You are spot on with the fact that the real OKRs are harder to attribute to the product alone, and will typically take longer to demonstrate the results.

However, these are the ones that matter and make the real impact. And if you weren’t able to reduce churn, it doesn’t help you that you were able to talk to customers and learn about the target market, so I am a big fan of brutal honesty here.

As to your question about who owns the result, I honestly don’t mind it too much. If what the company needs is for us to reduce churn, I’m more than happy to collaborate with customer success on that and deliver a great product that will help them make our customers happy.

Moreover, this is an opportunity for product leadership: communicate the value proposition, make sure the account managers know how to communicate it to the customers, and make sure the product delivers on its promise.

The boundaries of the product leader’s role go above and beyond the actual product that is being delivered.