Do the “experts” really understand Jobs to be Done?
I was just reading through this article again, and I’m afraid I have to disagree on how the Job-to-be-Done is defined.
The Job is not just about function…uh, yes it is
Karen Dillon says the job is not just about function. But Having a nice bed to sleep in…is not a job to be done, so this evaluation is a bit off for me. It conflates part of a job with a single need; and the need (“nice”) is also poorly constructed and open to a vast array of interpretations.
Jobs are functional in nature. They have a comprehensive portfolio of “needs” which describe the various outcomes customers use to evaluate a solution. We don’t all score these outcomes the same way.
She goes on to say that Jobs have social and emotional components that may be even more powerful than the functional ones. Well, this is a classic case of someone who is focused on the shopping experience. Emotional needs (which are captured in outcome-driven innovation, the foundation concept behind JTBD) and are used in marketing scenarios to increase the leverage of the function job during the buyer journey.
It’s very important in Jobs to be Done research not to analyze a particular solution…which is clearly what is done through a cherry-picking look at Airbnb. Not everyone wants to stay at an Airbnb, which means this is a segment derived from a different set of unmet needs.
Customer experience gets conflated with the core Job to be Done
While the core job to be done is critical to customer experience (because they have to complete the job satisfactorily) this is typically a conversation reserved for consumption chain jobs — which are attached to the core job.
I haven’t done a qualitative analysis of the hospitality industry (or a quantitative one for that matter). However, I can say that this analysis gets the qualitative side very wrong. It takes a lot of “right” things and packs them improperly…which is perhaps why there is a lot of talk about unpacking jobs to be done.
