Toddler Soccer Goal Detangling
Goal every team on the same output metric and they swarm the ball. Detangle the customer journey into lanes.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
When every team is goaled on the same headline output — revenue, GMV — they all converge on the few surfaces and customer sets where that number is provably movable. Vora calls this toddler soccer: everyone runs at the ball, nobody gets clean contact, and there is no coordination. The fix is to map the customer journey, decompose the output into input metrics along it, and give each team its own lane that ladders into the same company outcome.
Origin
Vora's own metaphor, informed by watching a lot of toddler soccer as a parent of three. The goal-tree mechanics come from her work building product orgs at Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and now Faire.
Core principles
- 01A single shared output metric creates crowding, not focus.
- 02Every team should have a different goal that ladders into one goal framework covering the full customer journey.
- 03Input metrics (visits, conversions, reorders) are the lanes; the output metric is the scoreboard.
- 04Never invent a metric that makes a team feel good but isn't causally connected to the customer problem and the company outcome.
- 05Cross-functional disagreement is healthy tension, not malfunction — different teams hold different information and different incentives by design.
How to run it
- 1
Spot the swarm
Look for the symptom: multiple teams working the same surface, the same customer set, or the same measurable product, tripping over each other. That is toddler soccer.
- 2
Map the customer journey end to end
Lay out everything the customer needs across their journey. Play the entire field, not just the part where the ball currently is.
- 3
Decompose the output into input metrics
Ask which customer engagements actually lead to the output. For GMV: number of people who visit, who convert, who reorder, and so on. Goal on those inputs rather than strictly on the output.
Pro tip Splitting by surface is a valid alternative decomposition — GMV per surface, with the surfaces divided among teams.
- 4
Assign one distinct lane per team
Give each team a different goal within the tree so everyone has room to make progress and everyone can see how they fit into the bigger picture.
- 5
Sanity-check the causal link
For every input metric, verify you have faith it is genuinely connected to the output metric and to solving the customer problem. Balance 'the theoretically best metric' against 'a metric the team can actually move, understand and watch'.
Watch out Do not create a metric that is disconnected from the output just to make a team feel good. It must solve the customer problem and be reflected in company performance.
- 6
Normalise the resulting tension
Different lanes mean different incentives and different information, so teams will disagree. Name that as healthy: nobody is a bad person, nobody has poor intent, everyone is doing the job they were given. Then hold the disagreement as an open, explicit conversation.
Pro tip If teams disagree on the company or customer outcome itself, that is structural and needs escalation. If they agree on the outcome, the disagreement is just a conversation about the best route.
Watch out The failure mode is hiding the tension — pocket vetoes and back channels, driven by an assumption that disagreement is emotional or wrong.
In the wild
Rather than motivating everyone on GMV, Vora splits it: GMV per surface with the surfaces divided across teams, or the underlying engagement metrics — visits, conversions, reorders — that add up to GMV.
→ Each team has room to make progress in its own lane, sees how it fits the bigger picture, and the customer problem gets solved end to end instead of in one crowded spot.
Vora, a mother of three, has watched a lot of toddlers play soccer: every child sprints to the ball, they trip over each other, nobody gets clean contact, and there is no coordination. It is exactly what a single company-wide output metric does to a product org.
→ The metaphor names the dysfunction so vividly that teams recognise themselves in it, which is half the fix.
Common mistakes
Goaling everyone on revenue because it's obvious
It is the thing the company has to do, it's measurable, and there are only a few places you're guaranteed to move it. So everyone piles into those places — which is precisely the swarm.
Inventing a feel-good metric
A metric chosen because a team can move it, but disconnected from the output, produces motion without customer value or company performance.
Treating cross-team disagreement as a problem
Different teams hold different information and different incentives by construction. Reading that as something going wrong pushes the conflict underground into pocket vetoes instead of onto the table.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product and org leaders setting company or team goals where multiple teams currently share one headline output metric.
Not ideal for
Very small teams or early startups where a single shared metric is genuinely the right focusing device and there is no swarm to break up.
From the transcript
“that leads to like what I call toddler soccer you know where everybody just runs to the same surface or the same customer”
“what would it look like if we could detangle it so that every team we had internally had a different goal that ladders into like…”
“can you goal on those input metrics can you goal on number of people who visit number of people who convert number of people who…”
“you have to have faith that is actually connected to that output metric”
“I think the thing that makes tension healthy is like one when you can acknowledge it”
From the episode
Making an impact through authenticity and curiosity
Ami Vora (CPO at Faire, ex-WhatsApp, FB, IG)