Jobs To Be Done Overview

by December 10, 2015

At the Glance Conference in San Francisco, CA I had the pleasure of hearing Bob Moesta, an originator of the Jobs-To-Be-Done methodology talk over the process how it works and why.

  • Getting to consumer insights is difficult. How do you go from survey and/or ethnographic data to what people actually do?
  • Most of the time we’re doing research in the active looking stage. All of what people tell us then is unrealistic. Instead look at the trade-offs people are willing to make. Learn from what people already do. They are the innovators, not us. We need to keep up with them.
  • Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) allows you to uncover what causes people to use a product. What causes behavior?
  • All consumers lie to you. JTBD is not based on research. It is based on interrogation. Don’t ask people what they want to do. Interrogate them after they do it and find out why they did.
  • If you listen to your best customers, they'll take you to the wrong place. They wanted advanced features/tweaks that take you away from the core needs most people have.
  • What is the job someone is trying to do with something? People don’t want a quarter inch drill, they want a quarter inch hole. The 5 Why’s method is a way to get to real needs.
  • The struggling moment is the seed of innovation. When people struggle is when they find new things to do what they want. People need to do something new, there’s no time to add an additional thing to their lives.
  • The competitive set of doing a job like “help me recover from a stressful day” includes drinks at the bar, the Xbox, yogas classes, and pepsi.
  • What’s the push of the situation against the habit of the present. What’s the magnetism of the new solution vs, the anxiety of the new solution?
  • You don’t always need to add features, you often need to take features away in order to help the customer make progress.
  • The 3 lens of JTBD: functional, emotional, social. Addressing emotional considerations is often the most valuable.
  • During JTBD interviews work to find the causality behind actions. Keep challenging people’s answers to get to the real reasons people do things. Don’t pay attention to attributes, try to understand what behavior the attributes lead to.
  • The JTBD premise: people are trying to make progress in their lives everyday. People don’t buy products, they hire them to do something. In specific situations where people struggle they seek out new solutions.
  • Find the micro-struggles. That's where value is created.