Jobs to be Done
Written
- A Job to be Done is a process that consumers go through to change their life situations into preferred ones, but can’t due to some constraints.
- The product is what removes or alters the constraints, allowing the consumer to get the job done.
- That is, the customer doesn’t specifically care about what your product does. The customer wants to improve his life through some process and your product is the thing that enables that process to take place.
- What is is not
- A JTBD is explicitly not an activity or a task. These describe how you use a product, not how it benefits you. The benefit (e.g. staying motivated during a workout by the activity of listening to music) is the job.
- There are not different types of jobs. Instead, just think of every job as a unique process that combines various things from the different potential “types” (emotional, functional, social, etc.).
- Deciding if something is a job
- Can you visualize the customer acting it out? If so, then it’s actually an activity or task.
- Is it describing something the customer doesn’t like? If so, then it’s not a job.
- Is it describing a better version of the customer? If so, then it is a job.
- A job answers the question “How are you better since you started using the product?”
- Psychologist Albert Bandura described humans as “proactive, aspiring organisms.” JTBD extends this to posit that we buy and use things to improve ourselves.
- Think of a Job to be Done like an employee that the user hires. They pay for your product to do the work, and they get the benefits.
- it’s a job “to be” done, meaning it describes what you will be in the future, not what you are now.
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