chi.zhangDiese Theorie stammt von Clayton Christensen. Die zentrale Idee: Menschen kaufen keine Produkte – sie “stellen” Produkte ein, um eine bestimmte Aufgabe (einen “Job”) zu erledigen. Ein Milchshake wird nicht gekauft, weil er lecker ist, sondern weil er auf dem Weg zur Arbeit den Hunger stillt und die Zeit vertreibt.
Jobs to be Done zwingt dich, tiefer zu denken: Was will der Kunde wirklich erreichen? In welcher Situation befindet er sich? Was sind seine tatsächlichen Ziele – nicht nur die oberflächlichen, sondern die funktionalen, emotionalen und sozialen?
Mein Fazit dazu: Die Theorie ist brillant – aber extrem schwer anzuwenden. Denn um den wahren “Job” zu verstehen, musst du schon sehr nah am Kunden sein. – Und das ist definitiv nicht für jemand geeignet, der/die nicht einmal eine Geschäftsidee hat.
Du musst viele Gespräche führen, beobachten, zwischen den Zeilen lesen. Und selbst dann ist es oft eine Interpretation. Zwei Menschen können dieselben Interviews führen und zu völlig unterschiedlichen Schlüssen kommen, welcher “Job” eigentlich erledigt werden soll. Die Methode gibt dir einen Rahmen – aber keine eindeutigen Antworten.
Es gibt ein Paradox, das fast jedes Unternehmen kennt: Man entwickelt ein Produkt nach allen Regeln der Kunst, fragt die Kunden, was sie sich wünschen, baut genau das – und nach dem Launch nutzt es niemand. Die Features bleiben unberührt, die Erwartungen unerfüllt. Das Problem liegt selten in der technischen Umsetzung. Es liegt in der grundlegenden Annahme darüber, warum Menschen überhaupt kaufen.
Die meisten Unternehmen fragen: Was will der Kunde besitzen? Die bessere Frage lautet: Welches Problem muss der Kunde in seinem Leben lösen? Genau hier setzt das Framework „Jobs-to-be-Done” an – eine Denkweise, die in den letzten Jahren von Harvard-Professor Clayton Christensen, dem Ingenieur Bob Moesta und dem ehemaligen IBM-Manager Tony Ulwick entwickelt wurde. Die Kernthese: Kunden kaufen keine Produkte. Sie „engagieren” sie wie Werkzeuge, um eine spezifische Aufgabe zu erledigen. Ein Job eben.
“Jobs to be Done” ist ein beliebtes Werkzeug, um Geschäftsideen zu entwickeln. Wenn dich das Thema interessiert, kannst du gern den Hauptbeitrag „Geschäftsidee finden: Die 5 Phasen der Evolution, die du nicht überspringen kannst.” lesen, um ein Gesamtbild zu bekommen. lesen, um ein Gesamtbild zu erhalten.
Der Trugschluss der Demografie
Wer im Marketing arbeitet, denkt in Personas: Männlich, 35 Jahre, Einkommen über 80.000 Euro, wohnhaft in München. Das klingt präzise. Ist es aber nicht. Demografie zeigt Korrelationen, keine Kausalitäten. Sie beschreibt, wer jemand ist – aber nicht, warum jemand handelt.
Bob Moesta erzählt gern von einem Lebensmittelhersteller, der auf „gesundheitsbewusste Millennials” abzielte. In den Interviews stellte sich heraus, dass auch eine 55-jährige Frau das Produkt kaufte. Ihr Motiv? Die Tochter kam zu Besuch, und sie wollte als modern und gesundheitsbewusst wahrgenommen werden. Der „Job” war soziale Anerkennung innerhalb der Familie – das Geburtsjahr spielte keine Rolle.
Oder das Beispiel zweier Porsche-Käufer: Ein 20-jähriger Student, der sich mühsam einen gebrauchten 911 aus den Achtzigern zusammenspart. Und ein 55-jähriger Manager, der dasselbe Modell neu vom Hof fährt. Demografisch könnten sie unterschiedlicher nicht sein. Doch beide „engagieren” das Auto für denselben Job: Lass mich mich jung, rebellisch und lebendig fühlen. Der Kontext, nicht das Alter, erklärt die Kaufentscheidung.
Der unerwartete Wettbewerb
Wer den Job versteht, sieht plötzlich Konkurrenten, die vorher unsichtbar waren. Netflix-Gründer Reed Hastings hat das früh begriffen. Er definierte den Job seines Dienstes nicht als „Filme streamen”, sondern als „Entspannung am Ende des Tages ermöglichen”. Aus dieser Perspektive konkurriert Netflix nicht nur mit Disney+ oder Amazon Prime. Es konkurriert mit einer Flasche Wein, einem Videospiel, einem heißen Bad – oder mit Schlaf. Hastings sagte einmal: „Wir konkurrieren mit Schlaf. Und wir gewinnen.”
Ein klassisches Beispiel ist die McDonald’s-Milchshake-Studie aus den frühen 2000er-Jahren. McDonald’s wollte den Absatz steigern und fragte Kunden in Fokusgruppen, wie der Shake besser werden könnte. Die Antworten waren erwartbar: schokoladiger, größer, günstiger. Also investierte McDonald’s Millionen in die Optimierung – und die Verkaufszahlen blieben flach.
Erst als Clayton Christensens Team einen anderen Ansatz wählte, wurde es interessant. Statt zu fragen, was die Leute wollten, beobachteten sie, wann sie kauften. Ein Forscher stand 18 Stunden lang in einer Filiale und notierte: Fast die Hälfte aller Milchshakes wurde vor 8 Uhr morgens verkauft. Von Einzelpersonen. Die nur den Shake kauften. Und dann ins Auto stiegen.
Am nächsten Tag sprach das Team diese Kunden auf dem Parkplatz an. Nicht: „Warum mögen Sie Milchshakes?” Sondern: „Welchen Job sollte der Shake heute Morgen für Sie erledigen?” Die Antwort war überraschend einhellig: Die Leute hatten eine lange, langweilige Autofahrt vor sich – 45 Minuten, eine Stunde. Sie brauchten etwas, das sie beschäftigte und bis zum Mittagessen satt hielt.
Warum nicht eine Banane? Zu schnell gegessen. Nach drei Bissen vorbei, 43 Minuten Langeweile übrig. Warum kein Donut? Klebrige Finger, Krümel auf dem Anzug, Stress am Lenkrad. Warum kein Bagel mit Frischkäse? Zu trocken, zu umständlich, man braucht beide Hände.
Der Milchshake war perfekt. Dick genug, um 20 Minuten durch den dünnen Strohhalm zu dauern. Sättigend. Sauber. Eine Hand am Lenkrad, eine am Becher. Das Entscheidende: Die Zähigkeit des Shakes, in jedem anderen Kontext ein Produktfehler, war hier die wertvollste Eigenschaft.
Aber McDonald’s verkaufte auch nachmittags viele Shakes. Diesmal an Eltern mit Kindern. Der Job war ein anderer: Sei kurz der gute Vater, sag mal „Ja” zu deinem Kind. Hier war die Zähigkeit plötzlich ein Problem. Der Vater wollte nach Hause, Abendessen machen – kein 20-minütiges Schlürfen im Auto. McDonald’s reagierte: Morgens wurde der Shake noch dicker, mit kleinen Fruchtstückchen für Abwechslung. Nachmittags gab es eine dünnere, kleinere Variante. Und Self-Service-Terminals für die morgendlichen Pendler, die keine Zeit hatten, hinter Familien in der Schlange zu stehen.
Ergebnis: Umsatzsteigerung um den Faktor sieben. Nicht durch bessere Schokolade. Durch besseres Verständnis des Jobs.
Die emotionale Barriere: Der Esstisch-Effekt
Ein Job hat immer mehrere Dimensionen: funktional, emotional, sozial. Das zeigt eine andere Fallstudie – aus Detroit, aus der Immobilienbranche.
Ein Entwickler baute luxuriöse Eigentumswohnungen für Senioren, die ihr großes Haus aufgeben wollten. Granitarbeitsplatten, Marmorboden, faire Preise. Die Besichtigungen liefen hervorragend. Die Leute waren begeistert. Aber sie kauften nicht. Sie kamen zweimal, dreimal – und verschwanden dann.
Bob Moesta interviewte die Nichtkäufer. Und immer wieder kam ein Detail zur Sprache: der alte Esstisch. „Ich weiß nicht, was ich mit unserem Tisch machen soll.” Oder: „Das schöne Erker-Fenster ist zu klein für unseren Tisch.”
Ein Tisch? Wirklich? Diese Menschen gaben Hunderttausende für eine Wohnung aus – und scheiterten an einem Möbelstück?
Moesta erkannte: Es ging nicht um Holz und Lack. Es ging um Erinnerungen. Der Tisch war der stille Zeuge von 25 Jahren Familienleben. Jedes Weihnachtsessen, jeder Geburtstag, jede Hausaufgabe. Ihn wegzugeben fühlte sich an wie Verrat an der eigenen Geschichte. Wie die Bestätigung, dass diese Lebensphase – Eltern sein, Kinder großziehen – endgültig vorbei war. Die Angst vor diesem emotionalen Schritt blockierte den funktional völlig sinnvollen Umzug.
Die Lösung war keine bessere Küche. Es war ein Service: Das Unternehmen bot Umzugshilfe, zwei Jahre kostenlosen Lagerraum und einen Sortierraum in der neuen Anlage. Die Botschaft: Du musst dich heute nicht entscheiden. Nimm den Tisch mit. Schau in einem Jahr, ob du ihn noch brauchst. Die emotionale Barriere fiel. Die Verkäufe stiegen sprunghaft. Der Preis wurde sogar um 5.000 Dollar erhöht – die Leute zahlten gern. Sie kauften nicht Lagerraum. Sie kauften die Erlaubnis, ihre Erinnerungen zu behalten.
Die vier Kräfte des Wechsels
Ein besseres Produkt allein reicht nicht. Menschen wechseln nur, wenn die Kräfte, die zum Neuen ziehen, stärker sind als die Kräfte, die sie zurückhalten. Das Modell der „Vier Kräfte” beschreibt dieses Spannungsfeld:
1. Push (Schmerz): Das Problem mit der aktuellen Lösung. „Meine Software ist langsam.” „Mein Rücken schmerzt von der alten Matratze.”
2. Pull (Anziehung): Das Versprechen der neuen Lösung. „Die neue App sieht intuitiv aus.” „Die Matratze in der Werbung wirkt so bequem.”
3. Anxiety (Angst): Die Sorge vor dem Unbekannten. „Was, wenn ich beim Wechsel meine Daten verliere?” „Was, wenn die neue Matratze noch schlechter ist?”
4. Habit (Gewohnheit): Die Trägheit des Bestehenden. „Ich kenne alle Tastenkürzel in meinem alten Programm.” „Meine alte Matratze hat ihre Macken, aber ich bin dran gewöhnt.”
Die Formel ist einfach: Push + Pull müssen größer sein als Anxiety + Habit. Scheitern passiert meist nicht, weil der Pull zu schwach ist. Sondern weil die Anxiety ignoriert wird.
Zurück zu den Condos: Der Push (das große Haus ist zu viel Arbeit) war stark. Der Pull (die schöne neue Wohnung) auch. Aber die Anxiety (Was passiert mit meinen Erinnerungen?) war stärker. Erst als das Unternehmen direkt die Angst reduzierte – durch Lagerraum, durch Zeit – funktionierte der Wechsel.
Die Lehre: Manchmal ist die mächtigste Innovation keine neue Funktion. Sondern die Beseitigung von Angst. Ein Ein-Klick-Datenimport ist kein Feature. Es ist ein Angst-Reduktions-Tool. Eine 30-Tage-Geld-zurück-Garantie ist keine Verkaufstaktik. Sie ist ein Angst-Reduktions-Tool.
Die Wissenschaft der Innovation
Tony Ulwick wollte den Zufall aus der Produktentwicklung nehmen. Seine Methode, „Outcome-Driven Innovation”, ist mathematisch. Statt Kunden zu fragen, was sie wollen, identifiziert er „Desired Outcomes” – messbare Ziele, mit denen Kunden den Erfolg eines Jobs bewerten.
Das Herzstück ist der „Opportunity-Algorithmus”:
Wichtigkeit + (Wichtigkeit – Zufriedenheit) = Opportunity-Score
Ein Beispiel: Rasenmähen. Du befragst mindestens 100 Personen und lässt sie zwei Dinge bewerten:
- Wie wichtig ist es dir, die Zeit fürs Mähen zu minimieren? (Skala 1–10)
Antwort: 9 (sehr wichtig, niemand mäht gern) - Wie zufrieden bist du mit deinem aktuellen Rasenmäher in dieser Hinsicht? (Skala 1–10)
Antwort: 4 (geht so, er verstopft oft, ich muss den Beutel leeren)
Rechnung: 9 + (9 – 4) = 14
Ein Wert über 10 gilt als solide Chance. Über 15 als Volltreffer. 14 bedeutet: Hier gibt es eine große Marktlücke. Wer einen signifikant schnelleren Mäher baut, wird Erfolg haben.
Umgekehrt: „Minimiere die Zeit, um den Motor zu starten.”
Wichtigkeit: 6 (nett, aber nicht kritisch)
Zufriedenheit: 9 (Knopfdruck funktioniert bei den meisten Geräten gut)
Rechnung: 6 + (6 – 9) = 3
Ein Score von 3 bedeutet: Das Problem ist gelöst. Wer hier Millionen investiert, um den Start um 0,5 Sekunden zu beschleunigen, verschwendet Geld. Der Markt ist überversorgt.
Ulwick besteht auf präziser Sprache. Keine vagen Begriffe wie „einfach”, „schnell” oder „zuverlässig”. Stattdessen nutzt er eine strenge Grammatik:
Verb + Metrik + Objekt
Schlecht: „Mach den Rasenmäher benutzerfreundlicher.”
Gut: „Minimiere die Zeit, die nötig ist, um alle Bedienelemente zu erlernen.”
Schlecht: „Mach ihn robuster.”
Gut: „Minimiere die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass die Klinge sich verbiegt, wenn sie auf einen Stein trifft.”
Mit dieser Präzision können Ingenieure tatsächlich arbeiten. „Mach es besser” ist kein Entwicklungsziel. „Reduziere Vibrationen am Griff um 20 %” schon.
Ulwicks Behauptung: Produkte, die nach dieser Methode entwickelt werden, haben eine Erfolgsquote von 86 % – verglichen mit 17 % im Branchendurchschnitt. Eine steile These. Aber selbst wenn sie nur zur Hälfte stimmt, ist die Methode bemerkenswert.
Was das für Unternehmen bedeutet
Die zentrale Lektion von Jobs-to-be-Done lautet: Hör auf, Produkte zu bauen. Fang an, Fortschritt zu ermöglichen.
Dein Produkt ist austauschbar. Der Job, den deine Kunden erledigen wollen, bleibt oft über Jahrzehnte konstant. Theodore Levitt prägte dafür die berühmte Metapher: „Die Menschen wollen keinen Viertel-Zoll-Bohrer. Sie wollen ein Viertel-Zoll-Loch.” Was Levitt als Bild formulierte, macht Jobs-to-be-Done messbar und operationalisierbar.
Wer versteht, welche funktionalen und emotionalen Kämpfe seine Kunden führen, muss nicht mehr raten, was im Backlog oben stehen sollte. Er weiß es.
Die Frage ist nicht: Was hat dein Produkt heute geleistet?
Die Frage ist: Für welchen Job wurde es heute Morgen wirklich eingestellt?
Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are going to attempt something a little ambitious. Okay, maybe very ambitious. We’re going to try and change the way you see, well, pretty much everything around you. The phone in your hand, the car you drive, even the sandwich you grabbed for lunch today. It’s a bold claim, but I think, once you put on the glasses we’re going to talk about today, you really can’t take them off. It changes how you look at the world.
I want to start with a quote that I feel like everyone in business, or marketing at least, has heard a thousand times. It’s from Theodore Levitt, the Harvard professor. He famously said, people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. It’s the classic marketing cliche, right? It’s on slide decks everywhere. It is. But here’s my issue with it, and this is where I kind of want to start our whole deep dive today. I feel like most people, they nod at that quote, they put it on a poster in the office, and then they go right back to their desk and try to sell the drill anyway.
Oh, absolutely. They start talking about the voltage, the ergonomic grip, the battery life. Yeah. They are just completely obsessed with the object, not the outcome. And I’d go even further than that. I think the quote itself, as famous as it is, might not actually go deep enough. How so? You think they don’t want the hole? Well, think about it. Do you actually want a hole in your wall? A hole is damage. It’s, you know, it’s dust. It’s a mess you have to clean up. Nobody wants a hole.
Okay, that’s a fair point. I don’t want the hole. I want the shelf that goes into the hole. Exactly. You want the shelf, but then do you really just want the shelf or do you want your books off the floor? Okay, yeah. Do you want the feeling of looking at your living room and thinking, finally, this place is organized. I feel like an adult who has their life together.
Okay, now we’re getting philosophical. You’re saying the drill is just a tool to get to an emotion. That’s it. You’ve hit it. And that is the absolute core of what we’re discussing today. The framework is called jobs to be done. Jobs to be done, or GTBD if you see the acronym. Right. And the fundamental idea is that customers don’t buy products, they hire them. Hire them, like you’d hire an employee. Just like an employee. You have a struggle in your life. There’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be. And you look around and you hire a product to help you make that progress. And I guess if the product doesn’t do its job, you fire it. It’s that simple. And you might fire it even if it’s a perfectly good product on paper with all the right features. If it doesn’t solve your specific struggle, it’s gone.
So our mission today is to really unpack this framework. We’re going to look at why traditional marketing, all the stuff we learned in school about demographics and personas, is actually leading a lot of companies off.
Cliff. And we’re going to look at the three main schools of thought, the sort of godfathers of this theory: Clayton Christensen, Bob Moesta, and Tony Olick. We’ve got some incredible stories to illustrate this. The famous milkshake study, which is legendary for a reason. Oh, it’s the, and another one that I found fascinating, the case of the Detroit condominiums and a dining room table. Yeah, that one really gets to the emotional core of a purchase.
And then we get into the math. Because there is actually an algorithm for this, which I have to admit I was surprised to find. It’s not just vibes and storytelling. No, not at all. It can be incredibly scientific and predictive if you want it to be.
OK, but before we go any further, I want to play devil’s advocate right out of the gate here. Please do. We’re saying stop looking at demographics. But isn’t the whole world built on demographics? If I’m running a Facebook ad campaign, the first thing it asks me for is males, 25, 34, living in Chicago. Are you telling me that’s completely useless? It’s not completely useless, but it is deeply, deeply misleading. The sources we looked at specifically from places like RV and SIVO, they call this the demographic blind spot. The blind spot. I like that.
Because here’s the problem. Correlation is not causation. The data tells you who someone is. It gives you a label, but it doesn’t tell you why they do anything. It has zero causal power. OK, give me a concrete example to make that real.
OK, picture this. You have a 20-year-old college student. He’s eating ramen noodles, working a part-time job, but he saves up every single penny to buy a used, maybe slightly beat-up Porsche 911 from the 1980s. I can see that guy. He wants to look cool, maybe impress people.
OK, now picture a 55-year-old corporate executive. He makes half a million dollars a year. He walks into a gleaming dealership and buys the exact same car, a Porsche 911, but brand new. Top of the line. Right. Now, on a demographic spreadsheet, these two people are on different planets. Totally. Different age, different income, different zip code. An advertiser would never, ever put them in the same bucket. One is a budget-conscious student, the other is an affluent professional.
But in the jobs-to-be-done framework, they might be the exact same customer. Because they hired the car for the same reason. Precisely, they both hired that car for the same job: help me feel young, rebellious, and alive again. The struggle feeling stuck or bored is the same. The demographic is almost irrelevant to the core motivation.
That’s so interesting. So if Porsche only targets the 55-year-old because, you know, that’s who has the money on paper, they miss the entire cultural current that the 20-year-old brings to the brand. They miss the aspiration. And you can flip it. You can have two people who look identical on paper but are hiring products for totally different reasons. And there was a great example of this in the research.
From the Rewired group, they called it the ice cream paradox. And I love a good paradox, especially when it involves dessert. This one is perfect because it just shows how surface level data can lie to you.
So imagine you’re a marketer for a health food company. You’re building your target persona. OK, let’s call her Sarah. Sarah is 35, a yoga instructor, buys organic kale at Whole Foods, tracks her macros on an app, and listens to wellness podcasts, maybe even this one. Hello, Sarah. Welcome to the show.
Now, if you are a brand manager for a super indulgent, triple fudge, high fat, high sugar ice cream bar, do you target Sarah with your ads? Absolutely not. She’s the enemy. She’s in my health conscious consumer bucket. It would be a total waste of money to show her an ad for my decadent ice cream.
But then you look at the actual point of sale data and you see Sarah. She’s buying that triple fudge ice cream bar on a Tuesday afternoon. Why? Is the data wrong? Is our persona broken? Did she have a cheat day? See, traditional marketing panics here. They say, oh, our personas are broken. People are unpredictable. But jobs to be done asks a different, better question. It asks, what happened in Sarah’s life that day?
Right. What was the context, the circumstance? Let’s imagine Sarah’s day. She taught three back-to-back hot yoga classes. Her car broke down on the way home. It’s raining. Her boss called and was upset about something. She just feels completely overwhelmed. So she’s not hiring the ice cream as food or nutrition. Not at all. She is hiring the ice cream as a coping mechanism. The job is, help me find a small moment of comfort and indulgence in a chaotic, stressful day. And a kale salad simply cannot do that job. It’s not qualified.
Exactly. A kale salad cannot soothe anxiety. The ice cream is the only candidate qualified for that specific position at that specific moment. So the circumstance, the bad day was the thing that caused the purchase, not her demographic profile. Precisely. And this is the aha moment of the whole framework. People don’t fundamentally change who they are from day to day, but their circumstances change constantly and different circumstances trigger different jobs that need to be done.
I love that. It makes the customer feel so much more human, you know, less like a data point on a spreadsheet. So we have the basic concept. You hire products to solve a struggle. But this isn’t just one monolithic theory. There are actually, what, three different schools of thought here, right?
Yes, that’s a great way to put it. If you dive into the literature from sources like the Christensen Institute or GoPractice, you’ll see three names pop up over and over again: Clayton Christensen, Bob Musta, and Tony Ulwick. And they all view the job from a slightly different angle.
OK, let’s break them down because I think seeing the different angles is really helpful. Let’s start with Clayton Christensen. He’s a Harvard Business
Ess School guy, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, the late, great Clayton Christensen. He’s really the philosopher of the group. He focuses on the why. For him, JTBD is a theory, a lens. It’s a way of seeing the world and understanding the causal mechanism of customer behavior. He’s less about a rigid step-by-step process and more about the fundamental mindset shift. So he’s the big picture guy. He gives us the theory.
Right. Then you have Bob Moesta. He actually worked with Christensen on some of the early research. He’s an engineer by training, but really at his core, he’s a salesperson. And the source material calls his approach demand side sales. Exactly. Moesta is the detective. He focuses on the when and the how. He wants to reconstruct the timeline of a purchase. What happened yesterday? What happened this morning? What was the first thought that led you here? He treats every purchase like a crime scene investigation, looking for clues. I like that image. The CSI of shopping. So we have the philosopher, the detective.
And then the third one is Tony Olwick. Tony Olwick is the scientist. He’s a former IBM engineer who looked at innovation and said, this is too much art, too much guessing, too much luck. He wanted to make it a science. So he developed a framework called Outcome Driven Innovation or ODI. And he’s the one who brings the math to the party. He brings all the math. He focuses on the what. He has a methodology for breaking a job down into incredibly specific, measurable steps or desired outcomes and then uses quantitative surveys to predict success. And he claims a pretty staggering success rate, right? It’s an 86% success rate for new products developed with his method, which is just wild compared to the industry average, which is something like 17%. 86%. I mean, if that’s even half true, everyone should be listening to him. It’s a big claim, but his process is incredibly rigorous.
So you have the philosopher, Christensen, the detective, Moesta, and the scientist, Ulrich. Three different ways of looking at the same core idea. Okay, that’s a great map of the territory. So let’s get into the stories. Because I think the theory is great, but until you see it in the wild, in practice, it’s hard to really grasp. And we have to start with the milkshake. It is the canonical case study. It is the story that launched a thousand ships. It’s the one everyone tells. So set the scene for us. This was McDonald’s in the early 2000s, right?
Yes, McDonald’s. They wanted to increase sales of their milkshakes and they did what every big, smart company does. They started with the product and their customers. They brought in focus groups of their core demographic, you know, let’s say males 25 to 45, and asked them, how can we make this milkshake better for you? And I’m assuming the customers in the focus group gave the usual predictable answers. Exactly what you’d expect. Make it chocolatier. Make it cheaper. Make it bigger. Add chunks of cookies.
Or candy. Right. More is better. That’s always the answer. Always. So McDonald’s listened. They’re a data-driven company. They spent millions of dollars reengineering the shakes. They made them richer, chocolatier, chunkier. They rolled them out. Let me guess. Sales went through the roof. Sales did absolutely nothing. They completely flatlined, didn’t move an inch. But why? They gave people exactly what they said they wanted. Because people are terrible at explaining their own motivations in a sterile, artificial focus group setting. They don’t know what they want until they’re in the circumstance.
So McDonald’s, frustrated, called in Christensen’s team. And Christensen’s first piece of advice was, stop asking people what they want. Just watch them. The stakeout. I love this part. The stakeout. One of his researchers stood in a McDonald’s for 18 hours straight, and they just took meticulous notes on when people bought milkshakes, what else they bought, if they were alone, and if they ate in or took it to go. And they found a pattern that just absolutely made no sense at first. What was the pattern? Almost half of all milkshakes were sold before 8:00 a.m. That’s kind of gross. Who wants a milkshake for breakfast at 7:30 in the morning? That’s what they thought. And it wasn’t families with kids. It was always a single person, usually a man. They came in, bought only the milkshake, nothing else, got in their car, and drove off.
Okay, so the detective work from Bob Moesta starts here, they have to ask. What job needs to be done at 7:30 a.m.? Right, so the next day they went back and they started stopping these people in the parking lot. But they didn’t ask, why do you like milkshakes? They asked a weird question. They asked, excuse me, what job were you trying to get done that caused you to come here and hire this milkshake this morning? And I’m sure people looked at them like they were crazy. At first, yeah, but then they started to open up, and the common thread was the commute. Every single one of them had a long, boring drive to work, maybe 45 minutes, maybe over an hour.
Okay, so the job is, keep me occupied and entertained during a boring drive. That’s one part of it, and the second part was, keep me full until lunch, because I’m not really hungry now, but I will be by 10 a.m. Okay, but hold on a second. I want to push back on this because if the job is commute entertainment and fullness, there are a million competitors for that job. Why not a bagel? Why not a banana? Why not a Snickers bar? That is exactly the next question they investigated. What was the milkshake competing against and why did it keep winning?
So they asked about the banana. Yeah, the banana seems perfect. It’s healthy. It’s cheap. It’s clean. One hand on the wheel. But think about the physics of eating a banana while driving. How long does it actually take? I don’t know. A minute. Maybe two minutes if you take small bites. Right. You peel it, three bites, and it’s gone. And you
Still have 43 minutes of boring commute left to go. The job isn’t done. Exactly. The banana’s too efficient. It doesn’t last. Plus, people said it didn’t really fill them up. They were hungry again by 10:00 a.m., so the banana gets fired.
Okay, what about a donut? A nice glazed donut that lasts longer if you savor it. The customers hated the donuts for one very specific reason. The mess. Ah, the sticky fingers. Sticky fingers, crumbs on their suit, glaze on the steering wheel. Now you’re driving and you’re anxious because you’re trying to wipe your hands on your pants. It creates more problems than it solves. It creates anxiety. Donut fired.
Okay, bagel with cream cheese. Too dry, you have to chew and chew. And it’s a two-handed operation. You can’t steer a car and spread cream cheese on a bagel at the same time. It’s a safety hazard. Bagel fired.
So the milkshake, this seemingly unhealthy breakfast choice, wins by default. It doesn’t win by default. It wins because it is a perfectly designed tool for this specific job. And the key attribute was its viscosity. Viscosity, not a word you usually associate with deliciousness. But in this case, its thickness was its number one feature. The customer said things like, it takes me 20 minutes to suck this thick shake through that tiny little straw. And that’s a good thing. In any other context, that would be a product flaw. Here, it’s a huge benefit because for 20 minutes, they have something to do. One hand on the wheel, one hand on the cup. It gives their mouth something to do. It fights the boredom. It fits perfectly in the cup holder. It’s clean, and it sits in your stomach like a brick, so you are definitely not hungry at 10 a.m. It is the perfect tool for the morning commute job. Exactly.
But here is the brilliant twist in the story. They also sold a lot of milkshakes in the afternoon. Same exact product. Same exact product off the menu. But a totally different job was being done. In the afternoon, the buyers were almost always parents, usually dads. They were picking up their kids from school or sports practice. The treat moment, the reward. Right. The dad has probably been saying no all day. No, don’t touch that. No, finish your homework. No, sit still. He wants to be the good dad for a minute. He wants a moment of connection with his kids, so he buys the kid a milkshake. Oh, yeah, I get that.
But now think about that thick, viscous milkshake, the one that takes 20 minutes to drink. Is that a good thing for the dad who’s trying to get home and make dinner? No, it’s a nightmare. He wants to get home. He doesn’t want the kids slurping in the backseat for the next half an hour making a mess. Exactly. He’s looking at his watch thinking, just finish the shake. So the thickness, which was a feature in the morning, is a bug in the afternoon. That is absolutely mind blowing. The same attribute is a positive or a negative, depending entirely on the time of day. It depends on the job. So McDonald’s had a c
Choice. If they just made the milkshake better in a generic way, like making it chocolatier, they’d fail to serve either job properly. They had to optimize for each job. So what did they do? Did they actually make two different shakes? They did. For the morning crowd, they made the shake even thicker. They made it harder to drink to prolong the experience. And they added tiny chunks of fruit. For flavor. No, not for flavor, but for unpredictability. Unpredictability. What does that mean?
Think about the boring commute. It’s the same road every day. If you unexpectedly suck up a little piece of strawberry, it’s a tiny event. It breaks the monotony. Oh, a strawberry bit. It keeps you engaged with the product. That is hilarious. They were gamifying the milkshake to fight boredom. And they made one other change for the morning job. They added self-service kiosks in the lobby, but put them in front of the main counter because the morning commuter is in a rush. They don’t want to stand in line behind a family of five ordering pancakes and hash browns. They want to swipe a card, grab the shake, and go. Speed was critical.
Okay, and for the afternoon, dad job. They realized they needed a different solution. They started offering a smaller, thinner shake that a kid could finish in five minutes. The get in, have a special moment, get out shake. This just completely destroys the idea of a milkshake demographic. It has nothing to do with age or gender. It’s about the morning commute struggle versus the afternoon parenting struggle. And when they made those changes targeted at the specific jobs, sales increased by a factor of seven. Seven X. That’s the power of getting the job right.
Okay, let’s move to the second story because this one hits on the emotional dimension even harder. The Detroit condominiums. Yes, this is a classic Bob Mosta story from his work with the Rewired Group. He was hired by a real estate developer who built these beautiful new condos specifically for downsizers. So retirees. Yeah. Empty nesters, people whose kids have moved out. Exactly. The kids are gone. The big four bedroom house in the suburbs is too much work to clean. The yard is a pain. They want to move to a simpler life. And this developer built what they thought was the perfect product. Luxury finishes, granite countertops, marble floors, bay windows. And the price was very competitive. Sounds like a slam dunk. Should have sold out in a week.
That’s what they thought. They had tons of foot traffic. Couples would walk in and just rave about the place. This is beautiful. The price is great. This is exactly what we’re looking for. There’s always a but. No one was buying. They’d come back two, three times and then just disappear. Why? I mean, if the product is good and the price is right, what’s the problem? What’s stopping them? That’s the multi-million dollar question Moesta had to figure out. So he started doing his detective work. He interviewed the people who almost bought a
Unit but then backed out at the last minute, and he noticed a very weird, specific detail kept coming up in the conversations. What was it? The dining room table? The table. People would be talking about the new condo, how much they love the kitchen, and then they’d sigh and say, man, I just don’t know what we’d do with our dining room table. Or, I’d love to move, but that lovely bay window isn’t big enough for our table.
Okay, I have to play the skeptic here. These are people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new home. Are they really going to let a piece of used furniture stop them from making a life-changing decision? Just buy a new table. Sell the old one. And that’s the logical, rational response. That’s what the developer thought too. But Moesta, using his interview technique, realized it wasn’t about the wood and the varnish. It was about the memories embedded in the wood. The emotional dimension of the job. He realized that for these families, that dining room table was the silent witness to their entire family history. It was the scene of every Christmas dinner, every Thanksgiving, every birthday party, every messy homework assignment for 25 years.
Oh, wow. Okay. To get rid of that table felt like throwing away their family history. It felt like betraying their past. It was an admission that that chapter of their life as parents with kids at home was well and truly over. And that was terrifying. So the struggle wasn’t I need a smaller place to live. The struggle was I want to transition to the next simpler stage of my life, but I’m terrified of losing my identity and my memories in the process.
Exactly. The table was the physical anchor of that anxiety, holding them back from making the purchase. So what did the developer do? I mean, you can’t solve that with granite countertops. Did they build bigger dining rooms? They actually did make a small architectural change. They shrunk the second bedroom a little to make the dining area slightly larger. But the real game-changing innovation wasn’t architectural at all. It was a service.
What kind of service? They had a breakthrough insight. They realized they weren’t in the construction business. They were in the moving lives business. So they started offering a full sorting and transition service. Like they’d help you pack your boxes. Much more than that. Specifically, they provided a sorting room right there at the new condo complex. They said to potential buyers, don’t worry about it. We’ll move everything for you. Take your time sorting it out here. And by the way, we will give you two years of free, secure storage.
Ah, that’s it. So they told the customer, you don’t have to make the painful decision about the table today. Exactly. They completely removed the anxiety from the equation. Bring the table. We’ll put it in storage for you. Decide in a year or two if you still want it. No pressure. That broke the emotional deadlock. It was like a dam breaking. Sales skyrocketed. They
Even raised their prices by $5,000 to cover the cost of the moving and storage. And people happily paid it because they weren’t paying for storage space. They were paying for permission to keep their memories and peace of mind. That is the power of understanding the deep emotional job, not just the functional one. It’s amazing.
Okay, so we’ve seen the examples. We’ve seen the light. But now I want to get really practical. If I’m a listener and I’m thinking, okay, I want to do this for my business, how do I actually find these jobs? I can’t just guess, oh, it’s about the payable. You have to have a process. No, you can’t guess. You have to dig. And this brings us to the next section, the methodology, and specifically Bob Moesta’s interview style.
Right, the CSI of shopping. He calls it a documentary of the purchase. But the number one rule, and this is going to sound completely counterintuitive, is never ask why. Wait a minute. The whole framework is about finding the why. Why shouldn’t I ask the question why? Because when you ask someone a direct question like, why did you buy that car? They lie to you. They lie, intentionally. Not maliciously. They rationalize. They invent a story post-purchase that makes them sound smart and logical. They’ll say, oh, I bought it for the great gas mileage. I bought it for the five-star safety rating. When really, they just bought it because it’s red and it makes them look cool.
Right. But they might not even admit that to themselves, let alone to you, a stranger. The real reason is often subconscious. So instead of asking why, you ask what happened. You become a journalist.
Okay, let’s try this. Let’s role play a bad interview versus a good interview. I just bought, let’s say, a new expensive mattress.
Okay. The bad interviewer, the traditional market researcher, says, why did you buy this mattress?
Well, my old one was kind of lumpy, and I read that this one provides better back support. See? Boring. It’s a rationalization. It’s not useful. Now let’s try the Moesta way.
Tell me about the day you bought the mattress. When was it?
It was last Saturday.
Okay. Last Saturday, what was the weather like?
It was sunny, actually. Pretty nice out.
Who were you with?
I was with my wife.
And did you go out for lunch before or after you went to the mattress store?
We went for tacos before.
Okay, so you’re at the taco place. Did you guys talk about the mattress at lunch?
Actually, yeah. I remember complaining that my neck hurt from sleeping funny.
Okay, your neck hurt. How long has your neck been hurting?
Oh, man. Probably three or four months, on and off.
So why didn’t you buy the mattress three months ago when the pain started?
Well, I guess we were busy. Or no, actually, we were waiting for our tax refund to come in.
Uh-huh, the tax refund. So the triggering event wasn’t the pain. The pain was there for months. The trigger was the cash infusion. The money showing up in your bank account gave you permission to solve the problem.
Problem. I see exactly what you did there. You didn’t ask me for my opinion. You walked me back through the timeline like a documentary and you found the real cause. Exactly. You reconstruct the timeline of the purchase. You’re looking for these key moments. The first thought when the customer thinks, you know, this old way isn’t working anymore. Then there’s passive looking where they start noticing ads but aren’t serious. Then active looking where they’re Googling and reading reviews. And finally, deciding the tipping point.
And this leads us to what I think is maybe the most useful practical tool in this entire deep dive, the four forces of progress. Yes. If you take one thing away today, it should be this diagram. Imagine a vertical line. On the left side is your old life, your old product. On the right side is the new life, the new product. There are two forces pushing you towards the new life and two forces holding you back in the old one. Okay, let’s walk through them one by one.
Force number one, pushing you forward, the push. The push of the situation, this is the pain, this is the problem, my back hurts from my old mattress, my morning commute is mind-numbingly boring, my current software is glitchy and slow. Okay, force number two also pushing you forward, the pull. The pull of the new solution. This is the shiny new thing. That new mattress in the ad looks so soft and inviting. That milkshake looks delicious and fun. That new software has a beautiful, clean dashboard. This is what most marketing focuses on, the features, the benefits, the pull.
But if push and pull were the only things that mattered, we’d all be switching products constantly. But we don’t. We get stuck. We get stuck because of the two forces holding us back. Force number three, holding you back. The habit of the present. Inertia, laziness. Exactly. It’s the devil you know. I’m used to the lumps in my mattress. I know all the keyboard shortcuts in my old glitchy software. Yeah. I’ve always just grabbed a bagel in the morning. It’s what I do. It takes energy to change. Okay.
And then force number four. You call this the silent killer, the anxiety of the new. This is the one I want to spend time on because I feel like most businesses completely ignore this force. They don’t even see it. I agree. Anxiety is all the what-if questions. What if I spend $2,000 on this new mattress and it’s even worse for my back? What if I switch to this new software and I lose all my data during the migration? What if I throw out my old dining room table and I regret it for the rest of my life? It’s the fear of making a mistake, the fear of being wrong.
And here is the simple but profound formula that governs every single purchase. For a customer to switch, the combined forces of push plus pull must be significantly greater than the combined forces of habit plus anxiety. That is such a powerful equation for innovation. Think about the condos again. The push, the big house is too much work, wa
It’s very strong. The pull, the new condo was beautiful, was also very strong. But the anxiety, what about my memories? What about the table? Was even stronger. So the deal died over and over again. Until they found a way to directly reduce the anxiety. Right. Notice what they did. They didn’t increase the pull by adding even nicer granite. They attacked the anxiety force head on by offering the storage room. That’s a huge lesson for anyone listening. Sometimes the most powerful innovation isn’t about adding a cool new feature, it’s about removing fear.
Exactly. If you’re a software company, your one-click data import button isn’t just a feature, it’s an anxiety reduction tool. Your 30-day money-back guarantee isn’t a sales tactic, it’s an anxiety reduction tool. I love that framing. Yeah.
Okay, so that’s the qualitative side, that’s the detective work. But we promised the scientist. We promised them the math. Let’s talk about Tony Olwik and outcome-driven innovation. This is where we get really rigorous. Olwik’s whole premise is stop guessing what customers want. He has an algorithm to find exactly where the biggest opportunity is in any market. He calls it the opportunity algorithm. The formula is importance plus important satisfaction, opportunity score.
Okay, that sounds like my old algebra textbook. Let’s plug in some real numbers so you can track this. Let’s use a lawnmower, for example. Perfect. So using Olick’s method, you would survey at least 100 people. And you don’t ask them what features they want. You ask them to rate a specific desired outcome, like minimize the time it takes to mow the lawn, and they rate that on a scale of 1 to 10.
Exactly. First, how important is that to you? 10 is super important. 1 is not important at all. Okay. Nobody likes mowing the lawn, so saving time is very important. Let’s say importance is a 9. Okay. Now you ask them the second question. Thinking about the lawnmower you currently use, how satisfied are you with its ability to help you minimize the time it takes to mow?
Well, most mowers are okay, but they could be faster. They get clogged. You have to empty the bag. Let’s say satisfaction is a 4. It’s below average. Okay, now let’s do the math. We take importance, 9, plus the gap between importance and satisfaction, which is 9, 4. So 9 minus 4 is 5. We add that to the original importance of 9. So 9 plus 5 is 14. An opportunity score of 14. Is that good? What’s the scale?
Anything over 10 is considered a solid opportunity. Anything over 15 is a home run. So 14 is a big green light. That is an underserved market. It’s a job that is highly important to customers, but they are not satisfied with the current solutions. That means if you build a significantly faster mower, people will pay a premium for it.
OK, let’s flip it. Let’s look at an over-served market where you shouldn’t innovate. All right. Let’s take another outcome for the lawnmower. Minimize the time it takes to start the engine. Okay, importance.
Maybe big six? It’s annoying if it doesn’t start, but most modern mowers with push-button start are pretty good. It’s not a huge pain point anymore. And satisfaction? Probably an eight or a nine for most people. The problem has largely been solved.
Okay, so the math is importance six plus importance six, satisfaction nine. That’s six minus nine, which is negative three. So six plus negative three is… An opportunity score of three. Which means? It means nobody cares. Do not touch this. If you are an R&D department and you spend millions of dollars to make the mower start 0.5 seconds faster, you are wasting every single penny. The market is over, sir.
This is brilliant. It’s like a heat map for innovation. It tells you exactly where to focus your resources and just as importantly, where to stop. it’s the ultimate cure for feature bloat. Companies love adding features that nobody asked for just to have another bullet point on the box. This math stops that cold.
Now, Olwek also talks about the universal job map, and he’s very clear this is different from a customer journey map, right? Yes, and the distinction is crucial. A customer journey map tracks what a customer does with a specific product. I open the app, I click the search button, I type a query, I buy. It’s solution specific. A job map tracks what the customer is trying to accomplish completely independent of any product or solution. The source material from Stratagen uses the example of crossing a river.
Right. It doesn’t matter if you’re in ancient Rome or today, whether you swim, take a boat, or build a bridge. The fundamental steps of the job are universal. Define. Where exactly do I want to end up on the other side? Okay. Where is the best point to begin my crossing? Prepare. Gather my supplies. Check the equipment. Confirm. Is the current too strong? Is it safe to proceed? Execute. Actually cross the river. And then monitor, modify, and conclude. and innovation can happen at any one of those steps.
Exactly. Think about a modern GPS app like Waze or Google Maps. The execute step of the job, get to a destination, physically driving the car, hasn’t changed much in 50 years. But Waze completely revolutionized the locate, confirm, and monitor steps. Right, monitor being watch out for traffic ahead. Before Waze, you monitored traffic by looking out your windshield and listening to the radio. Now, Waze monitors it for you in real time and helps you modify your route on the fly. They innovated on the informational steps of the job, not the physical driving part.
So if you’re a business owner, you should map out the entire eight steps of the job your customers are trying to do, from define to conclude, and then use the opportunity algorithm to find out where the real friction is. Maybe your product is great at the execute step, but everyone struggles with the prepare step. That’s your golden opportunity.
One last thing on Ulwick that I found really interesting. He is incredibly specific about
Language. He basically has a war on vague words. He hates the word easy. He hates easy, fast, reliable, simple, because they are subjective. They’re meaningless. What is easy to you, an expert user, might be impossibly hard to me, a novice. So how does he force people to write clear requirements or outcome statements? He uses a very strict grammar.
The grammar of innovation is direction of improvement, minimize, maximize, plus unit of measure, time likelihood number, plus object of control, plus contextual clarifier. That sounds like a robot wrote it. Give me a before and after example.
OK, a bad, vague outcome statement is make the lawnmower easy to use. A good Ulwick style outcome statement is minimize the time required to learn how to operate all the controls on the mower. OK, that is precise. Minimize time. I can put a stopwatch on that. I can measure it.
Another bad one. Make the mower more durable. A good one. Minimize the likelihood that the blade will bend when striking a rock. Minimize likelihood. That’s a probability metric. You can test that. Exactly. When you give engineers precise, measurable, unambiguous metrics like that, they can actually build it. Make it awesome is not an engineering goal. Minimize handle vibration by 20% is. I can absolutely see why his success rate is so high. He just removes all the ambiguity from the front end of the process. Ambiguity is the enemy of successful innovation.
Okay, let’s zoom out. We’ve done the philosophy, the stories, the math. Now let’s look at a modern giant and see how they use this thinking. Let’s talk about Netflix. Netflix is the ultimate jobs to be done company, even if they don’t use the exact jargon. Reed Hastings, the founder, gets this intuitively. He has a famous quote that I absolutely love. Netflix is competing with a bottle of wine, which on the surface sounds insane. Netflix is a multibillion-dollar tech company. Wine is a beverage. They are in the same industry. They don’t show up in the same stock market reports. They aren’t in the same industry, but they are absolutely competing for the same job, which is what the job of help me unwind and relax at the end of a long, stressful day.
Ah, okay. It’s 8:00 p.m. Yeah. You’re tired. Your brain is fried. You have a choice. You can turn on Netflix. You can pour a glass of Cabernet. You can take a hot bath. You can doom scroll on TikTok for an hour. You can listen to a podcast. Those are the real competitors for my attention. Exactly. If Netflix only thinks its competitor is HBO Max or Disney Plus Long, they are missing the entire battlefield.
The source material also mentioned they compete with sleep. Yes. Hastings actually said in an interview, we compete with sleep and we’re winning. That’s kind of dark, but it’s completely true. The job is help me escape reality for a while. Sleep does that job perfectly too. But let’s look specifically at the difference between Netflix and Disney+. because this is a perfect example of how two
Very similar products can be hired for two very different jobs. Okay, lay it out. Disney Plus is very often hired by parents for the job: keep my children occupied and safe for 30 minutes so I can have a break and make dinner. The digital babysitter job. Right. And the safe part of that job statement is the key differentiator. You know, as a parent, if you put on Disney Plus, your five-year-old is not going to accidentally stumble upon something traumatizing or inappropriate. It’s a walled garden.
Whereas Netflix? Netflix is the Wild West. You hire Netflix for a completely different job. Maybe it’s help me participate in the cultural conversation, so I know what everyone at work is talking about. Squid Game, Tiger King, Bridgerton. Exactly. You hire Netflix for the novelty, the edge, the buzz. You don’t hire Disney Plus to watch Tiger King. You hire Netflix for that thrill-seeking job.
And this brings up the threat from things like the metaverse or Fortnite. Right. If the core entertainment job is shifting, especially for a younger generation, from help me passively watch a story to help me actively participate in a story, then Fortnite is a huge threat. The job is shifting from passive entertainment to active participation. And if Netflix stays just a movie player, they might get fired by that entire generation. Which is exactly why they are now launching games inside the Netflix app. They are pivoting to chase the job, not just defending their product category. It’s fascinating. If you follow the job, you can see the threats coming from outside your industry before they hit you. If you only follow your industry, you get blindsided.
Blockbuster followed the video rental industry. They thought their competitors were other video stores. Netflix knew they were in the home entertainment business. And the rest is history. Ouch. Too soon. No, Blockbuster’s long gone. We can make those jokes.
Okay, final section, implementation. If I’m a product manager or a CEO listening to this and I’m fired up, what are the common mistakes and pitfalls I need to avoid? One of the biggest pitfalls, especially in a B2B or business-to-business context, is failing to realize that the customer isn’t one person. Right. In a company, buying a piece of software is a nightmare by committee. Tony Ulwick’s company, Strategyn, breaks it down into three distinct customer roles that you have to understand: the job executor, the product lifecycle support team, and number three, the buyer.
Okay, let’s define those. The executor is the person actually using the tool every day. Yes, that’s the accountant who’s using the new financial software. Her core job is minimize the time it takes to close the books at the end of the month. The support team, who’s that? That’s the IT guy who has to install and maintain the software. He doesn’t care about closing the books. His job is minimize the likelihood of a security breach or minimize the time required to install this on 100 computers.
And the buyer, that’s the person with the money. That’s the CFO. Her job is to minimize the total cost of ownership or maximize the return on investment. So, if you build a beautiful piece of software that the accountant absolutely loves, but it’s super expensive and a nightmare to install, the IT guy vetoes it because it fails his installation job, and the CFO blocks it because it fails her financial job. You lose the sale even with a happy end user. So you have to understand and solve the jobs for all three of those roles. You have to satisfy the buying job and the installation job just to get permission to even attempt the usage job. That’s a complex but really important map.
What’s another mistake? The abstraction level problem. How broadly or narrowly do you define the job? If you go too high, it’s useless. We help people be more productive. That’s worthless. You’re competing with a pen, a desk, a cup of coffee, a 20-minute nap, a meditation app. The competitive set is infinite. Exactly. Too broad. But if you go too low, we help accountants in Denver who use QuickBooks reconcile their expense reports on Tuesday mornings. Okay, that’s way too niche. You’ll never build a big business on that. You need to find the Goldilocks zone. You want to group people by the struggle, not their title or location. Something like, help finance teams at mid-sized companies close their month-end books faster and with fewer errors. That’s a solid, actionable job statement.
And finally, let’s talk about the distinction between user stories and job stories. I work with agile software teams, and we write user stories all the time. As a persona, I want feature, so that benefit. Right, the classic format. As a 35-year-old marketing manager, I want a button to export my report to PDF so that I can share it with my boss. Exactly. What’s wrong with that? The JTBD proponents, like the folks at Intercom who popularized this, hate that format. Because the first part, as a 35-year-old marketing manager, introduces bias and constraints. Why does her age matter? Why does her title matter? It focuses on who she is, not what she’s trying to do.
So what’s the alternative they propose? Job stories. The format is different. In situation, I want a motivation so I can expect an outcome. Okay, let’s convert the milkshake story into that format. When I am on a long and boring morning commute, I want to have something that keeps me engaged and feeling full so I can arrive at work feeling satisfied and ready for the day. I see the difference. There’s no as a 25-year-old male commuter in there. And notice there’s no mention of the solution. It doesn’t say I want a chocolate shake. It focuses purely on the struggle, the boring commute, and the desired outcome, feeling satisfied. It leaves the solution totally open to the designers and innovators. It frees the creators to be more creative. Exactly. If the requirement is, I want a chocolate shake, the only thing you can do is make a better chocolate shake.
Te shake. If the requirement is, I want to be entertained on my commute, maybe I invent a shake with popping boba pearls. Or maybe I invent a cup that tells you jokes. A cup that tells jokes? I would absolutely buy that. The solution space is wide open.
We are coming up on the hour and my brain is completely full, but in a good way. Let’s try to synthesize all of this. If we strip away the jargon, JTBD, ODI, four forces, what is the single core message? The core message is empathy. It’s about a fundamental shift in perspective. It’s about shifting from looking at your customer as a wallet with demographic tags attached to it and starting to see them as a human being who is struggling to make progress in their life. It’s about stopping the guessing game. It’s moving from guessing to predicting. When you truly understand the causal mechanism, the job, you can start to predict what solutions will work and what won’t. It’s a much more reliable way to innovate.
Okay, I want to leave our listeners with a final provocative thought or a challenge. We talked a lot about finding underserved markets where importance is high and satisfaction is low, but I want you to think about over-served markets. Like the modern washing machine. Exactly. Think about the wash machine in your house. For the core job of get my clothes clean, the job is done. It cleans clothes perfectly. You are highly satisfied. There is no opportunity left in the cleanliness part of the job. So the market commoditizes. The only way to compete is on price. Innovation stalls. Unless you find a new related job to solve. Maybe the new job is minimize the water and energy usage or minimize the noise so I can run it at night without waking the baby. Or minimize the need for ironing. Oh, that’s a good one. Minimize wrinkling. That’s a huge underserved job that’s adjacent to the main job of cleaning.
So here is the challenge for everyone listening. Look around you right now. Pick an object in the room with you. Your headphones, your water bottle, your office chair. And don’t ask who made this. Don’t ask what are the specs. Ask yourself, what struggle did I have in my life that caused me to go out and hire this thing? And be really honest with yourself. Did you buy those expensive headphones for the audiophile grade sound quality? Or did you hire them to act as a sign to your coworkers that says, do not talk to me. I’m trying to focus. The Do Not Disturb sign job, a very important job in an open office. And then ask the final question, is this product actually doing the job well? Or are you just tolerating it? Because if you are just tolerating it, that means you are ready to fire it. And that means there is a massive opportunity for someone else to come along and build something better that truly solves your struggle.
There’s always a better way to get the job done. Thank you for hiring us for the last hour to do the job of entertain and educate. We hope we satisfied the requirements of the job. We
I’ll see you in the next Deep Dive.
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