TEI 333: A framework for Jobs-to-be-Done – with Jay Haynes

How product managers can build great products by focusing on their customers’ unmet needs

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) is a valuable tool for product managers and innovators, and there are different thoughts on how to actually put it into optimal practice. Our guest, Jay Haynes, is helping that problem by creating the first and only JTBD software for product, marketing, and sales teams. He founded THRV (pronounced Thrive) to make that happen. Also, Jay has three decades of innovation experience and has helped Microsoft, Dropbox, eBay, Twitter, American Express, Oracle, Target, and others.  

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[1:54] What is Jobs-to-be-Done?

Jobs-to-be-Done is a method to build great products that customers love. The core idea is that customers are not buying a product; they’re hiring a product to get a job done. A job to be done is a goal a customer needs to achieve, and it’s independent of any product. For example, we don’t want iPods, cassettes, or CDs; we want to create a mood with music using whichever product best helps us accomplish that job.

[4:16] What problem does Jobs-to-be-Done help product managers with?

It helps us fail less. If you start with a brand-new idea, you have no way to judge whether the idea is useful. JTBD lets you start with your customers’ unmet needs instead. Then you can more quickly and efficiently come up with ideas, which will be much more valuable once you understand their problems.

[6:04] How do we get started with Jobs-to-be-Done?

Everything starts with the customer. You need to know who your customers are. It’s amazing how many teams disagree on whom their customer is. Many companies define their customers using personas, which can lead us away from the core customer who benefits from getting the job done. Instead of limiting yourself to personas, group your customers into job beneficiaries, who are the people who benefit from getting the job done. For example, Nest the thermostat company focuses on the job beneficiaries. Traditionally, thermostat manufacturers sold to contractors, not homeowners. Nest redefined their customer and decided to sell directly to homeowners. This was smart, because homeowners are the job beneficiaries, benefiting from the thermostat, which performs the job of creating a comfortable home.

Often, especially for B2B products, we have multiple different groups with different needs interacting with our product. In addition to job beneficiaries, there are job executors, who help the beneficiary get the job done, and purchasers, who purchase the product. Job executors perform consumption jobs like installing the thermostat, while job beneficiaries perform function jobs like using the thermostat. Both are important, but increasingly consumption jobs can be done by the job beneficiary. Focusing on the job executor isn’t good for your long-term growth, because someone is going to figure out how to get rid of the job executor, like Nest did. Focus on the job beneficiaries, because they’re your true market.

[15:07] What’s the next step?

Next we go to the market. The market you’re in is the most important decision you can make as a product team. If you have to choose between being a great entrepreneur in a terrible market or a mediocre entrepreneur in an awesome market, choose the awesome market. If you haven’t thought about what your market is and what your customer’s job is, you’ve made a critical mistake.

There are no product-based markets. There are only markets for getting jobs done. For example, when Apple created the iPod, they defined their market based on the product. They sold $30 billion of iPods, but today the iPod market is zero. The market isn’t for iPods; it’s for creating a mood with music. Pandora experienced enormous success by finding a different way to create a mo...