Key Principle
Applying Jobs Theory is a five-phase process:
- Discover the job using field methods: compensating behaviors, nonconsumption analysis, negative jobs, storyboarding interviews, and the emotional score (Ch. 4-5).
- Map the Four Forces -- push, pull, habits of the present, anxiety of the new -- to understand the full causal chain of customer switching (Ch. 5).
- Build a job spec across functional, emotional, and social dimensions, including tradeoffs, competing solutions, and obstacles (Ch. 6).
- Design the complete experience that removes every barrier between the customer and their desired progress (Ch. 3, 6).
- Align the organization around the job as "commander's intent," with metrics that track customer progress, not internal activity (Ch. 9).
"Designed without a clear job spec, even the most advanced products are likely to fail. There are just too many details to nail and tricky tradeoffs to be made in creating customer value for innovators to rely on the luck of just guessing right." (Ch. 6)
Why This Matters
Theory without implementation is useless. Most companies understand Jobs Theory conceptually but fail in execution because they skip phases or collapse them. The most common failures: jumping from discovery straight to product features (skipping force mapping and experience design), designing only for functional dimensions while ignoring emotional and social ones, and never aligning the organization around the job so that drift slowly replaces causal understanding with internal efficiency metrics.
Of 20,000+ new product launches tracked by Nielsen (2012-2016), only 92 sold more than $50M in year one and sustained sales in year two. "Every single one of them nailed a poorly performed Job to Be Done." (Ch. 3)
"Efficiency is only value creating when it is in the performance of a process that is creating customer value by fulfilling a high-priority job." (Ch. 9)
Good Examples
SNHU: Discovered two separate jobs (coming-of-age experience vs. adult credential completion), created a physically separate organization for each, designed the online experience around "convenience, customer service, credentials, and speedy completion times" (Ch. 3). Result: $32M to $535M revenue, 34% CAGR over six years. Critical metric: 95% of graduates said they would do it all over again (Ch. 9).
American Girl: Built an experience ecosystem -- historical books, stores with restaurants and doll hospitals, packaging with a two-cent belly band adding "twenty-seven seconds" to the unwrapping experience. Competitors who copied the product failed because "they thought it was a product. They never got the story part right" (Ch. 6). 29 million dolls sold, $500M+ annual sales; sold to Mattel for $700M.
Intuit/QuickBooks: Small business owners' job was confidence that money flowed efficiently, not accounting expertise. QuickBooks launched with "half the functionality at twice the price" (Ch. 3) yet became the global leader because it nailed the job. Competition was spreadsheets and shoeboxes, not other accounting software. $4B revenue, $25B market cap.
Medtronic India (Healthy Heart for All): Biggest competition was nonconsumption, not rival pacemakers. Identified four barriers -- patient awareness, diagnostics access, care pathway navigation, affordability -- and designed a corresponding experience for each: free screening clinics, patient counselor "Sherpas," and fast-approval loans reflecting emotional needs. ~167,000 screened, ~15,000 treated, 100+ hospital partnerships in 30 cities (Ch. 6).
Counterpoints
Starting with surveys and feature requests: Intuit's TurboTax team spent years optimizing based on customer feature requests when the actual job was completing taxes without needing the interview tool at all. "We got into feature chase. Too often we'd go look at what customers were asking for and build it." -- Scott Cook (Ch. 9). The reframe -- "completing customers' taxes without their having to answer any questions" -- triggered immediate creativity.
Skipping the emotional dimension: The Segway was conceived around "more efficient personal transportation" without circumstantial specificity -- "But whose need? When? Why? In what circumstances?" (Ch. 2). A surgeon chose pen-and-paper over superior software because turning to a computer broke eye contact with an anxious patient. "We'd designed everything in that room from a functional perspective, but we had completely overlooked the emotional score." (Ch. 4)
Not aligning the organization: Volvo, the undisputed purpose brand for safety, lost its way under Ford when it tried to compete as a luxury brand -- declining until sold at a loss to Geely in 2010. The brand lost its causal link to a specific job (Ch. 6). Growth-driven process optimization gradually replaces causal understanding with internal correlations -- throughput, cost-per-unit, feature velocity (Ch. 9).
Key Quotes
- "When you are solving a customer's job, your products essentially become services. What matters is not the bundle of product attributes you rope together, but the experiences you enable." (Ch. 3)
- "Companies don't think about this enough. What has to get fired for my product to get hired?" (Ch. 5)
- "The insights that lead to successful new products look more like a story than a statistic." (Ch. 5)
- "We weren't measuring what was most important to our customers. Because it's hard to measure. But it matters profoundly." -- Scott Cook (Ch. 9)
Rules of Thumb
- Discovery: Look for compensating behaviors -- they are revealed preferences proving both a job's existence and its intensity (Ch. 4). Collect "a huge number of data points from a smaller sample size," not "a handful of data points from a huge sample" (Ch. 5).
- Discovery: Apply the two validity tests -- if the job uses only adjectives/adverbs, it is not a job; if every candidate solution comes from the same product class, you are at the wrong abstraction level (Ch. 10).
- Discovery: Negative jobs -- things people desperately want to avoid doing -- are often the best innovation opportunities. CVS MinuteClinic was built on the job of not wanting to see the doctor (Ch. 4).
- Force mapping: Loss aversion is roughly 2x as powerful as the allure of gains; the new solution must be dramatically, not marginally, better (Ch. 5). You can succeed by reducing opposing forces (habit, anxiety) rather than only increasing pull.
- Job spec: Always specify all three dimensions -- functional, emotional, social. "Consumers' social and emotional needs can far outweigh any functional desires." (Ch. 2)
- Experience design: Track Big Hire (purchase) and Little Hire (actual use) separately -- sales data masks job failure (Ch. 5). Design the experience to remove every obstacle, not just improve the product.
- Org alignment: Use the job as commander's intent -- it tells you both what to pursue and what NOT to pursue (Ch. 9). Measure customer progress, not internal activity.
- Ongoing: Watch for organizational drift -- when internal metrics turn green but the company has lost sight of what those metrics were designed to serve. "We measured all the stuff that was easy to measure because it rolled off our servers" rather than "whether we were improving customers' lives" (Ch. 9).
Related References
- Five Methods for Discovering Jobs - Phase 1: Discovery methods
- The Four Forces of Progress - Phase 2: Force mapping
- Designing Experiences Around the Job - Phase 4: Experience design
- The Jobs-Focused Organization - Phase 5: Org alignment