But in order to build this into a habit, you have to start by making sure everyone's on the same page.

Ultimately, uniting your team around a single metric creates purpose and enforces discipline for every feature you build, no matter how small.

• Set an expiration date. At Y Combinator, startups are expected to hit 8% growth a week on their core metric. Creating a timeline for product metrics is the only way you can build up an organizational rhythm that uses data to drive results.
• Tape your core metric to the heads of your entire team. As Aditya Vempatay of analytics platform Amplitude says, "It's impossible to come up with individual tactical goals that contribute to the overarching core metric if data is siloed and available only to the growth team or the data scientists." Your overarching core metric should be in a dashboard where everyone can see it, from Product to Sales.
• Drown out the noise. Looking at Facebook's metrics and how it hit viral growth 10 years ago is fine, but doesn't relate to what you're building today. In order to actually build a product people care about, you need to collect your own data within the context of your product.