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North Melbourne are seeking to turn around their AFL fortunes quickly after appointing David Noble as their third coach in as many years.

North Melbourne's hierarchy is adamant transforming the Kangaroos into an AFL premiership contender within three years is a realistic target under new coach David Noble.

The Kangaroos are coming off a horror 2020 season that yielded just three wins and ended with Rhyce Shaw stepping down as coach for personal reasons.

But they are seeking a swift turnaround under former Brisbane Lions football manager Noble, who was appointed as Shaw's successor last week.

On Monday, chairman Ben Buckley revealed North's high expectations of Noble, which include turning the struggling team into a top-four outfit in "two to three years".

"If a club is not ambitious then it's really not serving its members properly," Buckley said.

"Every club in the competition ultimately wants to win a premiership and the best way to do that is to be a consistent performer in the top four.

"Time frames are always difficult things to nail down but I think it's realistic that within that time period we should be competing at that level.

"We're not going to get there immediately; there's still parts of the puzzle to put together and there's foundations to build on.

"But ultimately that's our goal and I don't think we should apologise for it."

Noble, 53, said the optimistic target was in line with what the North board had outlined to him before his appointment to his first senior AFL coaching position.

"We've got to have ambition, there's no problem with that," Noble said.

"The chairman made it really clear that we've got to get ourselves organised, we've got to build a plan and it's got to be long-term, but there's no ceiling on our group.

"Therefore that's absolutely in alignment with what we've already talked about."

Noble has been signed on a rolling contract that North chief executive Ben Amarfio said was an economic decision based around reducing the amount of fixed costs at the club.

In effect, it means it will likely cost less for the Kangaroos to sack Noble if the relationship turns sour than if he was on a fixed-term contract.

AFL premiership coach Paul Roos was an integral figure on the North selection panel that hired Noble - his former Fitzroy teammate - and will be installed in a wide-ranging advisory role at the Kangaroos next season.

He will work closely with Noble and the football department, as well as Amarfio and chairman Ben Buckley.

Noble will have John Blakey as a senior assistant coach and still has forward and midfield coaches to appoint before the pre-season program ramps up in January.

Noble promised an attack-first game-style that will set the club up for long-term success and help drag supporters back through the turnstiles.

"We need to build a platform of capacity to play finals long-term; that's the avenue that we need to go down," Noble said.

"I'd like to be attacking but we need to have a pretty ruthless defensive side to our game as well.

"There's some elements that we've got to address with the group when we get back in, but I'd like to attack and then defend ... and then win."