The ultimate guide to Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)

Introduction

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) is a powerful framework for understanding customer behavior and driving innovation. Developed by Bob Moesta and Clayton Christensen, JTBD focuses on the progress that customers are trying to make in their lives, rather than just the features or benefits of a product.

What is Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)?

At its core, JTBD is based on the idea that people don't simply buy products or services — they "hire" them to make progress in specific circumstances. This progress is defined by the "job" they're trying to get done. The framework shifts the focus from the product itself to the underlying motivations and contexts that drive customer behavior.

Key aspects of JTBD include:

Understanding the customer's context and desired outcome
Focusing on the progress customers want to make
Identifying the "struggling moments" that trigger a change in behavior
Recognizing that products compete based on the job they're hired to do, not just their features

Modern tools like Innerview can automatically extract the pushes, pulls, anxieties and habits from user interviews. This not only saves time but also ensures you don't miss any crucial details.

Why is JTBD important for product development and innovation?

JTBD is crucial for several reasons:

Reveals true competition: By understanding the job, you can identify unexpected competitors. For example, a Snickers bar might compete with a protein shake or a sandwich, not just other candy bars.
Uncovers hidden demand: JTBD can reveal opportunities that aren't obvious when looking at traditional market segmentation. For instance, Southern New Hampshire University discovered a large untapped market of non-traditional students by understanding their job to be done.
Drives innovation: By focusing on struggling moments and the progress customers want to make, JTBD provides a clear direction for innovation that goes beyond incremental feature improvements.
Improves product positioning: Understanding the job allows you to position your product more effectively by aligning with the customer's actual needs and contexts.
Enhances customer understanding: JTBD provides a deeper, more nuanced view of customer behavior than traditional market research methods.

By applying JTBD, companies can create products that truly resonate with customers' needs and stand out in the market.

The Core Principles of Jobs-to-be-Done

To effectively use the JTBD framework, it's essential to understand its core principles:

Understanding context and outcomes vs. pain and gain

One of the most significant misconceptions about JTBD is that it's primarily about identifying pain points and gains. While these are important, JTBD goes deeper by focusing on the context in which customers make decisions and the outcomes they're seeking.

Context: This includes the situation, circumstances, and constraints that influence a customer's decision. For example, a person buying a Snickers bar might be in a context where they missed a meal, have a lot of work to do, and need quick energy.
Outcome: This is the progress the customer is trying to make. In the Snickers example, the outcome might be to quickly satisfy hunger and get back to work.

Understanding both context and outcome provides a more complete picture of the customer's job to be done than simply looking at pain points and gains.

The concept of "hiring" products to make progress

In JTBD, customers don't just buy products – they hire them to make progress in their lives. This concept shifts the focus from the product's features to its role in the customer's life.

Key points about "hiring" products:

Products compete based on their ability to do the job, not just their features
Customers may "fire" one product and "hire" another if it does the job better
Understanding why customers "hire" your product can reveal opportunities for innovation and improvement

The importance of studying struggling moments

Struggling moments are key triggers that cause people to look for new solutions. These are the points where the current solution is no longer adequate, and customers become open to change.

Why struggling moments matter:

They reveal opportunities for innovation
They help identify the true job to be done
They provide insight into the context and constraints customers face

By focusing on these struggling moments, companies can identify opportunities to create products that customers are more likely to "hire."

JTBD is not just about understanding what customers want, but why they want it in specific contexts. This deeper understanding is what makes JTBD such a powerful tool for innovation and product development.

The Four Forces of Progress

When considering Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), it's crucial to understand the four forces that influence a customer's decision to make a change or stick with their current solution. These forces work together to either drive progress or maintain the status quo:

Push of the situation: This is the context that motivates a person to consider a change. It's the dissatisfaction or problem with their current situation that creates a need for something new.
Pull of the new way: This is the attraction of the new solution or product. It's the perceived benefits and improvements that draw a person towards making a change.
Anxiety over the new way: This represents the concerns and uncertainties about adopting a new solution. It includes fears about whether the new product will work as expected or if it's worth the investment.
Habits of the old way: This is the inertia of the current situation. It's the comfort and familiarity with the existing solution, even if it's not perfect.

Bob Moesta, co-creator of the JTBD framework, explains these forces as a system of behavior:

"If F1 (push) and F2 (pull) are not greater than F3 (anxiety) and F4 (habit), they're not going to move, they're not going to do anything. And so ultimately what we're doing is we're framing the market as a system of behavior."

Understanding these forces is crucial for product development and marketing. It's not just about creating a better product (increasing the pull), but also about addressing the anxieties and habits that might prevent adoption.

How to Implement JTBD

Implementing Jobs to Be Done effectively requires a systematic approach. Here are key steps to follow:

1. Identifying jobs to be done

Focus on struggling moments: Look for situations where customers are dissatisfied or struggling with current solutions. As Moesta says, "Struggling moments is the key and it's struggling moments that people take action on."
Look beyond the product: Don't just think about your product's features. Consider the broader context and outcomes customers are seeking.
Study recent purchasers: Talk to people who have recently bought your product or a competitor's product. Ask about what led them to make the purchase.

2. Conducting effective customer interviews

Use a timeline approach: Ask customers to walk through the entire process from when they first thought about making a change to when they actually made the purchase.
Focus on specific instances: Instead of asking general questions, focus on specific events and decisions.
Dig deeper: When you hear something that seems irrational, dig deeper. As Moesta notes, "The context makes the irrational rational."
Avoid leading questions: Don't ask customers what they want. Instead, focus on understanding their context and desired outcomes.

3. Analyzing and interpreting JTBD data

Look for patterns: Identify common contexts, outcomes, and obstacles across multiple interviews.
Identify the four forces: For each job, try to identify the push, pull, anxiety, and habit factors influencing customer decisions.
Create job statements: Summarize each job in a clear statement that includes the context and desired outcome.
Map competitive landscape: Understand what solutions customers consider for each job, even if they're not direct competitors in the traditional sense.

Moesta emphasizes the importance of actually talking to customers rather than hypothesizing in a conference room: "The biggest mistakes I've seen made is because they do it in a conference room and they don't go talk to people. They don't actually find the contradictions, they don't find the irrational parts."

Use modern tools like Innerview to do automatic transcription, AI-powered analysis (including JTBD), and enable collaborative insights management.

Read our complete guide to user interviews for more best practices to explore.

Common Misconceptions about JTBD

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a powerful framework, but it's often misunderstood. Here are some common misconceptions:

JTBD is not just about pain points

One of the biggest misconceptions about JTBD is that it's primarily about identifying pain points and gains. While these are important, JTBD goes much deeper:

Context and outcome vs. pain and gain: JTBD focuses on the context in which customers make decisions and the outcomes they're seeking, rather than just pain points and gains.
Irrational becomes rational: What seems irrational at first often becomes rational when you understand the full context of a customer's situation.

The importance of context in understanding customer behavior

Context is crucial in JTBD:

Reveals true motivations: The context often explains why people make seemingly irrational decisions.
Uncovers hidden competitors: Understanding context helps you see that your true competitors might not be who you think they are (e.g., Snickers competing with protein shakes, not just other candy bars).
Drives innovation: By understanding the full context, you can innovate in ways that address the real job customers are trying to do.

Why hypothesizing jobs in a conference room doesn't work

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is trying to determine jobs to be done without actually talking to customers:

Assumptions are often wrong: What seems obvious in a conference room is often far from the reality of customer experiences.
Misses crucial details: The nuances and contradictions that emerge from real customer stories are often the key to understanding the true job to be done.
Lacks emotional understanding: JTBD isn't just about functional needs; it's also about emotional and social dimensions that are hard to hypothesize accurately.

JTBD in Practice: Case Studies

Let's look at some real-world examples of JTBD in action:

Snickers vs. Milky Way: Understanding true competition

This case study illustrates how JTBD can reveal unexpected competition:

Snickers' job: Quick energy when you've missed a meal and need to get back to work.
True competitors: Protein shakes, sandwiches, energy bars - not necessarily other candy bars.
Milky Way's job: Emotional regrouping, often eaten alone after an emotional experience.
True competitors: Glass of wine, brownie, or even going for a run.

Key takeaway: Products that seem similar can have very different jobs, competing with entirely different sets of products or activities.

Intercom: Using JTBD to drive product strategy

Intercom used JTBD to refine their product offering and positioning:

Multiple jobs identified: Discovered customers were hiring Intercom for four distinct jobs.
Tailored offerings: Instead of building separate products, they turned features on/off based on the specific job.
Competitive positioning: Positioned different offerings against relevant competitors (e.g., HubSpot for acquisition, Zendesk for support).
Pricing alignment: Adjusted pricing to match the value proposition for each job.

Result: This approach helped Intercom grow to a multi-billion dollar valuation by aligning closely with customer needs.

Southern New Hampshire University: Uncovering hidden demand

SNHU used JTBD to discover a massive untapped market:

Anomaly investigation: Noticed a small group of students watching everything online despite paying full tuition.
Job discovery: Realized these students had a different "job" than traditional 18-24 year olds.
Market size revelation: What seemed like a small group of outliers represented a massive untapped market of non-traditional students.
Scaling success: By focusing on this job, SNHU grew to become one of the largest universities in the world with over 200,000 students.

Key takeaway: JTBD can help you identify and capitalize on hidden market opportunities that traditional segmentation might miss.

When to Use (and Not Use) JTBD

While JTBD is a powerful framework, it's not always the best approach. Understanding when to use it (and when not to) is crucial for its effective application.

Ideal scenarios for applying JTBD

JTBD is particularly useful in the following situations:

Product innovation: When you're looking to create new products or significantly improve existing ones.
Market expansion: When seeking to enter new markets or attract new customer segments.
Competitive differentiation: When you need to understand your true competition and how to stand out.
Customer experience improvement: When aiming to enhance the overall customer journey.
Pricing strategy: When determining how to price your product based on the value it provides in specific contexts.
Marketing and positioning: When crafting messaging that resonates with customers' real motivations.

Situations where JTBD may not be the best approach

JTBD might not be as effective in these scenarios:

No real choice: When customers don't have a meaningful choice (e.g., employer-provided health insurance).
Deeply habitual purchases: For products bought out of pure habit with little conscious thought (e.g., buying a specific brand of gum).
Highly regulated industries: Where customer choice is severely limited by regulations.
Commodity products: For true commodities where differentiation is nearly impossible.
Internal processes: For improving internal business processes where there's no "customer" making a choice.
Crisis management: In immediate crisis situations where quick action is needed rather than deep customer understanding.

In these cases, other approaches like ethnography, prototyping, or more traditional market research methods might be more appropriate.

JTBD is most powerful when there's a meaningful choice being made by customers and when understanding the context and desired outcome of that choice can lead to innovation or improvement.

JTBD and Innovation

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a powerful framework for driving innovation by focusing on struggling moments and identifying new market opportunities. Here's how JTBD can be leveraged for innovation:

Focusing on Struggling Moments

One of the key aspects of JTBD is its emphasis on identifying and understanding struggling moments. As Bob Moesta explains:

"Struggling moments is the key and it's struggling moments that people take action on. And what I would say is they're everywhere. They are freaking everywhere in our lives and there's only certain contexts when all of a sudden we realize we have to do something about it."

By focusing on these struggling moments, companies can:

Identify unmet needs in the market
Understand the context in which customers make decisions
Uncover opportunities for innovation that competitors might miss

Identifying New Market Opportunities

JTBD can help companies identify new market opportunities by:

Revealing hidden demand: By understanding the job customers are trying to get done, companies can uncover opportunities that aren't obvious when looking at traditional market segmentation.
Uncovering unexpected competitors: JTBD helps companies see the true competitive set from the demand side, rather than just looking at similar products or services.
Focusing on progress, not just features: By understanding the progress customers are trying to make, companies can innovate in ways that go beyond incremental feature improvements.

Bob Moesta shared an example of how JTBD helped Southern New Hampshire University identify a massive new market opportunity:

"We found basically these anomalies, these people who were going to school but not actually coming to class and watching everything online. And it was like 50 or 60 of them and the anomalies basically, and they're paying full price, they didn't want to come. For Paul, it was kind of like why are they doing this? And when we went to study them, we realized that they actually had a very different job than a typical 18 to 24 year old because one, they were a little bit older, typically they had either already had a degree or they basically had tried to go to college and it didn't work."

By understanding this job to be done, SNHU was able to tap into a market of over 200,000 students, becoming one of the largest universities in the world.

Integrating JTBD with Other Frameworks

Jobs to Be Done can be effectively integrated with other popular frameworks to create a more comprehensive approach to product development and innovation. Here's how JTBD can work alongside design thinking and lean startup methodology:

JTBD and Design Thinking

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. JTBD can enhance design thinking in several ways:

Problem framing: JTBD can help teams better define the problem they're solving by focusing on the progress customers are trying to make, rather than just surface-level pain points.
User research: The JTBD interview technique can be incorporated into the empathy phase of design thinking, providing deeper insights into customer motivations and contexts.
Ideation: Understanding the job to be done can inspire more innovative solutions during the ideation phase, as teams focus on helping customers make progress rather than just adding features.
Prototyping and testing: JTBD insights can inform the creation of prototypes that address the core job, and help teams evaluate solutions based on how well they help customers achieve their desired progress.

JTBD and Lean Startup Methodology

The Lean Startup methodology emphasizes rapid experimentation and iteration to validate business ideas. JTBD can complement this approach in several ways:

Hypothesis formation: JTBD can help startups form more accurate hypotheses about customer needs and behaviors, leading to more effective experiments.
Customer development: The JTBD interview technique can be integrated into customer development processes, providing deeper insights into customer motivations and decision-making processes.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) design: Understanding the core job to be done can help startups create MVPs that address the most critical aspects of customer needs, leading to more meaningful validation.
Pivot or persevere decisions: JTBD insights can inform pivot decisions by helping startups understand whether they're addressing the right job or need to shift their focus.
Growth strategies: As startups scale, JTBD can help identify new market segments and opportunities for expansion based on similar jobs to be done.

Bob Moesta emphasizes the importance of integrating JTBD with existing processes:

"Every company actually has its own innovation process based on who they have, who they're serving, the underlying technology. And so, in my opinion, to have a very predictive one process that fits across everybody, I think there are principles, but I don't think there's one process."

Measuring Success with JTBD

Measuring the success of implementing Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) requires a focus on both quantitative metrics and qualitative insights. Here are key considerations for measuring success and evaluating the impact of JTBD on your product strategy:

Key Metrics to Track

Job Completion Rate: Measure how effectively your product helps customers complete their job to be done. This could be tracked through user behavior analytics or customer surveys.
Time to Job Completion: Monitor how quickly customers can achieve their desired outcome using your product compared to alternatives.
Customer Satisfaction: Use Net Promoter Score (NPS) or other satisfaction metrics specifically tied to how well your product helps customers make progress.
Retention Rate: Track how well your product retains customers over time, as this can indicate whether you're consistently meeting their job to be done.
Market Share within Job Category: Instead of traditional market share, measure your share of the specific job market you're targeting.
Revenue per Job: Track the revenue generated from customers using your product for specific jobs.
Feature Adoption Rate: Monitor which features are most used for completing specific jobs, helping prioritize future development efforts.
Switching Rate: Measure how many customers switch to your product from competitors for a specific job, and vice versa.

Evaluating the Impact of JTBD on Your Product Strategy

Product-Market Fit: Assess how well your product aligns with the jobs customers are trying to accomplish. This can be done through surveys, interviews, and usage data analysis.
Innovation Pipeline: Evaluate how JTBD insights are influencing your product roadmap and the quality of new ideas generated.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Monitor if JTBD-informed marketing and positioning leads to more efficient customer acquisition.
Lifetime Value (LTV): Track if customers acquired based on JTBD insights have higher lifetime value.
Product Development Efficiency: Measure if JTBD reduces wasted effort on features that don't address core jobs.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Assess how well JTBD creates a shared understanding of customer needs across teams.
Competitive Differentiation: Evaluate how well your product stands out in addressing specific jobs compared to competitors.

Bob Moesta emphasizes the importance of focusing on progress rather than just features:

"Instead of just talking about features, it's typically talking about features for the first 90 to 120 days, but after that we just talk about struggling moments because that's the seed for real innovation and basically where new products come from."

When evaluating the impact of JTBD, it's crucial to look beyond traditional product metrics and consider how well you're helping customers make progress in their lives. This may require developing new metrics or reframing existing ones to align with the JTBD framework.

Advanced JTBD Techniques

Timeline interviews

Timeline interviews are a crucial technique in Jobs to Be Done research. They involve asking customers to walk through the entire process from when they first thought about making a change to when they actually made the purchase. This approach helps uncover the full context and sequence of events that led to the decision.

Key aspects of timeline interviews:

Focus on specific instances rather than general questions
Explore the "first thought" moment that triggered consideration
Identify key events and decision points along the journey
Uncover the pushes, pulls, anxieties, and habits at each stage

Bob Moesta emphasizes the importance of going beyond surface-level responses: "In the first five minutes of an interview, they're going to tell you, 'I bought a new car because I got a deal on it and it was a car I've been dreaming about forever.' But when you start to dig deeper, it's like, no, the old car had 280,000 miles on it. You had three large bills in the last four months. It's making a sound and you've got a long trip coming up. That's why you're getting a car."

Switch interviews

Switch interviews focus specifically on the moment when a customer decides to change from one solution to another. This technique is particularly valuable because it reveals the true motivations and contexts that drive change.

Key elements of switch interviews:

Identify the specific "struggling moment" that triggered the switch
Explore the alternatives considered and why they were rejected
Uncover the anxieties and habits that had to be overcome
Understand the full context of the decision, including seemingly irrational factors

Moesta notes, "Nobody wants to change. So that makes this actually the easiest thing to look at is tell me why people change. We just seem to literally not want to go deep enough and we use the lazy word of random and probability as pseudo for knowledge, and it's not knowledge."

Job mapping

Job mapping involves breaking down the overall "job" into its component steps and identifying opportunities for innovation at each stage. This technique helps teams understand the full scope of the customer's journey and where their product can add the most value.

Steps in job mapping:

Identify the main job to be done
Break down the job into discrete steps
Identify the desired outcome for each step
Uncover pain points and opportunities at each stage
Brainstorm potential solutions and innovations

Moesta emphasizes the importance of understanding the full context: "Value is not just the outcome. Value also has where you start. So if I start here and I end here, I'm going to value it this much. But if I start down here and I go up here, I value it that much more."

The Future of JTBD

Emerging trends in JTBD research and application

Integration with AI and machine learning:
- Using natural language processing to analyze customer interviews at scale
- Identifying patterns and insights from large datasets of customer behavior
- Predicting potential jobs to be done based on emerging trends and contexts

Innerview can automatically analyze user interviews using the JTBD framework, providing insights into customer needs and motivations. This saves hours of time and helps augment your team.

Expanding beyond product development:
- Applying JTBD to service design and customer experience
- Using JTBD insights to inform marketing and positioning strategies
- Incorporating JTBD thinking into organizational design and culture
Combining JTBD with other frameworks:
- Integrating JTBD with design thinking and lean startup methodologies
- Using JTBD alongside quantitative market research techniques
- Incorporating JTBD insights into agile development processes

How AI and machine learning might impact JTBD

While AI and machine learning offer exciting possibilities for JTBD research, it's important to maintain the human element and deep understanding that comes from direct customer interactions. Potential impacts include:

Enhanced data analysis:
- AI could help identify patterns and insights from large sets of customer interviews
- Machine learning algorithms could suggest potential jobs to be done based on observed behaviors
Automated interview transcription and analysis:
- Natural language processing could help transcribe and analyze interviews more efficiently
- AI could flag key moments or insights for human researchers to investigate further

Modern tools like Innerview can automatically analyze user interviews using the JTBD framework, providing insights into customer needs and motivations. This saves hours of time and helps augment your team.

Innerview offers industry-leading speech recognition that can transcribe interviews accurately, regardless of topic, industry, or accent. This not only saves time but also ensures you don't miss any crucial details.

Moreover, Innerview supports transcription and translation in over 30 languages. This feature is invaluable for global teams or when conducting research across different markets. It allows you to seamlessly transcribe and translate interviews, breaking down language barriers and ensuring that insights from diverse user groups are easily accessible and actionable.

Conclusion

Key takeaways

Focus on struggling moments: As Moesta emphasizes, "Struggling moments is the key and it's struggling moments that people take action on."
Understand context and outcome: JTBD is not just about pain points and gains, but about the full context that drives decisions and the progress customers are trying to make.
Look beyond features: Competing products may not be what you think. Understanding the job reveals unexpected competitors and opportunities.
Embrace qualitative research: Deep, investigative interviews are crucial for uncovering true motivations and contexts.
Consider the four forces: Push of the situation, pull of the new solution, anxiety of the new, and habit of the present all play a role in customer decisions.
Be open to irrational insights: Sometimes the most valuable insights seem irrational at first but make sense in the full context of the customer's situation.

How to get started with JTBD in your organization

Start small: Begin with a specific product or feature and conduct 10-12 interviews with recent purchasers or switchers.
Focus on stories: Ask customers to walk you through their decision process, from first thought to final purchase.
Look for patterns: Identify common pushes, pulls, anxieties, and habits across multiple interviews.
Map the progress: Understand where customers are starting from and where they're trying to go.
Identify trade-offs: Understand what customers are willing to give up and why.
Apply insights: Use JTBD findings to inform product development, marketing, and strategic decisions.
Iterate and learn: Continuously refine your JTBD process and share learnings across the organization.

As Moesta advises, "Choose what to suck at and figure out the trade-offs that you need to make and make sure that your trade-offs map the trade-offs of the customer. Because nine times out of 10, most products that fail is because they made a trade-off that the customer didn't agree with."

References

This blog post quotes details from Bob Moesta's interview on Lenny's Podcast.