Is Your Team Aligned? The Power of Shared Goals in PLG 🤝

👋 Welcome to Inspired Momentum!

In Product-Led Growth (PLG), success isn’t just about having a great product—it’s about having a team that’s aligned, focused, and working toward shared goals. Misalignment can lead to inefficiencies, conflicting priorities, and missed opportunities.

This week, we’ll explore:

1. Why shared goals are critical in PLG.

2. Signs of misalignment and how to fix them.

3. A framework to align your team for better results.

Let’s sync up and get started!

🤔 Why Shared Goals Are Crucial in PLG

In a PLG strategy, every team—product, marketing, sales, and customer success—drives growth. Without shared goals:

• Teams may focus on conflicting priorities (e.g., marketing optimizing for signups while product optimizes for activation).

• Collaboration breaks down, leading to inefficiencies.

• Metrics get siloed, making it harder to measure success.

The Result: Slower growth and a fragmented user experience.

The Fix: Align your team with shared goals and metrics that directly relate to your product’s success.

🚩 Signs Your Team May Be Misaligned

• Conflicting Objectives: Teams have KPIs that don’t complement each other.

• Siloed Communication: Limited collaboration between departments.

• Inconsistent Messaging: Users experience disjointed interactions across touchpoints.

• Decision Paralysis: Teams struggle to agree on priorities or next steps.

If any of these sound familiar, it’s time to recalibrate your approach.

🎯 A 3-Step Framework to Align Your Team

1. Define Your North Star Metric (NSM)

   Your NSM is the one metric that reflects your product’s value and growth. Examples include:

   • Slack: The number of teams sending 2,000+ messages.

   • Spotify: Time spent listening to music per user.

   • Dropbox: The number of files uploaded/shared per user.

   Action: Choose an NSM that connects all teams and reflects your product’s core value.

2. Set Team-Specific Sub-Goals

   Once the NSM is defined, break it down into actionable sub-goals for each team:

   • Marketing: Drive high-quality traffic that converts into active users.

   • Product: Optimize onboarding to reduce time-to-value.

   • Customer Success: Increase retention and drive upsells.

   Action: Ensure sub-goals are measurable, aligned with the NSM, and don’t compete with each other.

3. Build a Culture of Collaboration

   Foster cross-functional collaboration by creating systems for regular alignment:

   • Hold bi-weekly sync meetings to discuss progress on shared goals.

   • Use collaborative tools like Miro or Asana to keep everyone updated.

   • Celebrate wins and acknowledge contributions from all teams.

   Action: Create a real-time feedback loop where teams share insights and align strategies.

🛠️ Tools to Keep Teams Aligned

1. OKR Frameworks: Align objectives and key results across teams.

2. Dashboards (e.g., Amplitude, Looker): Provide a centralized view of progress on key metrics.

3. Collaboration Platforms (e.g., Slack, Notion): Streamline communication and project tracking.

🚀 Real-World Example: How Notion Keeps Teams Aligned

The Challenge: As Notion grew, they needed to ensure marketing, product, and customer success worked toward the same goals.

The Solution:

1. Defined their NSM: The number of active teams using Notion daily.

2. Set team-specific sub-goals:

   • Marketing focused on driving traffic to templates for team use cases.

   • Product improved team onboarding to reduce friction.

   • Customer success engaged high-value teams to expand usage.

The Result: By aligning around shared goals, Notion grew rapidly while maintaining a seamless user experience.

Your Takeaway: A shared focus on meaningful metrics drives collaboration and growth.

💡 Quick Tips to Align Your Team Today

1. Host a workshop to define your North Star Metric and align teams around it.

2. Identify and resolve conflicting KPIs across teams.

3. Introduce regular syncs to ensure ongoing alignment and collaboration.

📣 Share Your Alignment Story!

How does your team stay aligned in your PLG strategy? Reply to this email and share your tips—I’d love to feature your story in a future issue!

Until next time,
Filippo

P.S. Know a team struggling with alignment? Share this newsletter and help them get back on track!