This framework stands for Narrative, Commitment, and Task.

These can help when Product Teams are working on ambiguous initiatives and need more context

• Narrative: 1-2 sentence qualitative description of what the team want to achieve in Qtr (a wordier Objective)
• Commitments: 3-5 measurable goals that ‘pod’ commit to by a specific date (like Key Results)
• Tasks: Defining the work that needs to be done in order to achieve commitment. Can be changed in cycle.

NCTs aim to give more context around goals as to ‘why’ they were defined. This is done to provide the team with more motivation, as well as to encourage a more realistic goal-setting mindset. Which can be easily lost in a very laser-focused environment.

The best way to write your NCTs is to follow the framework:

• Narrative: Write a 1-2 sentence qualitative description of what the team want to achieve in the quarter
• Commitments: Draft 3-5 measurable goals that ‘pod’ commit to by a specific date
• Tasks: Define the work that needs to be done in order to achieve commitment. This can be changed in the cycle.

Example: Trip Advisor

Narrative: to increase the share of traffic coming directly to the product, rather than SEO and SEM.

Commitments:

1. Increase the number of unique savers by 10% by the end of Q1
2. Launch the enhanced "Save to Trip" feature
3. CTAs to 25% of traffic by mid-Feb

Tasks:

• Add a modal to announce the "Saves to Trip" feature to returning users
• Add a prominent save CTA to the hotel’s list page
• Add a tooltip to the more prominent save CTAs for users who have not previously used the feature