Quotable Misunderstandings of #JTBD
A few recent machinations of someone who can’t accept what has already been tried and tested in the market. Still trying to figure out what Jobs-to-be-Done is all about. Maybe someone can make sense of this for me…
I’m a person who has books that need to be stored. The #JTBD is Store my Books (I could add some context but why bother with details). I have options. I can find a closet to throw them in. I become a customer of a solution when I can purchase (consumption job) a pre-built shelf (if I value that option), or I can purchase one that requires assembly (if I value that option), or I can build one from scratch and purchase tools and materials (if I value that option).
In each scenario, I am the one dealing with this and have various solutions — or combinations of solutions — at my disposal. The end result is the same, I have a place — that is acceptable to me — to store my books. Acceptance is based on my particular needs (also known as desired outocomes; but let’s not get hung up on that just yet).
Below, you will find a contortion that misleads us into thinking the job is created in the absence of a customer (or segment of customers) with a set of needs— I simply hitch a ride, so-to-speak, when a product or innovator creates a job-to-be-done.
Customers need to get a job done — which is what drives them to look for solutions — solutions are not jobs. Solutions are evaluated based on their unmet needs (or shared unmet needs of a market segment). The “participation” comes when a company has identified these segments, and thus has their own jobs to get done to deliver relevant solutions valued by customers in the segment — who are trying to get their job done; not someone or something else’s.
Do you know what the following means? I don’t. Maybe we should come up with another term to describe whatever this means. Innovators start the Job-to-be-Done?
The new me…someone who has participated in finding a place to store his books! Do I look different? I feel much better, so that must be the JTBD. I had to get something functional done to feel better though! Did it make me feel better in all aspects of my life? Probably not, which is why we don’t design solutions to primarily make people feel better.
Personally, I have problems to solve. These are jobs; e.g. where am I going to store my books? My objective is to find a solution. Problems do happen, but then they are solved, or you still have them.
Jobs-to-be-Done is not a design-space concept. It is a problem-space concept that has evolved over 25 years to deal with the fuzzy front end of innovation.
The concept of outcome(s) is clearly misunderstood. He’s thinking of outputs. As we attempt to measure how well we get a job done, there are metrics we use around dimensions of speed, stability, scale and these have been called desired outcomes. It’s just like measuring a process. Let’s just call them what they really are, needs — we’re just treating them like metrics. Just like any process, there are lots of metrics we use to determine how well it’s getting done. Different people will have different evaluations.
Also, we’re not talking about tasks and activities, we’re talking about things that need to be accomplished. Thus, we map these as steps in a job; each step being something to accomplish to achieve the ultimate goal (job completion), with metrics that evaluate successful execution.
Here’s a PSA for you, if you still don’t understand what a Job is…
