Jobs To Be Done: Theory, Framework, & Real-Life Application

“If you start by identifying the jobs that customers are struggling to get done,” says Clayton Christensen, “innovation can be far more predictable — and far more profitable.”

A recent study conducted by Simon Kucher and Partners revealed that 72% of innovations and products in the market fail to deliver or meet expectations due to the wrong approach.

Businesses, entrepreneurs, and other professionals require a proven concept capable of eradicating the track record of failed products and broken industries. That’s where the “Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)” theory comes in.

Let’s take a quick but thorough tour of the Jobs To Be Done Theory, its conceptual framework, and how it can keep both emerging and established industries in the game.

What Is Jobs To Be Done?

We define “jobs to be done” as the desired outcome a consumer is trying to achieve. By figuring out what the consumer needs to get done, companies can roll out more effective products.

The Jobs To Be Done theory serves as a focal point to observe the needs of a consumer, the market, competitors, and consumer segments. A customer-based approach like this is developed by prioritizing customers’ needs or the jobs they intend to do.

For instance, Theodore Levitt, in his 1960 Harvard Business Review article, ‘Marketing Myopia’, stated that,

“An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill.”

Similar schools of thought believe that the extent to which you know your customers will determine the success of the product you release into the market.

In short, once the customer’s JBTD is known, ideas can be generated to address it effectively.

Jobs To Be Done Needs-Framework

The Needs-Framework primarily focuses on the things to consider when gathering consumers’ various needs. These metrics introduce more predictability and fewer guesses in the process of helping a consumer get the job done.

This is in contrast to the idea-first approach, where the entire existence of innovation is left to chance. Innovation is beyond generating random ideas and testing them out individually to see which one works and sells the most on the market. It is a time-wasting approach with fewer chances of success.

As Clayton Christensen stated in his book, ‘competing against luck’,

“ Fully understanding a customer’s job requires understanding the progress a customer is trying to make in particular circumstances and understanding all of its functional, social, and emotional dimensions — as well as the trade-offs the customer is willing to make.”

This statement outlines three types of job dimensions you should look out for — functional, social, and emotional.

Core Functional Jobs To Be Done

This entails the job a customer is trying to do. It could be anything from driving to school, doing the kids’ assignments, having breakfast in a restaurant before going to work, or paying a visit to the opera.

When a company focuses on these functional jobs that the customer needs to get done, then innovating a more effective product becomes possible.

Functional jobs are independent of existing products. Customers will always choose a new product offering a better solution than the one they have used for over a decade.

Social Jobs To Be Done

Social JTBD includes how the customer wants to be perceived after executing a job. For example, most teachers want to be perceived as being efficient and explanatory enough by their students.

Parents who drop off their kids at school every morning might want to be seen as responsible wards by the teachers.

When you consider this aspect in your metrics, the company can go ahead and innovate products or services that will safe-proof both the execution of the functional and social tasks to fully meet the customer’s needs.

Emotional Jobs To Be Done

Aside from wanting to execute the core functional job, there is the emotional aspect that even most customers might be unaware of. Getting a record of users’ personas is a plus here.

This category of jobs to be done is more likely to be subconsciously carried out. Emotional jobs define the way customers want to feel or avoid feeling after completing the core functional job.

Usually, customers want to feel satisfied, unembarrassed, secure, and appreciated, depending on the functional job done. Your company must consider that before rolling out a product.

Real-life Applications of the JTBD Theory

According to Christensen, customers don’t just buy the product, they hire it to get their job done.

A company will lose its customers if the latter finds a better innovation that significantly reduces the workload while achieving a more desirable result. Simply put, your product or service will be discarded if there is another one out there that can get the work done better.

The Jobs To Be Done theory is employed by a lot of popular business behemoths like PayPal, Nike, and Zoom.

Zoom — Remote Team Connection

During the COVID-19 period, most businesses were faced with the dilemma of carrying out their services due to a country-wide lockdown.

Zoom stepped up to fill the void by allowing businesses to remotely communicate. According to reports from the Zoom Board in March 2020, the platform recorded a spike in the volume of users, as high as 200 million active flows per day.

Professionals and non-professionals were able to communicate. And that was the job to be done. Zoom helped its users fulfill their communication needs.

Paypal — Digital Payment Platform

Before the end of 2020, PayPal saw an exponential increase in the number of customers using its services to make transactions across the globe. This was due to the declining use of cash for transactions.

PayPal also leveraged users’ fear of cyber security by implementing features that would ensure the safety of their money. By building up a feeling of trust with the existing customers, the payment platform was able to see a huge inflow of new merchants.

This demonstrates the emotional dimension of jobs to be done, as stated by Clayton Christensen.

Conclusion

Industries can avoid disruptive technology and financial breakdown if they prioritize the customer’s job to be done instead of focusing on generating random ideas.

By using this theory as a lens to view the whole product market and the customer’s needs, a more predictable and sustainable innovation pattern will be developed.

We recommend using the Jobs to be done template to effectively explain this theory.