Job Mission with OKRs

Examples
Supplement to the book Never Search Alone
By Phyl Terry
All Rights Reserved

The following are Job Missions that CG members created during job
searches/promotions.

As I suggest in Never Search Alone, you want to lay out objectives and then tie those
objectives to key results. Once you create a draft job mission with OKRs (objectives and
key results), then run it by your hiring manager for alignment. Doing so will impress
them and will help you gain clarity on the role.

If you come to agreement on the Job Mission and OKRs and then they make you an
offer, you can use this as the basis for negotiating the budget and resources you will
need to deliver on the agreed-upon OKRs.

1
Table of Contents

Individual Contributor 3
1: Principal Product Manager – Search & Discovery 3
Manager + Director 6
1. Director of Product Management 6
2. Director of Employee Technology at Amazon 7
VP, GM, SVP 8
1: Game Design General Manager with OKRs 8
2: General Manager, Media Company 9
3: SVP of Product at Consumer Subscription Business 11
4. EVP at a Bank 15
5. SVP of Product and Emerging Business 18
6. SVP of Product 21
7. VP, Nonprofit world 23
CEO 28
1: CEO of a FinTech (subsidiary of a larger financial services company) 28
First Drafts of Job Missions 32
1. Chief Digital Officer at a Large Transportation Company 32

2
Individual Contributor

1: Principal Product Manager – Search & Discovery

Here is an actual job mission anonymized.

This job seeker added a number of elements, which you can feel free to copy.

This is a very detailed Job Mission - ask your JSC for help in determining what level of
detail might be necessary/helpful for you and the particular job you are interviewing for.

I do like much of what they have done here including adding their assessment of the
company’s strategy, their simple statement about their job mission and main objective
(and how that ties to company mission/strategy), details on their strategy to deliver on
the OKRs, and notes on the cross-functional teams that they will need to work with.

This level of detail led to a rich discussion with the hiring manager about the role’s
scope, challenges and key stakeholders. In fact – and this is amazing – crafting this Job
Mission and presenting it to the hiring manager had two immediate outcomes: 1) the
company waived their normal take-home exercise for candidates; and, more importantly,
2) the hiring manager made an offer shortly thereafter.

Wow.

But that’s not all.

The job seeker used this first draft as a working doc and added more detail to it
throughout post-offer follow up conversations with cross-functional partners and the
hiring manager on key areas of uncertainty. Ultimately this process gave the job seeker
the confidence to accept the offer and then set them up for success in their first month.

[Company] Mission
[Company’s] mission is to make daily life effortless. [Company] provides the modern-day
consumer's go-to solution for immediate everyday needs.

Job Mission and Main Objective

The mission for this role is to create an effortless, fast experience for finding what you
want or need within the app. Be a proxy for the customer in working with
cross-functional teams.

3
Why?
● [Company]’s mission and value prop is all about instant needs. That means the
shopping experience must feel effortless and fast.

● The current [Company] app is out-of-date with table stakes search and discovery
features and capabilities which are affecting business growth potential (e.g.
filtering, semantic search / taxonomy, personalized search, UX of category
browse)

● The [Company] strategy to expand internationally and via category expansion

(e.g. grocery) will increase the challenges ahead to provide an effortless search
experience due a more diverse audience and high inventory of items

Key Results
● Improve search relevancy by x% (calculated via a formula that takes into account
% of search requiring requery, autocompletion / search CTR, reciprocal ranking,
# of clicks before add to cart)
● Improve search / browse / site nav speed by x% (e.g. time from app open to add
to cart)
● Improve discovery effectiveness (e.g. usage of category browse, time from
browse to add to cart, clicks on recommended items/section)
● Improve product detail page effectiveness (e.g. by increasing % converted from
PDP, time on PDP, cart size)
● Improve downstream metrics: Revenue (e.g. Cart value, LTV), Retention by x%

Strategy (how I’ll achieve these OKRs)

● Better search and browse UX: [Company] has already and is investing in
technical teams to build out world-class search algorithms but needs to leverage
these to make the user experience effortless via new frontend features.

● Personalization: [Company] can personalize the user experience for search and
browse (including autocomplete and subcategories) based on data it is collecting
already on which product categories and pages users have visited, their prior
query search terms, and where they are located (e.g. US / Europe). It can also
use this data to drive better recommendations for additional items to buy.

● Additional & Consistent Product info: [Company] can provide users more product
info where relevant (e.g. nutrition info, refrigeration needs) and doing so in a

4
 structured way will improve search as well.

● Discover new opportunities for impact: Leverage analytics and research

capabilities [Company] can do research with our existing customers and newly
acquired European partner to understand where customers are making the most
effort and reduce the time and burden.

Key Cross-functional Partners

Product/Eng
● Search & Discovery Backend engineering: primarily focused on building algos for
driving better search relevance, personalization and semantic search
● Consumer app Frontend team: Dedicated to building new app experience

Insights:
● Product Analytics: Dedicated to understanding end to end consumer behavior in
the app. Manage testing frameworks (e.g. split.io)
● User research: Develop insights about user behavior and needs - both
generative and evaluative

Product Data
● Product catalog / merchandising: Managing systems that warehouse product info
that is used for search, discovery, and product detail pages
● Taxonomy: Support efforts to build out better taxonomy which will better enable
semantic search

Ad / Merchant teams
● Balance consumer and brand needs to deliver effortless experience that aligns
incentives with brand partners to stay and grow on the platform

5
Manager + Director

1. Director of Product Management

This is a simple director of product job mission, though it is missing key information
about the budget and resources that this candidate will need to succeed.

Nonetheless, it helped to guide conversations and lead to an offer.

----------------------------

Reports to: GM / VP of Product - Marketing

To serve as a key leader to grow [company] CMS into a robust content platform
that serves all product lines in addition to [product line]. Manage a team of product
managers and partner closely with a team of leaders across UX and Engineering
to identify strategic opportunities for the product.

Outcomes

1. Grow revenue... [measured by Avg Rev Per Subscriber, _ % YoY growth]

2. Increase customer dollar retention [measured by _ % increase YoY and

improved NPS from _ to _]

3. Deliver strategic growth and innovation via key product launches that
bring more value to lower-priced Free/Starter plans to upsell and expand —
and to premium tiers with Pro/Enterprise to offer a unified digital experience

4. Create a team environment where people can succeed and thrive

measured by improved team happiness and engagement scores, X new
hires and Y retained team members

Vision
[Company product] is content management software that’s flexible for marketers,
powerful for developers, and gives customers a personalized, secure experience.
Best-in-class content, marketing, and data analytics tools that match

6
enterprise-grade power with consumer-grade intuitiveness to help small and
medium-sized businesses grow better.

2. Director of Employee Technology at Amazon

This is another relatively simple job mission that, like the one above, is missing key
information about the budget and resources that this candidate will need to succeed.

Nonetheless, it helped to guide the interviews (he noted unknown outcomes in light grey
to help him in his question asking).

Reports to: [Hiring Manager]

To serve as a key leader for the [team name] dedicated to improving employee
connectedness through communications, rewards, recognition, and social networking.
Take an ambitious concept and turn it into a delightful employee product to help people
feel supported by Amazon as their employer.

Outcomes
1. Improve Amazon’s employee recommendation score from 94% to 96% in 2022
2. Boost Amazon’s ability to hire 500,000 new hourly employees in 2022 by
improving field worker / associate retention by _%
3. Grow app adoption both hourly employees (current % – target %) and corporate
(current % – target %)
4. Drive innovation and product adoption by delivering (key launches and changes
needed) in 2022; pilot in March and worldwide launch in September before peak
season
5. Boost engagement and a sense of connection by increasing daily and weekly
active app usage by __% from (start amount) to (end amount)
6. Maintain an app rating of 4.7 stars or higher for A to Z
7. Grow the A to Z Engagement Tech team from (start amount) to (end amount) —
recruit, hire, onboard, retain, and support learning career development

Vision
A to Z is a mobile application used by Amazon’s 1M+ employees to access internal
tools and stay connected with each other on the go.

7
VP, GM, SVP

1: Game Design General Manager with OKRs

In the actual job mission, this job seeker put in real numbers for the key results.
Below those have been removed.

Objectives:
● Lead, train and hire a best in class game design team to service all
the sports products. (assess needs, put together a hiring plan, key
result = hire X folks by Y time)

● Establish a playbook and operating practice for: (genericized key

result for the below = retention +x%, market transaction volume
+y%)
● The overall template and approach to collectibles and
collectability to be analogous across products.
● A templated approach to analytics and economic
management of the sports economies.
● Planning content creation with an eye to value, market
activity and retention.
● Designing features (from vision to specifics) to enhance the
player experience with measurable outcomes aligned.

● Management of day to day operations including content

management of the key components of the experience from
in-game economics to quests and community events. (KR = 80%+
of content releases go out on time with expected results in line with
quarterly product goals)

This was the plan he laid out to the CEO.

The CEO wholeheartedly agreed to the first bullet around building out the game design
team, and, in fact, extended it to building out their operations teams (and that
agreement reflected in the offer letter – i.e., the CEO agreed as part of the offer that
they would provide a budget to hire X number of people by Y time for both game design
and operations).

8
The other bullets became more of a discussion about the focus of his role, which led to
clarity around being in charge of launching a key new product vs managing current
products. And, as a result of that, the job seeker added OKRs for getting the new
product from start to closed to open beta.

Finally, as a result of these conversations, he was able to really hit the ground running
with clarity, resources, and the support to do well. Six months later, the new product was
launched and he was both happy and successful and well on his way to more
responsibility (and a raise).

2: General Manager, Media Company

Role: General Manager

Mission: Accelerate growth and diversify revenue for a profitable digital news
business, with sustainable strategies that strengthen its brand and empower
employees

Objective Results Needed for Success

Grow EBITDA ● Launch premium subscription ● Investment for

from $__ to products subscription products
$__ over ● Expand [product name] franchise ● Succession plan for
three years ● Explore podcast/audio brand [employee’s name]
extensions ● Consumer and UX
● Explore new revenue channels & research
partnerships ● Business development
● Maintain brand reputation, avoid resource
negative PR ● Brand marketing,
media budget

9
Integrate with ● Amplify & champion [brand’s] ● Strong partnerships
[parent potential with [internal senior
company] ● Scale [brand’s] content on executives named]
[company’s] platforms ● Dotted line to new
● Migrate to [software platform] product director
● Expand events business in ● Support to expand
partnership with other business events team
units
●

Evolve ● Replace [employee’s name] as ● Dedicated HR partner

Culture digital “go-to” for staff passionate about DEI
● Retain [three named key and employee
employees] engagement (360°
● Help [employee’s name] quickly reviews, quarterly
ramp up surveys, etc.)
● Establish benchmarks for and ● Dedicated,
grow employee engagement DEI-focused recruiter
● Create culture that prioritizes where accelerated
diversity, equity & inclusion hiring is needed

● Chief of Staff or similar executive coordination role (can be shared resource)

● Commitment to annual 360° feedback surveys for VP+ leaders
● Funding of Collaborative Gain membership and executive coach
● Support for my sharing digital media industry thought leadership (e.g.
conferences, podcasts, blogs)
● Streamlined process for capital to improve core platforms and reduce tech debt
without onerous analysis and justification
● Reimbursement for shared digital subscriptions for competitive research
● Consider corporate membership in [industry organizations]

10
3: SVP of Product at Consumer Subscription Business

This is the Job Mission and OKRs that a VP of Product put together as she was
negotiating an SVP of Product role at a new company.

She put together a background, job mission overview, high-level objectives with
detailed OKRs.

Background
I am a mobile/subscription/video product leader who has launched numerous
high-margin initiatives within consumer media companies. I am an expert in building
consumer ad and subscription businesses at scale (400M MAU, translated in over 60
languages, in every country in the world). I began my career with a strict focus on
streaming media and video content. Over the last 5 years, I have been instrumental in
building our data science team and capabilities to make our experiences more
personalized/relevant by leveraging ML. I have also led numerous infrastructure
projects. I led the ground-up rebuild of [digital company]. I have rebuilt numerous CMS
and video infrastructure projects. And most recently I launched [company’s] first
consumer-facing cash register in over a decade with [product-name] subscription
platform. I am also an expert in consumer privacy and have a deep understanding of
GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy legislation. To summarize I specialize in building
mobile, subscription, content, and data-driven product teams. I could not be more
pumped to bring a fresh perspective to your product organization and help them
become a much stronger team in the years ahead.

Job Mission for SVP of Product

My mission is to help purpose-driven media brands accelerate growth by building
startup-minded product teams who focus on solving the most valuable high-margin
customer problems. I pride myself on building a company and brand that we love
working at and a product team that is consistently recruited by top-tier companies but
rarely leave. I excel at rapidly accelerating the maturity of product teams by improving
their skills, processes, and tools to become a true product/data-driven org. I believe a
customer-first approach and improving the core competency of our experience drive
long-term sustainable growth. At [new company] this means greatly improving the
[product] experience so it is simpler, easier, faster, and more delightful to use for our
customers. To continually fund this mission and meet our growth objectives we must

11
also rapidly accelerate launching initiatives/features in our experience to drive high
margin growth.

To do this we must:

1. Modernize the brand, improve the onboarding/launch experience to attract and

better convert new audiences by Feb 28

2. Integrate all tech/tools (braze push notifications, attribution in segment,

behavioral data in data lake) needed to ensure we can better target, convert and
report/measure high likely to subscribe customers by Feb 28

3. Increase the perceived value of subscription offering by putting more value

behind the paywall to increase ARPU and LTV of paying subscribers

4. Double ARPU of the freemium audience with a new strategy for ad products
by May 15

5. Support M&A activity that accelerates meeting this objective by providing

strategic consultation and decision making when needed.

Detailed OKRs

1. Build a company and brand that we love working at and a product org that
is consistently recruited by top tier companies but rarely leave.
2.
1. Add 5 new PMs by Dec 31

2. Employee satisfaction and retention greater than 80% by Mar 31

3. Create job missions for every team member. Clearly define

expectations and what they need to accomplish to grow in their
career by Mar 31

12
 4. 100% of staff have career conversations with their managers by Mar
31
5. Every team has at least one team event by Mar 31
6.
2. Rapidly accelerate the maturity of the product team by improving our skills,
processes and tools to become a product and data driven org.

1. Introduce and put into practice a work intake process to 1) align

leadership and teams on the most valuable opportunities we should
be pursuing on a quarterly basis and 2) drive focus to increase
velocity by Oct 15

2. Introduce new team structure based on portfolio (workstreams) /

squad (triads) framework and coach/mentor teams on how to create
and present strategic roadmap plans by Oct 15

3. Introduce continuous discovery framework to give leadership and

teams greater confidence in our future big bets by Dec 31

4. Lay the foundation for data driven experimentation by building a

cross-functional team and integrating necessary tools (split.io) to
pilot a new testing program which performs a single multivariate
experiment in production, at scale, without incident by Mar 31

5. Partner with Customer Happiness team to become closer to our

customer and improve member experience when interacting with
customers by Mar 31
6.
3. Improve [this action] so it is simpler, easier, faster and more delightful to
use for free trial users and paying subscribers.

1. New trial users [this action] on day 7 increases by 10% for the
quarter YoY

2. Improve time to log [this action] by 10% for the quarter YoY

13
 3. Quarterly subscriber churn decreases by 6% YoY (assuming no
price change)

4. Improve the perceived data quality of this [item] by adding a higher

quality and verified data source by Feb 15

5. Introduce intermittent [this action] to capitalize on demand by Mar

15

6. Increase adoption and usage of [this item] by 15% by Mar 31

7. Reimagine [these actions/products] and present concepts to

leadership by Mar 31
8.
4. Rapidly accelerate launching initiatives/features in our experience to drive
high margin growth.
5.
1. Modernize the brand and introduce a new launch screen of the app
to attract and better convert new audiences by Feb 28

2. Integrate all tech/tools (braze push notifications, attribution in

segment, behavioral data in data lake) needed to ensure we can
better target, convert and report/measure high likely to subscribe
customers by Feb 28

3. Increase perceived value of subscription offering by putting more

value behind the paywall to increase ARPU and LTV of paying
subscribers
4. Double ARPU of freemium audience with a new strategy for ad
products by May 15

5. Quarterly visits or sessions grow by 10% YoY

6. Quarterly installs grows by 12% YoY

14
 7. Quarterly Install-to-trial conversion increases by 7% on each
platform YoY

8. Quarterly winbacks increase by 12% YoY

9.
5. Support M&A activity that accelerates meeting this objective by providing
strategic consultation and decision making when needed.

4. EVP at a Bank
EVP of a Division of a Large Bank

The following is the draft of a job mission that this candidate used during interviews to
inform questions and guide the conversation. It ended up being very helpful and led
directly to an offer.

The hiring manager loved this and the candidate believes that it not only led to an offer,
but to better negotiating compensation, budget, resources, and support.

Job Mission and OKRs

Mission (COF): To change banking for good (and to help people live their best lives. To
help our customers succeed by bringing ingenuity, simplicity, and humanity to banking.)

Mission (SBC): ?? Helping Small Businesses Do More Business ??

Objectives:

1. Continue/accelerate SBC’s rapid growth – to serve more businesses and

to do more good.
2. Deliver an ever-broadening suite of services to our small business
customers, serving more of their financial needs and enabling them to
thrive.
3. Preserve what is precious in SBC’s culture, while building what is
necessary for continued growth. (Personal component: integrate
successfully while adding my own leadership voice to the mix.)
4. Fee Income or Operating Efficiency Objective?

15
Key Results (the “what” - measured and updated quarterly):
1. SBC Growth
a. Billings from X to Y
b. Revolving loans from X to Y
c. Revenue from X to Y
d. Net income from X to Y

2. Holistic Suite
a. Define & align on the 5-year roadmap for a holistic product suite
that enables small businesses to pay, get paid, and bridge the
inevitable cash flow/working capital gaps that come with growth (3
quarter objective)
b. Integrated Payables build/launch/adoption milestones
c. Small business banking bundling/integration milestones
d. Revenue from existing customers from X to Y

3. Culture
a. Employee Survey Results
b. Commercial Card integration milestones (e.g. Rules of
Engagement, territory allocation, lead mgmt. processes)
c. Feedback cadence (esp. in 2022)
d. Direct Report feedback cadence
4. Fee Income/Operating Efficiency
a. Fee: Revenue $$ from X to Y
b. Efficiency: new - specific initiatives; existing - % from X to Y

“How” (theoretical examples – too early to tell)

1. SBC Growth
a. Customer Marketing Expansion
b. Inside Sales Expansion
c. Lead management process
d. Trigger marketing & sales
2. Holistic Suite
a. Project team deliverables
b. IP and Melio decisions and initiatives
c. SBB initiatives/decisions/tactical progress
d. Cross-sell tactical test & learn plan
3. Culture
a. Integration Plan

16
 b. Leadership Team building (off-site + 3 quarter plan)
c. Complete direct report team (hiring, integration, etc.)
d. Norms update and reaffirmation
4. Fee Income/Operating Efficiency
a. Existing initiative milestones
b. New initiatives

17
5. SVP of Product and Emerging Business
This is an actual job mission with company information anonymized. The author
included some information up front on the company for context and it is very detailed.
The author also included a section called ‘Relevant Background’ to highlight their
experiences and strengths. Discuss with your JSC if this is an appropriate template for
the job(s) you are going after.

[Company] Mission

The [Company] mission is to be the global standard for their products and services,
empowering employees to bring the most innovative products to the world.

Current Company Context

● [Company] product is a relatively newer vertical that needs to grow by multiple
channels.
● The niche finance industry is expected to reach $xx by 2026 and [Company] is
well-positioned to build on the success of their business model and partner with
more companies to solve customer needs.
● One channel contributed to 65% of Company’s Q3 revenue. While this is great, it
is a risk. We need to build more diverse channels.
● [Company] is getting ready for the next phase of accelerated growth. Our people,
processes, skills, and systems need to evolve to support this rapid growth need.

Product SVP, Emerging Business - Mission and Objectives

Mission: The mission of Product SVP, Emerging Business is to help

[Company]empower our customers to deliver delightful customer experiences for their
customers. It is to accelerate business growth by building new verticals, accelerating
current verticals, and building best-in-class teams.
Objectives: There are four critical components to the objectives of this role.
1. Establish and accelerate niche business for [Company].
2. Identify emerging business opportunities to diversify [Company’s] income
streams.
3. Build a world-class product organization. Build a strong product culture and
empowered teams that continuously deliver immense value to partners and their
customers.
4. Support transformation efforts to support the company’s next growth stage

18
Key Results
High-level proposed key results are to be identified, defined, and built with teams in the
first 60 days.
● Improve growth by x%
● Improve new channel customers by x%
● Improve discovery effectiveness to support product prioritization increasing the
impact of products on more end users by x%
● Improve customer renewal rate by x%
● Increase customer product coverage (variety of experiences signed up) by x%
● Improve access to advanced features to further embed our product in customer
workflows by x%
● Integrate Customer Success and Product team continuous feedback

Plan for First 60 Days: High level proposed plan to be shaped in partnership with
leadership
● First 20 Days - Learn:
○ Understand Senior Leadership Team, CEO, and board priorities,
expectations, and challenges.
○ Understand key parts of the business, customers, KPIs, challenges, etc.,
○ Understand the ecosystem, operating models, norms, culture, and pain
points
○ Start building relationships/trust
○ Understand performance metrics and status
○ Listening tour with customers
○ Listening tour with Customer Service teammates
○ Listening tour with team members
○ Assess product team through 360 review
○ Outcome - State of the Union
● 20-40 Days - Align:
○ Communicate refreshed vision
○ Align organization against vision
○ Evangelize vision and plan with the company and teams at all levels.
○ Identify ways to impact performance metrics
○ Identify ways to improve product teams
○ Outcome - Clear vision and alignment plan
● 40-60 Days - Execute:
○ Focus organization on aligned priorities
○ Ensure teams are unblocked, unlocked, and empowered

19
 ○ Outcome - Long-term execution and roadmap across all goals

How to achieve these OKRs: This will be further shaped by the first 20-40 days. But
the early hypothesis indicates the need for the following amongst a few others.
● Accelerate launching initiatives/features in our experience to drive high-margin
growth.
○ Introduce a continuous discovery framework to give leadership and teams
greater confidence in our future big bets
○ Partner with Customer Success and Sales teams to become closer to our
customers and improve our products
○ Identify opportunities for improvements in close collaboration with
Engineering, Customer Success, and Sales teams to increase velocity of
delivery of tests and products.
● Build a product org that consistently delivers products that delight customers.
● Rapidly accelerate the maturity of the product team by improving skills,
processes, and tools to become a product org.
● Create job missions for every team member. Clearly define expectations and
what they need to accomplish to grow in their career
● If needed, Introduce and put into practice a work intake process to align
leadership and teams on the most valuable opportunities we should be pursuing
every quarter.

Relevant Background

I pride myself on building high-performing missionary organizations. I have built several

product teams that consistently deliver customer value and business results. I excel at
rapidly accelerating the maturity of product teams by improving their skills, processes,
and tools to become a true customer-first company through hiring, coaching, and
product rituals. My strength as a product leader lies in helping teams navigate product
challenges, identify risks, gaps, and opportunities, explore innovation paths and deliver
products.

Over the years, I have incubated, built, and launched differentiated products driving
growth and deepening customer engagement. I believe in a customer-first approach
and I spent the last decade deeply understanding people's financial lives and the
financial ecosystem. Through customer discovery in more than ten countries and
dozens of villages, towns, and cities, I have learned directly from customers, fintech
experts and industry thought leaders to develop subject matter expertise on financial
services. This helps me with global insights with a hyperlocal and nuanced view of the

20
consumer landscape and impact potential in developed countries as well as emerging
markets.

I played a critical role in major transformations to be data-driven, deepening customer

empathy, instilling innovative best practices, and building product excellence. I have
significantly shaped product function, and customer discovery practice and co-founded
a brand new CX function at [Company]. In addition, I have created industry-leading
initiatives to create product experiences through an inclusive, human-centered design
lens that addresses systemic inequities for underrepresented customer groups.

I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to the mission and the current
transformation journey [Company]is on. My background in building products, teams,
product discipline, and transforming organizations has prepared me well for this role.

6. SVP of Product
The author of this Job mission and OKR provided background information which
highlights their experiences as a business to business (B2B) software as a service
(SaaS) product leader. They included a table of their OKRs and also did a deep dive
into what support and resources they would need to be successful.

Context
As I reflected on and reviewed the amazing opportunities of this role and within
[Company], I created the following brief which I would like to explore as part of our
conversation in bringing me on board.

Background
I am a B2B SaaS product leader who has launched numerous initiatives targeting
Enterprise and Mid-market companies in Accounting, Mortgage, Real estate, and
Ecommerce.

I am an expert in building scalable teams that transform “nice-to-have” products into

“must have” products for Fortune 50/100/500 companies by focusing on strategic needs
of customers to create more capacity and remove drag on business performance.

I champion complex initiatives and rally cross-organizational teams to drive innovation.

My expertise includes using data that uncovers levers to drive revenue despite
challenging business climates for more sales and market share. This includes
implementing process changes and creating new teams to increase customer value for
market gains and new revenue. Most recently, I’ve launched a new cross-platform
product to obtain more of the market. Prior to that, I increased sales and squashed

21
market perceptions about dated products by revamping the user interface of a mature
product portfolio.

I also focus teams by reducing distractions and leveraging the scale of partners. My
experiences include optimizing resource capacity by sunsetting underperforming
products. I’ve also developed relationships and technical integrations with major
partners that increase go-to-market capabilities in targeted spaces, accelerating
customer adoption and results in massive sales gains.

To summarize, I specialize in building B2B SaaS product teams that target some of the
largest companies in the world. I am excited to bring a fresh perspective to your product
organization, help them become a much stronger team, and achieve growth in a
challenging macroeconomic environment in the years ahead.

[Company]’s Mission
To be the No. 1 solution, by a far margin, that empowers individuals to elevate their role
in the organization.

Job Mission: (S)VP of Product

Create a strategy for 60+% growth, a plan to achieve $1B in annual recurring revenue in
5 years, and then successfully execute the plan to achieve growth objectives.

In other words, my mission is to innovate market-leading solutions while not only

maintaining market leadership, but also increasing market share.

I pride myself on creating and executing strategies to drive growth, particularly in

addressing margin-enhancing ways to achieve wider product adoption.

I thrive on working with great people, including building a legacy of a team that’s known
for leading practices and developing members who are recruited by top-tier companies
but rarely leave.

I believe in customer-driven approaches, learning fast, and great execution to impactful

mission to make meaningful change for a customer base

At [Company], this means championing the strategies that will deliver superior
outcomes for customers. This mission also includes using analytics at scale to drive
decisions, and launching initiatives to learn fast with a focus on high margin growth.

To do this we must:

1. Lead the Market: Not only maintain the position as the leading solution, but also
expand the leadership gap between all other competitors

22
 2. Deepen Strategic Thinking: Within the core use cases, continue to identify
areas where [Company] can serve customers in new and better ways

3. Share Outcomes: Bring teams together across [Company] in their ability to

deliver great cross-platform outcomes

4. Cultivate Customer-first Culture: Maintain customer obsession while growing

and scaling the team

5. Deepen Domain Knowledge: I must become an expert in the space, customer

base, product, and core use cases.

7. VP, Nonprofit world

This is a job mission for an Associate role at an educational institution. This provides a
nice example of a job mission, key results and how the individual will succeed. It could
be even stronger with the inclusion of budget and resources.

Job Mission / Main Objective

Build a body of university stakeholders who will leverage their influence and resources
to create buy-in & “market demand” – in higher ed & broader education and community
sectors - for an emerging, new educational architecture at the secondary level.

Key Results – Measurable impact of a successful initiative

● Credibility for new secondary learning modalities and new “credentialing” that will
accelerate their adoption and make visible an emerging broader, education
sector “turn” made up of institutional innovations and mind-set changes centered
on inclusion and learner success.
● New resources, actionable steps & partnerships for updating key institutionalized
practices (e.g., college admissions), eliminating “cracks” between systems that
have the potential to bar learners from opportunity.

How I/We will succeed

● Determine “best model” by assessing other models and impact
● Design & execute strategic process for identifying, recruiting and convening
stakeholders
● Invest in orchestrating/cultivating the right culture and relationships
● Gain agreement on substantive and time-oriented goals to drive progress and
momentum

23
 ● Design and implement activities and supports tied to goals
● Continuously “take stock” and communicate progress

Key Cross-functional partners

● Internal team and leadership
● Fellows and Trustees
● External partners already onboard

24
Detailed 2023 OKRs
Objective
Lead the Market: Not only maintain
the position as the leading solution,
but also expand the leadership gap
between all other competitors.
Deepen Strategic Thinking: Within
the core use cases, continue to
identify areas where [Company] can
serve customers in new and better
ways
Share Outcomes: Bring teams
together across [Company] in their
ability to deliver great cross-platform
outcomes
Cultivate Customer-first Culture:
Maintain customer obsession while
growing and scaling the team
Key Result
● Identify the top 2 product opportunities to
maintain and improve win rate for each
key customer segment by [July 31st]
● Champion and get executive buy-in to
execute on (at least) 1 of the above
opportunities by [July 31st]
● Align go-to-market motions and deliver on
the above opportunity by [Dec 31st]
● Create an opportunity-solution tree for the
core business by [March 31st]
● Champion, update, and get executive
buy-in on the top experiments to pursue by
[April 30th]
● Develop a data-driven roadmap which
outlines major bets / problem spaces, and
customer segments the organization needs
to invest in by [June 30th]
● Conduct 2 discovery research projects by
[July 31st]
● Partner with Sales to identify the top
product opportunities to increase win rate
for each customer/competitor segment by
[March 31]
● Partner with Solution Engineering to
identify the top loss reasons for each
customer/competitor segment by [March
31]
● Partner with Customer Success to identify
the top upsell/cross-sell opportunities by
[March 31]
● Align cross-platform execution towards the
top 2024 cross-platform opportunity by
[Dec 31st]
● Add [?] new PMs by [???] experienced in
Design Thinking leading practices, and
using analytics for data-driven decisions to
drive adoption
● Introduce and put into practice an improved
launch process to drive customer
25
 awareness of new products into the
existing customer base by [Dec 31]
● Lay the foundation for customer data
analysis by building a cross-functional
team to surface key KPIs by [Dec 31] for
quarterly reviews

Deepen Domain Knowledge: I ● Demo/present the products, platform, and

must become an expert in the
space, customer base, product, and
core use cases
personas by [March 31st]
● Present Internal jobs-to-be done
(outcomes) by [April 30th]
● Present a user journey map (process
flows) by [June 30th]
● Present a service blueprint (feature map)
by [July 31ST]
● Sit for the CFE practice test by [Dec 31st]

Support for me
● Sponsor: In order to become an expert in the space in a short period of time, I
would like to have an internal sponsor to help me onboard into the company and
establish relationships (a person in the business, perhaps a key stakeholder in
Solution Engineering - a person that is not my boss).
● Domain Learning: For the first 180 days, I would like dedicated time and
resources to do the following:
o 0- 90 days: Certified Fraud Examiner Test Prep, $1k and 10% of my time
o 90-180 days: Lead two sequential 6 week discovery projects, a team of 2
and 50% of my time
o 0- 180 days: Shadow [Company]’s Internal team, 25% of my time
● Advisory: I am an advisor to a SaaS startup, Compa. This advisory role asks
that I am available for ~2 hours of calls a month. I advise them on Product
Management and SaaS strategy. Is there any concern you have about this
advisory role?
● Executive coaching. Is there any formal internal executive coaching? If not, I’d
like financial support for this. $8k/yr for [Company]. Private executive coach 2
hours/month at roughly $300/hr.

Resources for the role & team

● Product Operations role. Budget to hire 1-2 Individual(s) who handle major
aspects of the day-to-day operations. Facilitates intake, pitch reviews,
assembles content for story-telling, weekly/monthly communications, external
blog / branding, facilitates quarterly planning, tracks and updates OKRs &

26
 dashboards, etc. In general is accountable for the ongoing operations of the
product.
● Data & Analytics: Budget and support requested for 1-2 dedicated resources to
focus on the data backbone of product execution. Ensures teams have the data
they need to make decisions, awareness of experience / capability issues,
product health, observability, experience health, business health, etc. I assume
that teams already have access to industry based data from the Big 4, Gartner,
Forrester, etc.
● Product and Design Coaching. I would like support for ongoing training of the
product and design organizations on some of the routines of the product. The
continued investment will allow me to get up to speed on the domain rather than
focusing on operations. Key focus areas would be around User Centered
Design, Discovery, Story Mapping, and leveraging data to tell the story and
isolate the opportunity space. I estimate that these expenses would run roughly
$50,000 - $100,000 depending on the engagement model.
● Travel. I would like to budget about $5,000/person/yr for the team to travel to
visit with customers, partners, industry events, and meet with teammates over
the course of the year. This is critical to maintain a pulse on our users,
customers, and market. It’s also critical for team morale.
● Balanced Teams. From the Glassdoor reviews, it sounds that the team is tired
and feels under-resourced. I’d like a commitment to retain the 1:1:5 ratio of
PM:Designer:Engineers. I’d also like commitment that new experiments and
initiatives also would get properly resourced. Baseline resources will remain on
existing products and not assumed to be able to “stretch” to take on new
initiatives while maintaining the current state.

27
CEO

1: CEO of a FinTech (subsidiary of a larger financial services

company)
Job Mission, OKRs, and Key Questions

Role: CEO

Company Mission: Create a future where small business owners can manage their
finances fearlessly. Doing so means more new entrepreneurs, and more thriving small
businesses. To get to that future, we will be the simplest, all-in-one financial
management solution small business owners can’t live without.

Objectives:

1. Continue/accelerate Company’s rapid user growth – to serve more businesses

and to do more good.
2. Accelerate Company’s revenue/user growth while reaching profitability.
3. Preserve what is precious in Company’s culture, while building what is
necessary for continued growth.
4. Find, build and scale the critical linkages between Company and the parent
organization.

Key Results:

1. Acquiring 20-25K new users per month. Growing at 30%/year (or is that
revenue?). B for maintain, A for accelerate.
2. ARR of $95M. Reach ARR of $300M by (End of?) Year 3. (implies 47% CAGR)
a. Losing $2M/mo – get to break-even by (beg or end) year 3 (2024?)
b. Increase revenue/customer by x; (suspect) increase in products/customer
c. Continued low CAC (#s?)
3. Energized and growing team, with strong morale and moderating turnover
a. Recommitted/reconstituted leadership team
b. Employee survey results at or above today by end of Year 1
c. Quality of talent maintained (metric?) and turnover reduced (%)
4. Identify/scale current and new initiatives to increase the benefit of Company and
Parent Company for each other (1+1 = 3), while preserving Company’s ability to
operate nimbly in the FinTech ecosystem

28
 a. 2-3 large, key initiatives (e.g. tax prep, mutual cross-sell, Galileo joint
offering)
b. Quantitative values associated with each initiative (e.g. $ of new business,
# of x-sold customers, $ of joint savings)

Key Questions:

Any/All:

● What has your journey been at Parent Company?

● How do you feel about the progress/trajectory of Small Business?
● How do you work with/what’s your relationship like with Company?
● What’s Parent Company CEO like as a leader?

President of Key Division

● Love to understand how small business advisors are the same or different than
the full network of advisors?
● How is the [product] initiative with Company going?
● Are there more opportunities for cross-sell – esp that would benefit the broader
business?

CFO of Parent Company

● Why did you buy this subsidiary?

● How do you think about their operation as a separate entity alongside what must
be Board and investor expectations for synergies?
● What are the financial metrics you’re looking to see from Company?
o Currently they are expected to be 100bps of growth – can they be
200-300?
o How does their story drive the broader digitization story for Block?
o Where is the path to profitability on your priority list?

Chief Strategy & Small Business Officer

● How does your role as Small Business Officer relate to [person’s] on delivery and
Company on the other side?
● There are a few items that could be seen as duplicative ([company name]
partnership, [other company],. How do you think about those?

29
 ● 3 years from now what does the overall small business footprint look like for
Parent Company? What does Company look like within that?
● How much of Company’s business is in Canada vs US?

Parent Company’s CEO’s questions to this candidate

I’m sure you’ll have a lot on your mind…for me, I mainly want to go deeper into your
experience and make connections between what you have done and what I believe we
need at Company — specifically

driving growth

● Telesales 140 + 100 to 700; $1B to$3B + $2B

● Overall footprint ~$30B to ~$50B in 4 years (shift to customer behind triggers;
common metrics to flow $$ to higher ROIs…money came from Direct Mail
($200M down to $50M)
● Non-card lending from $1B to >$4B in just over 3 years; then Kabbage (also AP
Auto & FXIP)

strategic innovation

● SME primacy
● General contractor/subcontractor – specialty sales
● [airline] relationship – connecting merchant and travel…suite of cards (e.g.FBF)
● [company] construct (habit vs deals)

financial/operational acumen

● Many years of P&L leadership across varied businesses

● US SME from 11% topline and flat bottom to 8% topline and 10% bottom in 18
months (LTOs, Channel Integration plus Rules of Engagement – best opp to
most expensive channel)
● (Could use common metrics globally from above here instead…)

leading engineers and product teams

● 7 years on consumer side, including launching a dozen new cards/programs

● [company name] and; shift to agile
● SBS side: SPM model and centralization with site
● Salesforce integration

building culture

30
 ● One Global Marketing – fractal: coordinated vs controlled
● One US SME - ecosystem
● Co-brand + [company name] – war rooms

My questions/topics for CEO

● Dive deeper on synergies and expectations (esp BoD)

● Time on OKRs (above)
● Company Board
● Timing (likely)
● 1st 15 mos commute: ave # of days? (unlikely)

31
First Drafts of Job Missions

Here are some first drafts of job missions – i.e., created mid-way through the interview
process but before the candidates knew what they needed to know to finish writing the
document.

At this stage, drafting a job mission with OKRs helps to clarify the questions you
should be asking so that you can fully understand the role and finish the first draft.

1. Chief Digital Officer at a Large Transportation Company

This role was in the financing division of a large transportation company.

Company Mission/Vision:
[the candidate took information from the annual report to fill out the first draft of the company
mission and vision]

Financial Services Division

● FS is an innovation leader in the captive financial services industry, meeting their
customers’ changing needs while attracting the best talent in the industry.
● FS prides itself on their ability to build long-term relationships that help customers
succeed and grow without limitations.
● FS enables faster customer uptime and productivity by providing tailored and flexible
financial solutions to help customers buy or lease vehicles or machines.
● FS offers a competitive strategy to provide financial solutions which enables stronger
long-term relationships with customers and dealers.
● FS does this by ultimately providing ease of doing business, speed to market, and
knowledge and expertise of the industry for their customers.
● FS offers innovative financial services to dealers and customers that simplify their
purchase and ownership experience and drive their business success.
● As the financial services provider for the parent company, FS provides flexible financing,
insurance and other services tailored to a customer’s current and future needs, and
enables a long-term relationship, which increases loyalty to the Parent Company Group
brands.

32
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION NEEDED: evolve into a more nimble, entrepreneurial, and
digitally oriented organization to serve the changing needs and expectations of their clients

Job Mission for Chief Digital Officer

Accelerate customer-centric digital transformation across FS to enable:
● Delivery of financial products and services that are easy to use, integrated and
personalized - built on an ecosystem of connected data (from customers, telemetry,
operations, behavioral signals, etc.), systems and capabilities, and powered by
advanced insights and analytics
● An end-to-end omnichannel/digitally-led journey for Parent Company Group customers
that drives increased loyalty and overall customer lifetime value by serving customers’
needs and expectations of today and the future
● FS leaders and their teams in leveraging technology every day for value creation – for
customers and for the Parent Company Group overall
● Overall operational efficiency, productivity and sustainability through digitalization and
automation

Objectives:
● Partner with FS leadership and key Parent Company Group stakeholders to create FS’s
digital north star vision, strategy and roadmap
● Establish operating model between central and regional digital teams that builds
enterprise scale to maximize value, efficiency and productivity while fostering local
innovation for both market-specific capabilities and test & scale
● Simplify and strengthen digital and data foundation for growth, innovation and
agility
● Address priority tech debt and adoption / enablement challenges
● Identify key market segments (customer type, application, product/market fit
assessment, region, business readiness) for test & scale opportunities
● Build culture and focus talent development within Digital organization to prioritize
customer-centricity, a focus on outcomes over output, continuous discovery, continuous
improvement, collaboration, transparency and trust

Sample Key Results:

● Reduce platform/application footprint by X%
● Increase adoption and usage of priority enterprise platforms by X%
● Improve NPS/customer sat by X%
● Improve employee engagement score by X%

First 90 Days
● Spend time with stakeholders to better understand customers, products, key objectives
and KPIs, and biggest blockers

33
 ● Spend time with team to understand current functional ecosystem, operating models,
norms, culture, what’s working and what’s not, pain points, etc. – discuss
stop/start/continue activities and potential quick win ideas
● If possible - initiate

Questions:
● How would you define success for me/my organization over both the near term - 1 year
out, and longer-term - 3-5 years?
● Tech Debt - perspective on how FS got here and commitment to both resolving now and
ensuring investment for sustaining platform modernization (and how much is it estimated
to be)?
● Data Strategy – taxonomy, governance, architecture, advanced analytics?
● Team structure, functions, key leaders?
● Operating/engagement model with Digital leadership at Parent Company Group overall?
● Current budget - investment commitment for technology, people, process and data
changes?
● How will you and the rest of the leadership team support me in achieving these
outcomes for FS?

34