Framework

Jobs-to-be-Done

A framework for understanding customer needs and the tasks they aim to accomplish.

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Framework

Jobs-to-be-Done

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Transcript mentions

  • Max Schoening01:05:23

    … And so I think jobs to be done might encourage people to zoom out and sort of not get lost in the the sauce of like making the thing. That's why I like the framework.

  • Evan Spiegel00:45:52

    … And so the way that we did that was really by starting with the jobs to be done for our community and our advertisers. So getting really really basic and you know straightforward on okay you know for Snapchatters right are jobs t...

  • Jeanne DeWitt Grosser00:05:57

    … And so if you think of go-to-market more holistically, I think you can kind of go back to what are the jobs to be done from making a customer prospect aware of your product all the way through to high LTV, five years on the platform,…

  • Robby Stein00:52:08

    … The first is deeply understand people, and I think we talked about this a little bit with the jobs to be done point and Clayton Christensen's book, which I loved around Competing Against Luck. It really helps you be a student of why…

  • Eoghan McCabe01:10:49

    … You guys popularize jobs to be done. Like speaking of frameworks, you guys are a wealth of frameworks that we all use.

What guests say about Jobs-to-be-Done

5 takeaways drawn from 26 episodes, each linked to the moment it was said.

Products are hired to make progress, not bought

Bob Moesta, the framework's co-creator, argues people hire products to make progress in their life rather than buying them for their features. He illustrates this with Snickers versus Milky Way: near-identical candy bars that get picked for different moments once you ask when and why someone actually reaches for each one.

Bob Moesta at 00:05:07

Emotional jobs outperform demographic personas

Camille Ricketts notes JTBD includes emotional jobs, not just utilitarian ones, such as a shift in how someone feels rather than a task completed. Georgiana Laudi adds that personas fail because demographically identical customers lead different lives and want different outcomes; JTBD instead centers on the desired outcome, treating the product as just the vehicle to get there.

Camille Ricketts at 00:54:18 · Georgiana Laudi at 00:57:04

Applying it means building it into the workflow

Ryan Singer says he reaches for Bob Moesta's Jobs-to-be-Done and demand-side work during the problem-framing stage, before shaping any solution, to get clear on where customers are struggling. Brian Tolkin says Opendoor's standard product review template requires a jobs-to-be-done and problem-statement section for every review.

Ryan Singer at 01:38:37 · Brian Tolkin at 00:34:40

Guests warn against dogmatic, capital-J JTBD

Kayvon Beykpour's critique targets applying any framework, including JTBD, so religiously that it becomes an end in itself; his charitable take is that it simply forces a customer lens. Paul Adams says debating nuances between JTBD schools of thought is an intellectual distraction customers never care about. Robby Stein confirms he favors a deliberately "lowercase" jobs to be done, not the full rigorous methodology.

Kayvon Beykpour at 00:48:00 · Paul Adams at 01:08:47 · Robby Stein at 00:56:20

Moesta extends JTBD past products to careers

Bob Moesta says he has found the concept powerful enough to apply beyond products, to sales, college choice, and careers, and describes ongoing work finding new domains for it. He frames the core idea as helping recreate categories once applied outside its original product-design context.

Bob Moesta at 00:08:02