Intent

A goal tracks what we want to accomplish, but it does so imperfectly because no metric can fully capture what we aim to achieve.

Intent is the antidote. It tells us how to act, constraining and directing our pursuit of a goal. It helps us understand how to act when the metric is incomplete, what tradeoffs are acceptable, and what failure modes to reject. Without clear intent, teams can hit the goal while undermining their organization’s long-term interests.

Example

• Goal: Increase DAU by 1.0% by the end of the year.
• Intent: Increase long-term DAU (3-5 years) by building features people genuinely want. Success means marginal users return more often, more new users become active users, and user sentiment improves. Failure means boosting DAU through shallow reactivation or other tactics that raise the number without creating sustained engagement.