An innovation framework for challenging times
When you are providing a service or selling a product, lockdown measures have possibly made demand gone way up or way down. If your demand has gone down, you have a choice to wait for the storm to blow over or to adapt. History has shown adaptation is the best bet.
One of my favourite tools for adapting your products or services is called the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework. It is aimed at moving your focus away from the specifics of your product or service, and towards the ‘job’ your product or service is ‘hired’ to do. Business Professor Theodore Levitt told his students that “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” to give them an easy reminder of this way of thinking.
“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”
Assume you don’t know
Investigating those jobs can yield surprising results. In a famous application of the method, HBR professor Clayton Christensen investigated possibilities to increase milkshake sales for a fast-food chain. While the focus had earlier been on demographics, flavours and viscosity, Christensen and his team started just observing and interviewing customers. They found a large number of customers buying a milkshake and taking it with them on their commute to work. As they interviewed some of these people, they found out that the ‘jobs’ the milkshake was ‘hired’ to do were: ‘keeping them busy during their commute’ and ‘making sure they weren’t hungry when arriving at work’. The milkshake did these jobs better than its competitors (bananas, bagels, donuts) because drinking a thick milkshake keeps you busy and fills your stomach. It also keeps your suit clean and conveniently fits in your hand or cupholder. The only complaint was that getting a milkshake took quite some time, while they were in a hurry. Not changing the product itself, but simply streamlining the ordering process created a huge growth in sales.
Applying JTBD for yourself
Before talking to your customers, it helps to get your bearings so you know what to look for. Looking at your jobs from different angles can assist you in the process. Try brainstorming in these three categories:
- Functional jobs — the ‘results driven’, tangible jobs that your product or service (think of the hole in the wall or the full stomach)
- Emotional jobs — the way your product or service makes your customer feel (think of the feeling visiting a great restaurant, accomplishing a workout or feeding your kids a healthy meal)
- Social jobs — the way your product or service makes your customer appear to others (like appearing cool, tough, caring or ‘early adopter’)
If you have a problem generalising these jobs because your customers are diverse, try picturing 2 or 3 typical customers and focus on each of those separately. Try to stay away from classic segmentation based on demographics, but try segmentation based on ‘jobs’ instead. Don’t go overboard with too much separation, focus on going deep on the jobs in all dimensions.
This exercise will probably already give you some insights on the opportunities that warrant experimentation with changing aspects of your product or service. Right now, the ‘emotional job’ of ‘feeling safe’ has become a dominant factor in a lot of services that people are using or not using. That is why supermarkets and hotels go out of their way in acing not just the functional job (sanitizing, creating walking routes) but also in showing and explaining these to their customers, making them feel safer.
Once you get this exercise done, use it as a reminder what to ask and look for in the people visiting your store. When people are buying, don’t assume you know why. When people are just kicking tires and not buying, see it as a great opportunity to find out what job they are hiring for. Every conversation is a free lottery ticket.
If this resonates, stick the drill quote to your monitor!
