Jobs To Be Done and the Creative Process
"The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science" - Albert Einsten, as quoted in Zig Zag by Keith Sawyer
Clay Christensen's Jobs to Be Done theory (summarized in this article from 2016) is a central framework for my understanding of the world. I recommend Competing Against Luck and How Will You Measure Your Life (Chapter 6), both of which have extensive discussions of Jobs theory.
The key insight of Jobs theory is that a customer's decision to use a product or service is caused by some need in their lives. You 'hire' a hamburger because you need a filling, low cost meal quickly when you are away from home. Instead of the hamburger, you could have hired a granola bar, a salad, or a packed lunch. For many, none of those alternative solutions are as appealing as the tasty and convenient fast food burger, hence the burger gets hired by millions of people everyday.
What is brilliant about Jobs theory is the reframing of an age old question. For decades, professional marketers and consultants have studied consumers to determine where and when to advertise. Should they place a print add in the NY Times, or a digital ad in Facebook with the same limited budget?
With modern data analytics, marketers can study what populations tend to respond to what advertisements. Knowing that your customers are all highly educated men living in urban settings, aged 30-50, for example, would help make the decision of advertising in the New York Times rather than on Instagram.
But Christensen's insight is those attributes are correlations. They don't tell what causes a customer to buy a product. It matters because without that understanding the company cannot innovate to improve the offering, or develop new products and services. Correlations solve static problems, but developing an enduring company is a dynamic challenge.
If you are the burger company, and sales are flat or you see new competitors on the horizon, without a clear understanding of why customers are hiring your product, you are stuck. If you do have a good understanding, however, the path to innovation opens up in front of you (you are no longer, as in the book's title, Competing Against Luck).
Considering the Jobs lens on decision making has changed my career, my marriage and how I parent.
As a manager, Jobs theory helped me make the most important transition in leadership: understanding that what motivates me doesn't motivate everyone. Early on, I incorrectly assumed high correlation between my way of thinking about work and others in the organization.
Jobs theory asks me to pause, take a personalized approach and ask: What progress is this person seeking? I call this "Know the Why" in my Teambuilding work (here):
Why is this person here? What are they looking for in this experience? How does this role intersect with their goals in life? Simply asking this question, and recording the answer, improves the chances of a great relationship. First, it shows you care. And second, it affords a roadmap for fulfilling that persons why - Teambuilding Playbook
What is the Job to be Done in a marriage? It will differ for everyone, and change over time. What is a spouse looking for when they come home tired, frustrated from a long day at work? Or when diagnosed with an uncertain malady? Or when facing the death of a loved one?
You can look at these questions through the traditional correlation framework mentioned above. When my spouse comes home grumpy, s/he seems to pickup with a hug, warm tea and patient listening to the stories of the day. That may work initially, but it does not provide an understanding of why. What progress is my partner hoping to make in that moment? When the circumstances change slightly, as they of course will do over an extended marriage, blindly repeating the same response pattern may not be as helpful.
Like many other couples, my partner and I took a class on the 5 Love Languages early in our relationship. And, it continues to be a helpful tool in our marriage. The lessons are similar, but for whatever reason Jobs theory connects better for me. I relate the two with the following: Jobs theory provides the mental framework to understand why a certain love language connects.
That's how Jobs theory has changed my life already. But, I'm still on my journey. As I am thinking about creating / joining a new organization, Jobs theory is a central lens for my work. What is it I am hiring my career to do?
There's income, of course. And purpose. Identity. Learning and personal growth. There's stress too, as I believe in the research that stress can make you happier.
I'm working through those motivators, and using Jobs theory to push my own understanding of what I am trying to accomplish with my career. When am I happy to make tradeoffs between learning and income? Or stress and identity?
Jobs theory helps me unpack the 'why' in these questions and so much more.
All of this is top of mind for me today because I am struggling to use Jobs theory for my project on creativity. What is the job to be done when I student signs up for my course on creativity? Or for a parent to enroll their child? I need to get a better answer for those questions than I have at present. That is what I am working on.