TEI 335: JTBD tips from a veteran practitioner – with Bob Moesta

Dive deep into a valuable tool for product managers

In this discussion we are learning more about the power and use of Jobs-to-be-Done with Bob Moesta.

Bob is an innovator, entrepreneur, and the co-creator of the Jobs-to-be-Done Theory to investigate consumers’ motivations and decision-making processes. He also co-founded the Re-Wired Group, which helps companies repeatedly innovate and reliably predict success. He is also a Research Fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute.

Bob has had amazing mentors and many accomplishments. I’m sure you’ll find this discussion valuable.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[1:54] How did you get involved in Jobs-to-be-Done?

I’ve been breaking things for a long time and building things for the past 35 years. As I was building products, I would get marketing reports that told me who the customers were but wouldn’t tell me why they were doing what they were doing. One of my mentors, Dr. Deming, told me nothing is random; everything is caused; we need to understand why people buy what they buy. From that perspective, I started to understand the underlying causality behind why people buy something or do something new. I worked with Rick Pedi to make Jobs-to-be-Done a method and then another of my mentors, Clay Christensen, who made it a theory.

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) is a methodology based on the premise that people don’t buy products; they hire them to do jobs. It helps us understand the struggling moments that cause people to do something different. To solve problems, you need to see the big picture.

[7:22] What’s an example of a time you used JTBD?

When I was a VP of sales and marketing in the house building industry, I realized that our features looked like everyone else’s features and we could apply the JTBD methods to understand this business differently. We built homes for first-time home buyers, divorced families with kids, and downsizers. I asked, What causes someone to decide today’s the day they’re going to sell their house and move into one of my condos? The product is irrelevant. The important thing is to know what the customer wants, regardless of how we solve it.

Understand people’s context, desired outcome, and the struggling moment that causes them to want to change something. JTBD helps us understand the forces of progress, anxieties, friction, and habit that are pushing and pulling people, and the phases they go through of having a first thought, passively looking for something new, actively looking, and deciding.

When I was interviewing home buyers, I learned that a big friction point was getting rid of stuff to downsize. To decrease friction, we added two years of storage and a place to sort the stuff at the clubhouse, and increased sales 22%. We also provided crews that would fix people’s houses so they could sell. I realized I wasn’t really a builder; I was a mover. By making these changes, we went from 4% market share to 14% market share.

One of my mentors, Dr. Taguchi, said, There is way more that we don’t know than what we know, and don’t ever forget it. He taught me to always talk to consumers and understand their underlying causal mechanisms.

[14:01] What are the jobs of Snickers and Milky Way?

Snickers and Milky Way are both chocolate candy bars with almost all the same ingredients, except Snickers has peanuts. You would think they compete, but we found the candy bars get hired in very different contexts for very different outcomes. When people eat Snickers, it’s typically because they have work to do and are running out of energy, and they want something small and quick to eat. People almost always eat Milky Way alone and very slowly after something emotional happens. Snickers satisfies physically. Milky Way helps people feel better emotionally.