Understanding Customers Using 'Jobs to Be Done'

I’ve always been interested in understanding how the world works, though my interests have changed quite a bit over time. In school, I started out studying philosophy, imagining it would lead to insights about the great questions of life. This phase of abstraction led to a desire to understand the more concrete laws of the natural world, and eventually graduate study in physics. Then, when it came time to enter the working world, I pivoted again, curious to understand the business world and find more practical work applying the ‘laws of organizational physics.’

So when I come across ideas that have both explanatory power and real-world utility, I’m eager to share them with others. That’s why I’m so excited to be launching my first LinkedIn Learning course (link below) on one of the most useful ideas I’ve come across in my career: the idea of ‘Jobs to Be Done.’

What are Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)?

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a simple model for explaining why customers (or other stakeholders) make the choices they do. It asserts that what causes people to seek products, services, or experiences is the existence of important, unsatisfied ‘jobs’ they want to get done. It’s an easy idea to grasp, but one that has powerful applications in creating more customer-centric solutions, strategies, and organizations.

The value of this idea was recognized by the Chief Product Officer of LinkedIn, Tomer Cohen , who recently led the implementation of JTBD at scale across LinkedIn. I’m very fortunate to have Tomer appear in my course to share how they did this, the impact it’s had, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. In Tomer’s words, “The most important element in developing innovative products is a profound understanding of an unmet need. The Jobs to Be Done framework is a powerful way to help identify and contextualize that need in order to create superior customer value."

Why Jobs to Be Done?

Think of JTBD as a lens through which to view the world that focuses you on the progress that current customers, potential customers, or other stakeholders are trying to make in their lives - independent of your own solutions, business models, or preconceptions about what they will value. To look through this lens, all you have to do is ask the question: ‘what jobs are your customers trying to get done?’

An everyday example illustrates how asking this question can be enlightening. Consider the common occurrence (certainly for me!) of walking into a café and buying a cup of coffee (or your beverage of choice). What ‘jobs’ do you ‘hire’ that cup of coffee to get done? If you’re like me, your answer will vary. Sometimes it’s because I need an energy boost. Other times it might be to ground myself at the start of my day in a kind of daily ritual, or to take a break in the afternoon to recharge. And sometimes it might be because I need a place to get some work done while traveling, I know I can get Wi-Fi access in a café, and I consider the coffee purchase the ‘rent’ I need to pay to feel ok about occupying a table for a bit.??

And this variability is the whole point of asking this question – each answer suggests a different opportunity to innovate to better serve the customer, with different competitors, and different measures of success. The JTBD lens illuminates this complexity, enabling you to make sharper and more nuanced choices about where to focus.

JTBD can also help you to:

• Discover deeper insights in the ‘big data’ deluge. Companies collect, and have access to, more data than ever before, along with ever more sophisticated tools for analyzing it. But it’s often focused on inward-facing metrics or information about what is correlated with customer behavior. Asking about JTBD helps you to understand the deeper causes of why customers act as they do, which provides a much sharper guide for innovation
• Develop more customer-centric strategies. Companies naturally tend to pursue strategies and develop products that resemble what has been successful in the past. However, with technology, demographics, consumer behavior, and whole economies evolving faster than ever, this backwards-facing perspective can blind companies to new opportunities. JTBD gives you a compass to guide your strategies and products of tomorrow
• Create a more customer-centric culture. Finally, JTBD can function as a language everyone in your organization can learn to speak and understand to have a shared way of talking about customers, what really matters to them, and what you most need to understand to find ways to help them. Having this type of common language of customers is a critical building block for creating a more customer-centric organization and culture

I encourage you to learn more about Jobs to Be Done in my new LinkedIn Learning course, where I cover the foundations for the language, method, and mindset of JTBD that you’ll be able to apply in your day-to-day role, whatever that may be. Here is the link: https://www.dhirubhai.net/learning/understanding-customers-using-jobs-to-be-done-with-david-duncan

I invite you to ask questions, engage with me, connect with me on LinkedIn, and share your own insights on JTBD - I’m always eager to learn from others!