Des and his cofounders innately understood the power of integrating a customer-centric perspective into all aspects of their business. They applied a JTBD mindset to build their company. Writing in the introduction to their recent ebook, Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done, Des reflected on the significance that JTBD had in the company’s formation and success:1
When we were first introduced to Jobs-to-be-Done, it quickly resonated with something we already intuitively knew—that great products were built around solving problems. What Jobs-to-be-Done gave us was a better way of framing what we felt—a vocabulary and framework to unite the team behind a product strategy. Over time, it turns out it’s not just a great way for thinking about product. It’s become a marketing strategy at Intercom, as well as informing research, sales, and support.
JTBD permeated how Intercom did business, aligning employees across the company. For instance, when UX researcher Sian Townsend left Google to join the company in 2014, she hadn’t heard of JTBD. But two years later, she was not only convinced that the framework could help a company be successful, but she also became a dedicated convert. In her talk, “Jobs to Be Done: From Doubter to Believer,” Sian highlighted the significance of JTBD at Intercom:2
We’ve used JTBD to bring great focus to our company. And in the course of using JTBD, we’ve actually raised a huge amount of money over the last two years. So I feel like we must have been doing something right. It certainly feels like it’s helped us.
And after years of rapid growth, Intercom received $125 million US dollars in funding in 2018. The company trajectory continues upward. JTBD is a clear part of their success story.
But JTBD doesn’t just help startups or small teams align around customer needs. Even large organizations have relied on JTBD for strategic guidance. Just consider Intuit, the tax software giant. After 25 years of existence, the company continues double-digit growth in spite of the fact that the average lifespan of S&P 500 companies is now under 20 years.
So why isn’t Intuit dead? For one, Intuit also makes courageous moves, expanding into new markets quicker than others, often through acquisition (e.g., Mint.com and Quicken Loans). And employees are also encouraged to take risks. Experimentation is part of the company culture.
But Intuit doesn’t just make strategic guesses. Underpinning its seemingly leap-of-faith decisions is a firm grounding in customer needs at the executive level. Focusing on the job to be done allows Intuit to find continued opportunity for growth and consistently provide solutions that customers value. As founder and chairman Scott Cook says, “Jobs Theory has had—and will continue to have—a profound influence on Intuit’s approach to innovation.”3
More and more, there’s a growing belief that customer-centric businesses perform better than traditional organizations. For example, a 2014 study by Deloitte showed that customer-centric companies were more profitable.4 JTBD offers a consistent way to innovate around customer needs across the company, regardless of department or function. This book will show you how to implement JTBD.
A Way of Seeing
The context of business has changed. Consumers have real power: they can research your company’s background, compare customer ratings, and find better alternatives all with a simple tap. Traditional approaches to sustaining an enterprise no longer suffice. Operational efficiency, while important, isn’t enough to survive.
Within this new business landscape, opportunities for growth come from the outside, from beyond the borders of an organization. But despite a clear customer-centric imperative, traditional businesses have largely failed to change how they think about providing value. For one, they are stuck in management theories of the past, favoring unsustainable goals centered on maximizing short-term profit. But they also believe they can create solutions that customers will truly value without their input.
Part of the challenge is that people’s decisions and actions are seemingly unpredictable. Resting your growth strategy on fuzzy concepts like “needs” and “empathy” is daunting. While psychology and other fields have precise definitions of human needs, business does not. As a result, risk-averse organizations struggle to grasp the customer perspective and align to it.
JTBD helps shift a collective mindset, from focusing on the organization and its solution to focusing on customers and their needs. More than a particular method, JTBD offers a way of seeing your markets, your organization, and your strategy. It’s a way of reframing problems and solutions that I refer to as “JTBD thinking” or “jobs thinking” throughout the book.
More importantly, JTBD can help achieve alignment of teams in an organization. The common unit of analysis—the job to be done—provides not only a lingua franca across disciplines, but also fosters a new type of collaboration necessary for today’s fast-paced business world.
In my last book, Mapping Experiences, I talked at length about aligning to the customer experience. In a nutshell, an experience map and related techniques are devices to get that kind of external alignment.
But in order for teams to have their work aligned, they need a shared focal point. JTBD is no silver bullet, but it provides a starting point for tying alignment to the customer with alignment across teams and departments. This approach goes a long way toward speeding up decision-making and reducing coordinate costs.
What’s more, research shows that organizations that involve more of the company are more profitable.5 In modern companies, culture and collaboration play an increasingly key role. Jobs thinking informs a broad culture of innovation with a common language and perspective.
About This Book
This book is your introduction and guide to the nearly thirty-year-old field of JTBD. It is a collection of existing practices that I call “plays,” borrowing from the metaphor of a sports playbook. Basically, plays are individual techniques that form the building blocks of work in JTBD. You can use them individually or combine them with other plays, which I illustrate in the last chapter. Each play is indicated with the designation “PLAY
The intent is to give you a practical reference to various approaches within the JTBD canon. But keep in mind that this collection is not comprehensive. I include references for you to learn more on the topic. My aim is to open up a broader discussion and exploration of the role of JTBD in business.
The material included here is based on my own investigation into JTBD and various uses of techniques in my work over the past decade. My goal isn’t to introduce a new, competing view of JTBD, nor to present an original method. Instead, I strive to tie existing approaches together by recasting JTBD as a perspective or lens for how to see customers. My hope is that by exposing you to a range of possibilities, you’ll be inspired to adopt JTBD thinking and practices into your own work.
In writing this book, I’ve become acutely aware of the shortcomings of JTBD approaches. Like any method, there are trade-offs. Know that JTBD is certainly no panacea. As you read this book critically, I also encourage you to keep the benefits of JTBD in mind as well.
• First, having a clear unit of analysis—the job—provides a tangible focal point. Needs, emotions, and aspirations are then seen in relation to the job, layered on only after an understanding of the main job.
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