What business are you really in?
It’s one of the first questions I ask when working with leaders.
It’s also one of the questions that most often stops a room.
Organizations are usually quick to tell me what they manufacture, what services they provide, what technology they use, or what industry they compete in.
Far fewer can clearly explain the progress their customers are hiring them to create. Problem they want solved, the need they want you to fulfill or the job to be done.
At The TAG Collab, we’ve found that breakthrough innovation rarely begins with brainstorming sessions or the latest technology. It begins with asking better questions.
By combining behavioral science, strategic advisory, leadership development, and innovation frameworks, we help organizations uncover hidden opportunities, challenge long-held assumptions, and navigate what we call The Great Disruption—a time when technology, AI, workforce expectations, and business models are changing simultaneously.
One of my favorite frameworks for helping leaders think differently comes from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen: Jobs to Be Done.
Customers Don’t Buy Products. They Hire Progress.
There are countless frameworks for innovation, strategy, and growth. I’ve studied many of them throughout my career.
But Jobs to Be Done has consistently changed the way I look at organizations.
Because it fundamentally changes the questions you ask.
As a journalist, I learned that the quality of an answer depends on the quality of the question. Years later, leading organizations through transformation, I discovered the exact same principle applies to business.
When a company tells me what it sells, I’m interested.
When they tell me what problem they’re solving, I become curious.
But when we uncover what job customers are actually hiring them to do, that’s when hidden opportunities begin to emerge.
Christensen argued that customers don’t simply buy products or services.
They hire them to make progress.
People don’t buy a drill because they want a drill.
They hire it because they want a hole.
More importantly, they want to hang a picture, create a home, solve a problem, or accomplish something meaningful.
The product isn’t the destination.
Progress is.
That subtle shift changes everything.
Discovering the Job Is Harder Than It Sounds
If identifying the “job to be done” were as simple as sending a customer survey, every organization would already know it.
The reality is much more complex.
One of the reasons Christensen’s work has always resonated with me is that it recognizes something journalists, anthropologists, and behavioral scientists have understood for decades:
People aren’t always able to explain why they do what they do.
Ask customers why they purchased something, and they’ll often describe features.
Observe them.
Watch what frustrates them.
Notice the workarounds they’ve created.
Understand what was happening in their lives when they made the decision.
Listen for what they don’t say.
That’s where the real story lives.
The real job is often hidden beneath the surface.
Which is why discovering it requires curiosity far more than certainty.
A Refrigerator Company That Stopped Designing Refrigerators
One of my favorite examples of Jobs to Be Done doesn’t come from Silicon Valley.
It comes from a refrigerator company.
For decades, refrigerator manufacturers competed the same way. They built larger models, added more features, improved energy efficiency, and searched for ways to lower costs.
The assumption was simple:
People wanted refrigerators.
The challenge was building a better one.
Then Godrej & Boyce, one of India’s oldest manufacturing companies, began looking at the problem differently.
Instead of asking how to sell more refrigerators, they spent time observing families in rural communities.
What they discovered changed everything.
Many households weren’t trying to own a refrigerator.
They were trying to keep milk from spoiling.
Protect medicine.
Preserve vegetables for another day.
Reduce food waste.
Improve their family’s quality of life.
A traditional refrigerator wasn’t simply too expensive.
It was too large.
It consumed too much electricity in areas where power was unreliable.
It was designed for a lifestyle many families simply didn’t have.
The job wasn’t:
“Help me buy a refrigerator.”
The job was:
“Help me keep essential items cool long enough to improve my daily life.”
That insight completely reframed the opportunity.
Instead of designing a cheaper refrigerator, Godrej created ChotuKool, a compact, portable cooling device designed around the customer’s actual circumstances rather than the industry’s assumptions.
Notice what happened.
The innovation wasn’t born from asking customers what features they wanted.
It came from observing their lives.
From understanding their struggles.
From seeing the world through their circumstances instead of through the product category.
That’s why I believe observation is becoming one of the rarest—and most valuable—competitive advantages organizations have today.
Observation Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage
We live in an era overflowing with data.
Dashboards.
Analytics.
Artificial intelligence.
Predictive models.
Organizations know more than ever about what customers click, purchase, watch, and abandon.
Yet many understand less than ever about why those behaviors occur.
Data tells us what happened.
Observation helps us understand why.
As a journalist, some of the biggest stories I ever uncovered weren’t found in a press release.
They emerged by paying attention to what others overlooked.
Watching.
Listening.
Asking one more question.
Seeing the gap between what people said and what they actually did.
Innovation works the same way.
Sometimes the next breakthrough isn’t hidden inside another dashboard.
It’s hiding in plain sight.
Why Great Industries Struggle to Reinvent Themselves
One of Christensen’s most famous observations is that industries rarely disrupt themselves.
That idea has fascinated me throughout my career.
Successful organizations become exceptionally good at optimizing what already exists.
Their budgets reward it.
Their culture reinforces it.
Their reporting structures measure it.
Their incentives depend on it.
Ironically, those strengths often become barriers when markets change.
Organizations don’t usually fail because they’re poorly managed.
They struggle because they’re incredibly well designed—for yesterday.
Which is why disruption so often comes from outside the industry.
Outsiders aren’t protecting existing assumptions.
They simply ask different questions.
It Doesn’t Just Unlock Innovation. It Reveals Your Brand.
Jobs to Be Done is often introduced as an innovation framework.
I believe it’s much more than that.
It helps organizations rediscover who they really are.
Many companies define themselves by what they produce.
Customers define them by the progress they create.
That’s an entirely different lens.
When leaders truly understand the job customers are hiring them to do, they gain clarity far beyond product development.
They strengthen their brand.
They sharpen their messaging.
They improve the customer experience.
They build stronger cultures.
They make better strategic decisions.
Because brands aren’t built around products.
They’re built around the promise of helping people make progress.
Understanding that promise changes everything.
Better Questions Build Better Businesses
This is why I return to this framework again and again.
Not because it offers easy answers.
Because it teaches leaders to ask better questions.
What assumptions have we stopped questioning?
What problem are we really solving?
If we started this organization today, would we build it the same way?
What business are we actually in?
Those questions unlock conversations that rarely happen inside organizations—and that’s often where the greatest opportunities are hiding.
That’s Why We Created The TAG Collab
At The TAG Collab, we believe the future belongs to organizations that can see what others overlook.
We help executive teams uncover hidden assumptions, identify emerging opportunities, rethink their brands through the lens of customer progress, and navigate disruption through the intersection of behavioral science, strategic advisory, leadership, innovation, and organizational transformation.
Because lasting innovation doesn’t begin with brainstorming.
It begins with observation.
It begins with curiosity.
It begins with asking a better question.
So I’ll leave you with this:
What business are you really in?
Not what your website says.
Not what industry analysts call you.
Not what’s on your business card.
What job are people actually hiring you to do?
Because once you answer that question, you don’t just discover opportunities for innovation.
You discover the future of your brand.
Industries rarely disrupt themselves.
But leaders can.
And sometimes, the first step toward transformation isn’t finding a better answer.
It’s asking a better question.
About TAG Collab
At TAG Collab, we help executive teams uncover hidden barriers to performance, strengthen leadership capacity, and build cultures where trust, accountability, and innovation become competitive advantages.
Because in today’s environment, organizations don’t just compete on strategy.
They compete on the quality of their leadership.
Let’s Schedule a call www.thetagcollab.com
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