The ultimate guide to JTBD | Bob Moesta (co-creator of the framework)
Bob Moesta, co-creator of the Jobs to be Done framework, discusses how people "hire" products to make progress in their lives. He explains how to uncover customer struggling moments, apply the "four forces of progress," and conduct effective interviews to build products that truly meet customer needs.
Deep Dive Analysis
19 Topic Outline
Simplest Explanation of Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) Framework
Struggling Moments and Demand Generation
Understanding Context vs. Pain Points in JTBD
The Four Forces of Progress: Push, Pull, Anxiety, Habit
Reducing Friction in the Sales Process
Autobooks Case Study: Improving Buying Process and Conversion
The Six Phases of the Buying Process
JTBD Interview Process and Techniques
Bob Moesta’s Personal Experience with Dyslexia and Writing Books
Why People Switch Companies and Jobs
First Steps in Applying the JTBD Framework
Signs Customers Are Ready for a Change
Layers of Language in Customer Interviews
Examples of Companies with Broad JTBD Adoption
Different Flavors of JTBD and Common Mistakes
When Not to Use the JTBD Framework
Common Misconceptions About JTBD
Bob Moesta's Motivation for Working on JTBD
Three Big Takeaways from JTBD
6 Key Concepts
Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)
JTBD is a framework premised on the idea that people 'hire' products to make progress in their lives, rather than simply buying them. It focuses on understanding the context and desired outcome of a customer's struggle, which reveals the true competitive set of a product from the demand side.
Struggling Moment
A struggling moment is the root cause of demand for a product or service. It's a situation where a person faces a challenge or desire for progress, prompting them to seek a solution. Innovation often begins by identifying and addressing these moments, rather than starting with a product idea.
Four Forces of Progress
These are the forces influencing a customer's decision to switch from an old solution (Product A) to a new one (Product B). They include 'push' (dissatisfaction with the old), 'pull' (attraction to the new outcome), 'anxiety' (concerns about the new), and 'habit' (inertia of the old). A switch only occurs if push and pull outweigh anxiety and habit.
Context and Outcome
Beyond just 'pain and gain,' JTBD emphasizes understanding the specific context in which a struggling moment occurs and the desired outcome a customer is trying to achieve. The context makes seemingly 'irrational' behaviors rational, and value is derived from both the starting point and the desired destination.
Layers of Language
During customer interviews, people often speak in different 'layers' of language. The 'pablum layer' is superficial (e.g., 'my day was good'), followed by the 'fantasy nightmare layer' (exaggerations). The goal is to dig deeper to uncover what actually happened and the causal mechanisms behind their decisions, often by asking 'tell me more' or playing back incorrect assumptions to prompt elaboration.
Hypothesis Building Research
Unlike traditional market research that tests pre-existing hypotheses, JTBD research is about building hypotheses. It acknowledges that businesses often don't truly know why customers buy and focuses on qualitative investigation to uncover unknown causal mechanisms and struggling moments.
8 Questions Answered
The JTBD framework posits that people 'hire' products to make progress in their lives, not just buy them. It encourages understanding the specific context and desired outcome of a customer's struggle to reveal the true competition and demand for a product.
While pain points identify a problem, the 'context and outcome' approach goes deeper by understanding the specific situation (context) a customer is in and what they are trying to achieve (outcome). This broader understanding makes seemingly irrational customer behaviors rational and reveals the full scope of their needs.
Customers are influenced by four forces: 'push' (dissatisfaction with their current solution), 'pull' (attraction to a new solution's benefits), 'anxiety' (concerns about adopting the new solution), and 'habit' (the inertia of sticking with the familiar). A switch only occurs if the push and pull forces are stronger than the anxiety and habit.
From a causal mechanism and set theory perspective, patterns in pushes, pulls, anxieties, and habits tend to repeat around 7 or 8 interviews. Bob Moesta typically recommends doing 10, and no more than 12, interviews per round to get a good representation of the market.
A crucial mistake is to have a rigid discussion guide, as it prevents following up on meaningful information. Instead, interviewers should use the framework of pushes, pulls, anxieties, and habits as a guide for conversation, focusing on understanding the customer's story and asking 'tell me more' or 'give me an example' to uncover deeper insights.
JTBD is not suitable when there's no real choice for the customer (e.g., mandated health insurance) or when the 'job' is so habitual and minor (e.g., buying chewing gum) that people can't recall the specific context of their purchase. It's most effective when people are actively changing behavior or making significant choices.
Common misconceptions include equating JTBD with 'pain and gain' instead of 'context and outcome,' focusing solely on the outcome without considering the context, and hypothesizing jobs in a conference room without actually interviewing customers. The framework requires deep qualitative investigation to uncover contradictions and 'irrational' behaviors.
Bob Moesta's approach, aligned with Clay Christensen, is qualitative and focuses on people's jobs and the causal mechanisms behind their decisions, often used for new-to-the-world products. Tony Ulwick's approach is more supply-side driven, focusing on what a product can do and is more systematic and prescriptive, often applied to existing products to identify areas for improvement.
18 Actionable Insights
1. Understand Four Forces of Progress
Analyze customer behavior by understanding the four forces: Push (F1), Pull (F2), Anxiety (F3), and Habit of the Present (F4). People will only change behavior if the Push and Pull are greater than the Anxiety and Habit.
2. Design Sales for Customer Buying
Structure your sales process around how customers want to buy, not how you want to sell. Recognize the six phases of buying (First Thought, Passive Looking, Active Looking, Deciding, First Use, Ongoing Use) to meet them where they are and increase conversion.
3. Conduct Hypothesis-Building Interviews
Frame customer interviews around “what caused people to say today’s the day” they made a change. Extract their full story, including pushes, pulls, anxieties, habits, and trade-offs, without using a rigid discussion guide to uncover true motivations.
4. Focus on Struggling Moments
Shift your product roadmap and development focus from features to the underlying struggling moments customers face. These moments are the true seeds for innovation and where new products emerge.
5. Reduce Customer Friction Points
Identify and remove non-product-related frictional points in the customer journey, such as the effort of moving or setup. Addressing these can significantly increase sales, even if it means adjusting product pricing.
6. Cluster Customer Stories, Don’t Segment
When analyzing interview data, cluster customer stories by pathways of reasons (sets of pushes and pulls) rather than just segmenting. This helps understand the different jobs a product is hired for and resolve potential conflicts.
7. Interview Those Who Already Tried
To gain accurate insights into causation, only interview people who have recently purchased your product or a competitor’s, or who have churned. They can articulate the specific context and trade-offs that led to their actions.
8. Don’t Trust Stated Intent
Never trust what people say they will do or their initial, superficial responses. Instead, investigate what actually happened and unpack deeper layers of language to uncover the true motivations and causal mechanisms.
9. Choose What to “Suck At”
Make deliberate trade-offs in your product’s design and features that align with what customers are willing to sacrifice. This prevents overshooting customer needs, adding unnecessary complexity, and ensures your product’s compromises match theirs.
10. Leaders Must Do Customer Interviews
Ensure product leaders and founders personally conduct customer interviews. This direct engagement provides a deep, firsthand understanding of struggling moments and prevents the team from merely hypothesizing jobs in a vacuum.
11. Value is Context + Outcome
Recognize that customer value is derived from both their starting context and the desired outcome, not just the outcome itself. Understanding this helps avoid over-delivering features or mispricing your product.
12. JTBD for Choice and Change
Apply the Jobs to be Done framework primarily when customers have real choices and are actively changing their behavior. It is less effective for deeply ingrained habits or situations where customers have no viable alternatives.
13. Context Makes Irrational Rational
When customer stories seem irrational, seek out the full context. Understanding the complete situation will reveal why seemingly illogical behaviors or decisions are, in fact, rational within their specific circumstances.
14. Focus on Customer Progress
Shift your mindset from simply selling products to helping customers make progress in their lives. People ‘hire’ products to achieve specific outcomes within their unique contexts.
15. Identify What Not to Build
Use the Jobs to be Done framework to identify features or functionalities that are not essential to the customer’s core job. This helps prevent feature bloat and keeps the product focused on what truly matters.
16. Study Change, Not Momentum
Instead of merely observing the current direction of customer behavior, focus on understanding what causes people to change their direction. Innovation happens at these points of behavioral shift.
17. Accept Customer Perception
Be open to how customers actually perceive your product and its value, rather than trying to force your desired perception. This alignment is crucial for effective positioning and adoption.
18. Small Interview Sample Size
For causal mechanism research, aim for 10-12 customer interviews, as the patterns of pushes, pulls, anxieties, and habits tend to repeat and reveal themselves around 7-8 interviews.
6 Key Quotes
I think one of the biggest misconceptions around jobs to be done is this notion that it's pain and gain as opposed to context and outcome.
Bob Moesta
People hire products, right? They don't buy them. They hire them to make progress in their life.
Bob Moesta
Bitching ain't switching. Just because people bitch about something doesn't mean they're going to do anything about it.
Bob Moesta
What businesses think they're selling is not what customers are buying.
Bob Moesta
Innovation happens when people change.
Bob Moesta
Choose what to suck at and figure out the trade-offs that you need to make and make sure that your trade-offs map the trade-offs of the customer.
Bob Moesta
3 Protocols
Bob Moesta's Book Writing Process
Bob Moesta- Identify the struggling moments the book will address for readers.
- Analyze competitive books in the market.
- Outline what 'progress' looks like for the reader through the book.
- Define each chapter as a system, detailing how it helps readers make progress.
- Engage in 10 two-hour recorded talking sessions.
- Have a scribe transcribe and compile the spoken content into a book.
The Six Phases of the Buying Process
Bob Moesta- First Thought: The initial awareness or spark of needing something new.
- Passive Looking: Problem-aware but solution-unaware, learning about possibilities.
- Active Looking: Both problem and solution-aware, actively framing a solution and exploring options.
- Deciding: Making trade-offs between different alternatives.
- First Use: The initial experience with the new product or service.
- Ongoing Use: Building the new habit and integrating the product into daily life.
First Steps to Applying the JTBD Framework
Bob Moesta- If you have an existing product, interview 10 people who recently bought it. Focus on why they bought it, what was going on, what they hoped for, what they worried about, what they gave up, and how they convinced others.
- Listen for three sources of energy: functional (time, space, effort, knowledge), emotional (how they feel), and social (how others perceive them).
- If it's an established product, also interview people who have churned to understand their struggling moments and why they left.
- If building a new product, identify what people will stop using when your product comes out, and interview users of those competitor products to understand their jobs.