guide notes that too much prior familiarity can trip people up.

Drafting is silent first. The guide asks everyone to spend five to ten minutes brainstorming alone with a blank worksheet, then share in pairs, then bring candidates to the group and evaluate them against the checklist. Its reasoning is that open brainstorming is dominated by a few quick, vocal thinkers and that groups build on the first ideas instead of considering different ones. The same alone, pairs, group sequence is the basis of 1-2-4-All, a Liberating Structures format for engaging everyone at once.

The warm-up lowers the stakes. Drafting a North Star for a familiar product, such as the guide's OpenTable prompt, lets people practice the game, the metric and the inputs without defending their own team's work. When the group then turns to its own product, it already shares a vocabulary.

Convergence closes the session. The guide ends with four questions: which game the business plays, which candidates are strongest, what can be eliminated, and what additional information is needed. Amplitude's workshop article adds the follow-up: Ted Clark recommends one or two refinement sessions within a week and a half of the workshop so people do not lose their train of thought.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Set the purpose and the sponsor

Write one paragraph on why the organization needs a North Star now, using the guide's opening prompts: how clearly people understand the product strategy and how product work connects to financial results. Confirm a sponsor who will attend the opening and act on the result. Decide the scope, whether one product, one business line or the whole company. A scope that is too broad produces arguments about several North Stars instead of one.

Step 2: Choose the facilitator and the group

Pick an unbiased facilitator with enough authority to move the session along, and have them rehearse the exercises. Invite the smallest group that covers each critical discipline, following the workshop guide, and include people who talk to customers often. Balance people who generate ideas with people who test them. Tell everyone the session will produce candidates and that the final definition comes later.

Step 3: Prepare materials and data

Send a short pre-read on what a North Star Metric is and the three games. Pull a quick view of the metrics teams track today, as Amplitude's workshop article suggests, and any research on what customers value. Print or set up the statement worksheet, the checklist and a blank North Star worksheet. Prepare a warm-up product the whole group knows.

Step 4: Open, name the game and set the criteria

Start with the opening discussion, then ask the group to pick a single game: attention, transaction or productivity. Expect this to be the first real disagreement; Ted Clark says in the guide that it often changes the whole focus of the North Star. Review the seven-item checklist and brainstorm a few deliberately terrible North Stars for your product. The anti-examples give the group guardrails for later.

Step 5: Write the statement and learn the structure

Run the statement exercise before any numbers: our path to sustainable growth is a function of our ability to do what, which depends on which inputs. Keep the group on words and add measurement options last. Then explain the metric as a formula of a handful of inputs, and introduce breadth, depth, frequency and efficiency as a common pattern for inputs. Run the warm-up on another company's product to practice.

Step 6: Draft silently, pair, then share

Give everyone five to ten minutes alone with the blank worksheet and the checklist on screen. Pair people to refine each other's drafts, then collect candidates on a shared board. Evaluate them against the checklist and look for differences and common threads. Use the guide's template if people are stuck: "I would be more confident that our current product strategy is setting us up for sustainable long-term growth, if I observed an increase in" a behavior, measured a certain way.

Step 7: Converge and record

Answer the guide's four closing questions out loud and write the answers down: the game, the strongest candidates, what is eliminated, and what information is missing. Assign an owner and a date to each missing piece. Capture disagreements rather than smoothing them over, since they point to beliefs that need testing. Photograph or export the board before anyone leaves.

Step 8: Schedule the follow-up rounds

Book one or two refinement sessions within a week and a half, following Ted Clark's advice in the workshop article. Use them to pull data, pressure-test candidates, bring in stakeholders who were not in the room, and define the metric and inputs precisely. Send a one-page summary of the workshop to everyone who attended and to the sponsor. Plan to share the result later in a company-wide forum.

Best Practices

• Keep the first group small and add people in later rounds. The workshop guide prefers smaller groups and rounds over one crowded session, and a small group can reach agreement that a large one cannot.
• Protect the words-first order. If people start debating thresholds, park the question and return to the statement. The guide advises against getting bogged down in the specifics of a definition before the group has a powerful metric concept.
• Use silent drafting for anything that needs many ideas. It gives introverts and slower thinkers the same airtime as quick talkers and stops the group from anchoring on the first suggestion.
• Invite functions outside product. Cutler says in the guide not to underestimate what other departments can bring, and finance, sales and customer success often know which behaviors predict renewals.
• End with owners and dates. A workshop whose open questions have no owners loses its momentum within days, which is why the follow-up sessions go on the calendar before people leave.
• Treat disagreement as useful output. A clash over the game or the value exchange usually reveals a belief about customers that nobody had said aloud.

Common Mistakes

• Expecting a final metric from one session: The first workshop is phase one. Promise candidates and a plan, and use the follow-up rounds to define the metric precisely.
• Inviting everyone who wants to come: A crowded room drifts into status updates and positioning. Keep the core group small and share the output widely afterwards.
• Jumping straight to measurement: Arguing about data availability in the first hour kills promising ideas. The playbook warns against discarding concepts just because nobody yet knows how to measure them.
• A facilitator with a stake in the answer: If the facilitator's own team would benefit from one candidate, the group will notice. Use a neutral facilitator, or a pair from different teams.
• Skipping the follow-up: Without refinement sessions soon after, the board photo becomes the only record and people drift back to their own metrics. Schedule the follow-up in the closing minutes.

References

• Examples: Worked examples and scenarios
• FAQ: Frequently asked questions
• Parent Method: North Star Framework

Related Skills

• Identifying Your North Star Metric: Words Before Numbers
• Mapping Input Metrics From the North Star to the Work
• North Star Metric Cross-Functional Alignment That Sticks
• Iterating the North Star Metric and Its Inputs

Sources

• Amplitude: How-to Guide, Running Your North Star Workshop
• Amplitude: The North Star Playbook
• Amplitude: Behind the Scenes of a North Star Workshop
• Liberating Structures: 1-2-4-All

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