Quick Reference: JTBD Plays
Foreword
Some books are written primarily to be read; others are written mainly to be used. Jim Kalbach’s book, The Jobs to Be Done Playbook, should inspire the best of both. The reason is not just that Jim is a fluent writer with a crisp and clear purpose, but that he treats the fundamentals of user design, user experience, and the “job to be done” with thoughtfulness, seriousness, and rigor. I cannot overstate how important that is.
In my classes, workshops, and advisory work, I have the good fortune to work with talented people who truly want to do excellent work. I like and admire them. They are talented and smart. But oftentimes, because they are so talented and smart, they presume or assume they know the fundamentals of something when, in truth, they do not. With apologies to Atul Gawande, they have a “Checklist Manifesto” grasp of what they’re trying to do. That is, they’re doing everything they’re supposed to do but lack an essence and esprit that makes the work compelling. What people minimize (or overlook) about Gawande’s checklists is that they are supposed to be prompts and reminders for people who truly know their stuff. The challenge here is that people—smart people, caring people—don’t always quite know the right stuff.
Yes, they know the “product” and the “service” and the desired and desirable “user experience,” but do they really understand and appreciate the power and importance of “the job to be done”? The concept is simple and straightforward—it’s scalable, implementable, and extensible. Instantiation is not.
That’s why Jim’s book is so useful and important. He’s got the rigor and the chops to not only make the fundamentals accessible and understandable, but practical and doable as well. While I am a huge Clay Christensen fan (indeed, he was kind enough to write a blurb for one of my books), I think he’d be one of the first to acknowledge that his breakthrough conceptual thinking requires facilitators, translators, and interlocutors to make it work in the real world. With tongue firmly in cheek, it’s quite a “job to be done” to get the “job to be done” done. But that’s what Jim’s book empowers you to do.
This is not a book to be read in a sitting or a transcontinental flight. Similarly, you’re a jerk if you hand it to a colleague or a boss without spending some time with it yourself. The real way to get value from this book is to ask yourself—honestly and openly—where your greatest frustration lies as a value creator. Then start leafing through this book—not to find yourself or the answer, but to understand the essential fundamentals of the job to be done.
—Michael Schrage
Research Fellow at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy and
author of Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (HBR Press)
Introduction
In April 2013, I gave a workshop at UX London, a premier design conference that attracts participants from around the world. As a speaker, I also got to attend the conference. The lineup of presenters was stellar, as it typically is, and I didn’t want to miss out on the world-class content presented there. So prior to the event, I scoured the program to see which sessions would be most interesting.
One workshop in particular caught my eye: Des Traynor’s “Where UX Meets Business Strategy.” This was a three-hour session focused on how design influences business and vice versa. More specifically, Des was going to look into “How to orient a company around a job-to-be-done,” as he wrote in the session description.
It couldn’t have been a better mix of topics to match my interests at the time—the intersection of design, strategy, and jobs to be done (JTBD). I remember distinctly how intent I was on making it to that session. I had been learning all I could about JTBD and trying some techniques in my work. This was right up my alley. Like Des, I believe that business success comes from understanding human needs and motivations.
I flew to UX London from Hamburg, Germany, where I was living at the time, the day before the event. The organizers had arranged for a car to pick me up from the airport. After I found the driver, he informed me that we’d have to wait a few minutes for another passenger. He pulled out a piece of paper with the person’s name on it before standing at the end of the arrivals area. It read “Des Traynor, UX London.” I broke into a huge grin.
On the drive from Heathrow to the conference hotel, Des and I talked a lot about jobs to be done. He has a design background and was able to relate to my perspective of the field quite well. We were seeing eye to eye. In fact, during his workshop, Des asked me to speak to the audience of about 80 people for a few minutes, based on my experience with JTBD research.
At its core, the concept of JTBD is straightforward: focus on people’s objectives independent of the means used to accomplish them. Through this lens, JTBD offers a structured way of understanding customer needs, helping to predict better how customers might act in the future. The framework provides a common unit of analysis for teams to focus on—the job to be done—and then offers a shared language for the whole team to understand value as perceived from the customer perspective.
Des knew that with decades of history, JTBD could greatly help organizations shift their mindset from inside-out to outside-in. Beyond informing product design, JTBD also has a broad appeal, including marketing, sales, customer success, support, and business strategy.
Des is one of four co-founders of a company called Intercom, an online messaging solution that allows businesses to connect directly with customers by coordinating multiple channels of communication. It turns out that JTBD has played a large role in how Intercom approached doing business.
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.
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