Jobs Theory Blog

Last week we posted our Jobs-to-be-Done cheat sheet. It's a handy guide to help you understand how JTBD differs from traditional thinking, and how you can use the JTBD framework to create products people want to buy. This week we go into detail on five of these ideas.

Jobs-to-be-Done has its own language, filled with analogies, phrases and terminology that you'll become familiar with over time. Soon you'll be reminding your colleagues that "no one wants a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole." While that might be a clever way to illustrate the difference between a product and a job-to-be-done, we know that catchy phrases are not enough. You need to see how JTBD can affect your day-to-day practices.

We'll start with the first five concepts on the cheat sheet, dealing with your market, target customer, and competition. In our next two posts, we'll cover the remaining concepts. Feel free to review the cheat sheet before reading on.

Let's explore these ideas using an example from the education sector. Imagine you work for a company that makes textbooks, an educational publisher. It's a pretty complex environment with multiple stakeholders (students, teachers, administrators, parents...) and thanks to the rapid advance of technology, new competitors are entering the market. At thrv, we would approach this challenge from a different perspective:

As an educational publisher, the natural assumption to make is that there is a market for your product - books. Students want to learn from the best books, and teachers, parents & administrators want to ensure that students have access to those books. The job seems simple - produce a book with up to date information that's well written, easy to understand, is well-designed and will stand up to the wear and tear of a year traveling to school, the library and back home.

But is a book what the students really want? Actually, what they really want is to learn and nowhere is it written that textbooks are the only, or even the best, delivery mechanism for imparting information. This paradigm shift - from markets for products to markets for getting a job done is the single biggest 'flip' from the traditional way of seeing things to the way we view things at thrv. Once you understand what the true market is, you're now open to viewing problems, and most importantly solutions, in a whole new light, and that's where the greatest opportunity for innovation and success lies.

People, as a rule, want to please. They are often uncomfortable telling you things they don't think you'll like to hear. When you show a customer your new product and ask, "do you like this calculus book?" they are inclined to say, "Yes." After all, they don't want to disappoint you. They may even like the look and feel of it, but will it help a student learn calculus? You don't know yet. As a result, you probably haven't gotten a true read on the potential for your product.

By contrast, ask a person about some task they are trying to get done, like learning calculus, and they will give you a specific, detailed answer. They may tell you that it's frustrating when they have a specific question and there's no one around to ask. In that case, making a better book isn't necessarily the answer. By researching the job and looking for unmet needs you'll find specific problems that you need to solve and your customers will care about.

Demographics and Personas are the Siren Song of product development, luring you towards the rocky shores, ready to dash your product upon the rocks of apathy and dissatisfaction. Yes, there are many differences between an 11th grade Asian-American female from Seattle and a Mexican-American 10th grade boy who lives in Atlanta. But for your purposes, it's much more important to understand what they have in common: a need to learn calculus and a dissatisfaction with the current methods.

A far more relevant way of segmenting your market is by looking at people with the same unmet needs. The female from Seattle and the male from Atlanta may get frustrated in the same way when they have a question that can't be answered in the moment, regardless of their location, age, or gender. The unmet needs tell you more about the solution you need to create than the customer's demographic profile.

The traditional way of understanding who you're competing with is to focus on the companies who make similar products. If you print books, so do your competitors, otherwise they wouldn't be your competitors, right? Not anymore, not if you're focused on the job-to-done. Remember, customers are not buying your product, they are hiring it to get a job done. So, when considering how they can learn something, they are not just comparing books to books. They are comparing books to in-person tutoring, online videos, interactive online courses, anything that helps them learn.

Any product, service or process, including DIY, that performs all or part of the job is a competitor. Threats can come from businesses using new technology to get the job done faster or those that are only serving one part of the job extremely well and soon will transition to your domain, taking market share in the process. The good news is, when you're focused on the job, it's much clearer which new technologies you should adopt to stay ahead of the competition or understand which customer needs you need to serve better. Or if you are the competition, you can see where the incumbent is vulnerable.

Ever gone to a website and seen one of those comparison charts, where Product A has 23 features, and Product B "only" has 18 features and poor Product C, with their 15 features, well, how can they compete? Of course, you only need about six features, so, you're still confused on which product to buy.

The issue isn't how many features you have, it's whether or not your features are actually satisfying the needs of the customer. The best part is, that's measurable! Does a feature help the customer get the job done faster? How much faster? Does a feature help a customer get the job done more accurately? How much more accurately? By measuring factors such as these, you can devise features with demonstrable, quantifiable benefits. Or maybe you can satisfy all the needs with just one feature! Customers don't hire your product because it has a lot of features, they hire it because it has the features that get the job done.

Those are five ways JTBD helps you think different. How does your organization develop its product road map? Do you do it the traditional way? Could you benefit from implementing the thrv approach? If so, get in touch with us, we'd love to talk with you about how our products and services can help you launch high growth products.

In the next post, we'll take a look at generating ideas, pricing your product, and projecting revenue. 

This is the introduction to a series about how Jobs-to-be-Done can change your product development mindset. Part 1 explains the first five rows of the chart using the example of an educational publisher. Part 2 discusses Idea Generation, Pricing, and Market Sizing. Part 3 covers Road Mapping, Aligning the Team, and Scoping an MVP.

Jobs-to-be-Done is often presented from a theoretical point-of-view. To help you apply it to your everyday life in product development, we've created a Jobs-to-be-Done Cheat Sheet.

The Cheat Sheet illustrates the practical difference between a traditional approach to product management, and the JTBD approach from thrv. If you've ever found the theory to be a little overwhelming, this breakdown may help.

To ground the concepts, we imagine how Microsoft could have used JTBD to think differently when competing with the iPod. If you were a PM at Microsoft then and focused on the customer's unmet needs in the job of curating music, would you have proposed the Zune?

Think of the Cheat Sheet as a first step towards setting yourself apart from all other product managers and companies who don't know about Jobs-to-be-Done. Save the image and refer to it when you're about to do something the same way you always have.

To dig deeper into the Zune vs iPod, sign up for our free email course: How Microsoft Could Have Beaten the iPod Using Jobs-to-be-Done.

To apply JTBD to your market, check out our training, software, and services or contact us.

It's one of the toughest moments for any company. You've spent time and money, pushed a great team to their limits, and now you are ready to launch a product into the world. You should be proud, elated even, but your stomach is in knots. Why?

Because, despite all your efforts, you're not sure if it's going to be a success. You've seen this movie before. A big investment in all the best ideas from all the most talented people results in a lackluster response from your customers. The stakes are high so you tightened up your sprints and got more ruthless with your prioritization. Maybe this time will be different?

I've been there and know the feeling well. Excitement, fear, hope and trepidation all swirling around inside your heart, head and stomach. I've optimized design and engineering processes until my team is a well-oiled machine, but it had no effect growth. It's an experience I kept coming back to when thinking about the next challenge to take on in my career. The more thought I gave to it, the more it became clear: I was passionate about the product launch, or more specifically, helping organizations launch products with more confidence, less risk, and in ways that not only brought business success but also led to happy and focused teams.

The turning point for me occurred when I learned and adopted the Jobs-to-be-Done framework. JTBD clarified my thinking and reoriented my perspective on product management. After years with a product-centric point of view, JTBD asked me to take a customer-centric view. It made all the difference in the world. I realized that the tightest sprints in the world won't fix a broken product strategy that doesn't focus on customer needs. I'll admit, it was challenging at first. I had to break the way I had been thinking and speaking about products for years.

Eventually, I understood Jobs-to-be-Done was more than a buzzword and more than a mindset. It's also a process that brings science to the art of product management and increases the product launch hit rate and efficiency for those willing to put in the effort. When it came time for me to venture out on my own, I knew that helping others reap the benefits from this approach was not only what I wanted to do, but was also something that the product community needed.

thrv helps companies and product teams understand that successful launches aren't about innovative features (though that can help) or user tests saying your product is "cool" but rather about satisfying unmet customer needs. People buy products, people switch from other products, not just because something new comes along, but because it helps them do something they are already trying to do faster or with greater accuracy. With thrv, we are building the only platform for product managers based on understanding and quantifying the unmet needs of the customer's job-to-be-done.

Nothing gets me more excited than working with an organization and being there for the "lightbulb moment" when the customer-centric approach kicks in. thrv helps people understand and leverage the Jobs-to-be-Done process in a way that makes adoption faster and keeps the entire team focused on the customer throughout product development. While the theory of JTBD has a growing influence within the product management field, little has been done to help teams implement the practice. And as product managers, we all know a great idea doesn't launch a successful product--it's all about implementation and execution. thrv's tools and services are here to support you every step of the way.

Welcome to thrv! We're excited you're here and we can't wait to tell you more about our company, our people and our software. Why are we so excited? Because we believe the discipline of Product Management is ready for a new approach, one that will have you seeing your customers, your career and your product road map in a whole new light. We thought the best way to introduce ourselves to you would be by letting you hear directly from our Founder & CEO, Jay Haynes.

Jay has 25 years of experience running companies and shipping products, including time at Microsoft as a Product Manager. He is the holder of three U.S. patents, and received an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School. Jay's taken that experience and expertise and focused it on one mission: To help product teams launch successful products. That's ultimately why he started thrv, the first and only software application for Jobs-to-be-Done product management.

So, if you're involved in product management and you're struggling with questions about features, customer needs, pricing, or customer acquisition, grab a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage and start your journey with this introductory interview that will help you understand what Jobs-to-be-Done is all about, how thrv leverages this innovative approach, and most importantly, how it can help product managers excel at their jobs.

I've heard of Jobs-to-be-Done. It has something to do with a milkshake, right?

Jobs-to-be-done was made famous by Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School, who wrote about analyzing milkshake sales for a major fast food company (watch this great video for a description of the milkshake example). 40% of shakes were sold first thing in the morning. Did this company's milkshake have a flavor that early birds craved? No, they had a "Job-to-be-Done"--keep hunger at bay until noon and reduce the boredom of their morning commute. Christensen stumbled upon a real insight: People weren't buying a product, they were hiring a product to help them get a job done.

The milkshake served the job because it kept you full until lunch, you couldn't drink it quickly, and it only took one hand to consume--perfect for driving. It's interesting to note that recently Taco Bell created a line of breakfast items and focused on the fact you could eat it with one hand, leaving you free to go about your business. Now, that's a relatively simple consumer example, but Jobs-to-be-Done is a very potent approach in much more complex markets like medical devices, business information and complex consumer markets where the job itself is actually much more complicated.

Ok, but what is thrv?

thrv is the first and only software to use the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology for product teams and product managers. And what that means is thrv puts your customer's job front and center, so everything you do as a product manager and a product team, from analyzing competitors to prioritizing your product road map, to figuring out your messaging and positioning is done in thrv. That's very different than other product management tools and software which start with ideas about what your product should do. Because thrv focuses on your customer's job rather than your product, it helps you to generate ideas that will help your customers with their most critical issues.

With thrv, how do I use it with things like Buyer Personas or developing a cool new feature set?

Buyer Personas are interesting. They tend to be based on things like demographics, where you have an urban woman in her 60s and a rural man in his 20s and each is a different buyer persona. But the power of Jobs-to-be-Done is that it focuses on what those personas, those customers, are actually trying to accomplish. In the traditional view of things, a buyer persona might lead you astray from potential customers. For example, could an urban 60-year old woman and a rural 20-year old man both be trying to reach a destination on time? And the answer, of course, is yes. And they could both struggle with executing that job the same way, but because personas use demographic information to define your customers, rather than the job itself, that can lead you to make extraneous or even inaccurate assumptions. Jobs-to-be-Done can be very useful because it gives you insights into why customers are struggling to execute the job, not just who they are demographically. And once you understand why they are frustrated with executing the job, then you have the key to developing a new feature that they are likely to connect with and use, because now youve helped them get the job done quicker or more accurately.

Will using thrv and the JTBD methodology help me to get more people to buy and use my product?

That is the entire goal! To make you a product management hero. The goal with JTBD and within thrv is to coordinate your entire product team on what your customer is trying to do. In other words, to help you figure out, before you invest in building and marketing and selling a product, what is it that people are likely to buy and use? And what they're likely to buy is something that helps them get a job done. This of course was the famous milkshake marketing example. Clayton Christensen, when he was writing about it, realized that if you thought about improving the milkshake, if you realized that 40% of the people drinking milkshakes were drinking them in the morning on their commute, then you could study and analyze what's happening on their morning commute and gain insights into the job they are trying to execute. Rather than just studying how you make a milkshake better, you would study the job. And this is where you come up with breakthrough innovations that people will more likely buy and use.

Wait, so JTBD sounds different than what I thought. I don't have the time to learn new stuff, and we've already got a system at work. Why should I try this new approach?

There are three main reasons you might want to try the JTBD approach: One is, you want to convert more customers, and JTBD can be very powerful because it can quickly help you improve your positioning and your messaging just by thinking about what your customer is trying to accomplish. The second is that it can help de-risk your product road map. Your company is likely planning to invest potentially millions of dollars in new product features that are theoretically going to help you beat your competition. But that investment can be very risky because frequently companies launch new products or product features and they don't generate the revenue growth that they need. With thrv and JTBD framework you can assess the risk in your product roadmap. The third reason is that its a much better way to identify your competitors' weaknesses. If you have competitors that you are worried about, that are launching new products and/or are taking market share from your company, you can use thrv and JTBD to figure out where their weaknesses are by analyzing not just your product vs. their product, but how well your competitors product gets the job done, and how well your products get the job done.

I'm just a product manager, doesn't this need to get approved by the C-Suite?

It's good to have executive buy-in into any new approach or new tool, but as a product manager you can train your team, and get the training you need yourself to help improve in your job as a product manager independent of your C-Suite. Because as a product manager you're always looking for new insights into what your customers want and what your competitor's weaknesses are. JTBD and thrv can help you as a product manager which can help you help your team, which is the ultimate goal of thrv, to create highly effective product teams.

I get what you're talking about, but this will totally baffle my colleagues.

JTBD is a very logical process. When you explain your customer's job and what theyre trying to accomplish in a logical, coherent story, which is what JTBD enables you to do, your colleagues are more likely to agree on what your goal as a product team should be. In traditional methods, where there isn't an agreed upon method to understand customer needs or what your customer is trying to accomplish, problems such as conflict, dissatisfaction, and emotional arguments among colleagues can arise. One of the real advantages about thrv and JTBD is, you can translate a customer story into a series of metrics that can be measured, so then you and your colleagues can agree on what your customers are trying to accomplish which makes it easier to agree on what you should put in your product road map and how you should message and position your product.

Ok, this all sounds pretty good, but the Head of Product wants to push new features out by the end of the quarter, will thrv help us do that?

What you want to ask yourself (and your team) is, why do you want these new features for your customers? This is the power of JTBD thinking, understanding that customers don't necessarily want new features. In fact, what they want is to get a job done. If you can get the job done with fewer features, in many markets, thats actually a better solution. Ultimately what your Head of Product wants is satisfied customers and more revenue by selling more of your product. Jobs-to-be-Done enables you to focus and measure where your customers struggle so you can identify if you truly need more features, or you may in fact need fewer features to help your customers get the job done quicker and more accurately.

This requires a paradigm shift in thinking for the Head of Product and his/her team. Rather than measure their success by the number of features launched, they should be looking at customer satisfaction as a key metric of success, and customer satisfaction is measured, in the mind of the customer, by how well they can get their job done. That was my job at Microsoft as a product manager - we measured ourselves against the competition by who had the most features. Most of the time that didn't work because people weren't buying software based on the feature count, they were buying based on how effectively they felt the product would help them with the job they needed to get done. That traditional sort of thinking does often tend to lead companies down a path, and they do tend to chase their competitors. Real breakthroughs can comes when companies eliminate features and make it easier for customers to get the job done. This is not easy to do without JTBD, which is why we created thrv.

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Thanks for reading, we hope you found Jay's thoughts and insights worth thinking about. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear them. You can leave a comment below, or engage us on Twitter @thrvapp. If you'd like to speak to us directly about thrv and our training program, you can get in touch with us here.