Jobs To Be Done

Jobs To Be Done

Author

Anthony W. Ulwick

Year
2016
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Review

At any moment, I have a short queue of product books I want to read. I try to follow long books with shorter ones, so I don't lose momentum. I naively thought this book would be a quick read, but it isn't. It's insight-dense and concise, making it hard to get through.

The author has created and trademarked a product innovation process that he claims has an 86% success rate. That's great news for us right? Well. Hold on. The catch is it seems impractical to do, and it's trademarked, so you'll need to hire his consultancy to do it with you.

I love this book. The author critiques and discards much of what is standard in the industry. It's difficult to read as it will challenge some of your beliefs. I'd love to try the full 84-step process one day, but I think I'll need to be in the C-suite to actually implement it.

For now, I'll use parts of the process in a less rigorous way, despite the author's advice against it.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

  • Data showing success rates of traditional innovation processes average 17%, the success rate of ‘Outcome Driven Innovation’ is 86%.
  • Companies can increase the chances of successful innovation if they know ‘what metrics customers use to measure success and value’ when getting a job done.
  • Goal of innovation → come up with solutions that address unmet customer needs
  • Two existing schools of thought on innovation:
    • ‣
    Ideas-first approach: come up with ideas, test them with customers to see if they meet their needs.
    • Generate lots of large ideas then quickly and inexpensively filter out ideas they think will fail (using stage gates)
    • Three reasons why it won’t work
      1. Generating lots of ideas doesn’t meaningfully improve the chances that you’ll generate the optimal idea that will satisfy unmet customers needs. It’s like a doctor making the right prescription without knowing the symptoms
      2. The evaluation and filtering process is flawed… because the customer needs are not known and which of them are unmet isn’t known, the best solution is likely not in the consideration set, customers might not be able to make the connection between the product/service and their needs
      3. Customers can’t articulate the solutions they want
    • Companies using the ideas-first approach to innovation struggle to achieve success rates greater than 10 to 20%
    ‣
    Needs-first approach: learn what the customer’s needs are, determine which of those are unmet, devise a solution to meet them
    • Companies nearly always fail to uncover all or even most of the customer’s needs
    • Obtaining inputs in the customers own words results in the wrong inputs
    • Many companies assume it’s impossible to get a complete set of customer needs
    • Companies try to satisfy needs without a clear definition of what a need even is
  • Jobs-to-be-done theory provides a framework for categorising, defining, capturing and organising all of your customer’s needs. Tying customer-defined performance metrics (in the form of desired outcome statements) to the Job-to-be-done
  • Knowing the customers needs allows you to unlock better strategy by revealing hidden segments of opportunity and determining which needs are underserved or over served
  • Customers are more loyal to getting a job done - than they are to companies
  • Jobs-to-be-done Needs Framework
    • We must consider different types of customer needs: Core functional job / Related jobs / Emotional jobs / Consumption chain jobs / Financial outcomes
    • Job: the overall task the customer is trying to execute
    • Outcome: the metric the customer uses to measure success and value while executing a job
      • image
  • Customer need statements are mutually exclusive - defined independently of each other
  • A complete set of customer needs is collectively exhaustive
  • The goal of innovation is to device solutions that address unmet customer needs. So we need to…
    • Know the needs
    • Know which are unmet
    • Check for segments of customers with different unmet needs
  • You’re looking for a segment of customers with unmet needs you can serve - that make up a big enough % of the market to make it attractive
  • The core functional job:
    • is defined in a single statement: “monitor a patients vital signs”
    • is the anchor around which all other needs are identified
  • A functional JTBD has three unique and extremely valuable characteristics:
    1. A job is stable, it doesn’t change over time
    2. A job has no geographical boundaries
    3. A job is solution agnostic
  • Uncovering the customer’s desired outcomes (and metrics of success) is the real key to success at innovation - it’s more important than defining the actual job perfectly.
  • To uncover the customer’s desired outcomes - we dissect the core functional job into it’s component parts using a job map. desired outcome statements explain precisely how customers measure success and value as they go through each step. of the core functional job.
  • New products and services win in the marketplace if they help customers get a job done better (faster, more predictably, with higher output) and/or more cheaply
  • The JTBD Market GrowthStrategy Matrix:
image
  • Your product needs to be significantly better or cheaper … small changes won’t have the same effect.
  • Uber example:
    • Uber Lux → charging significantly more for significantly better
    • UberX → charging less for better
    • UberPool → charging significantly less for worse
  • Imagine trying to launch a differentiated strategy in a market that was over-served… there would be nobody looking to spend more as they’re already satisfied. You’d fail. This is the power of JTBD to select macro strategy.

Chapter 4: Outcome Driven-Innovation

  • Outcome Driven Innovation = a comprehensive, customer-centric, data-driven innovation process that is built around Jobs Theory
    • ODI links a companies ‘Value Creation Metrics Activities’ to ‘Customer-defined performance metrics’
  • 10 Key Steps
    1. Define the customer
    2. Define the Jobs-to-be-Done
      • Define the job statement in the correct format
        • Job statement = verb + object of the verb (noun) + context clarifier
        • E.g. Listen to music whilst on the go
    3. Uncover customer needs
      • Outcome Statement = Direction of Improvement + performance metric + object of control + contextual clarifier
    4. Find segments of opportunity
      • Differences in needs don’t come from demographics or psychographics
      • To discover segments of customers with unmet needs, you need to segment the market around unmet needs
    5. Define the value proposition
      • know where customers are underserved
      • secure the value proposition that communicates to customers that their needs can be satisfied
      • do everything to satisfy the unmeet needs better that competition
    6. Conduct the Competitive Analysis
      • Knowing how customers measure value, and how the competition stack up enables an organisation to create products and services that get the job done better or more cheaply
    7. Formulate the innovation strategy
    8. Target hidden growth opportunities
      • Opportunity Score = outcome importance + (outcome importance - outcome satisfaction)
    9. Formulate the market strategy
    10. Formulate the product strategy
  • Define your customer as a job executor. Ask customers what jobs they are trying to get done - instead of asking them what solutions they want.
  • Other benefits to using ODI:
    • Cost reduction - you’re only working on the things that matter
    • Enhanced speed to market - everyone understands what’s important and what needs to be delivered
    • Enhanced credibility - you don’t get questioned by internal stakeholders so much
  • Doing ODI is incredibly involved - 6 phases and 84 steps 😖
    • Initiate an ODI project (15 steps)
    • Uncover the customer’s needs (18 steps)
    • Gather quantitative data (18 steps)
    • Discover hidden opportunities for growth (10 steps)
    • Formulate the market strategy (12 steps)
    • Formulate the product strategy (10 steps)
  • Innovation shouldn’t be everyone’s responsibility - a small group of people doing ODI can inform market and product strategy. It’s a mistake to train everyone and get them ‘doing innovation’. Keep the majority of the company building. Most companies are great at building products. Build a team of ODI practitioners - who form the core of an innovation centre of excellence
  • Build it in three phases:
    1. Understand your customers jobs to be done
    2. Discover hidden opportunities in your market
    3. Use new customer insights to drive growth
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Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Foreward

  • 72% of all new product & service introductions fail to live up to expectations
  • Tools and process drive efficiency and create a framework for conversations
  • This research led Alex Osterwalder to create the Value Proposition Canvas
  • Tony’s approach takes the guesswork out of the innovation process
  • A tested model for innovation management that increases your chance of success
  • Improve your innovation toolbox

Introduction: The Failure That Led to Success

  • Author was embarrassed by an early product failure. Giving him motivation to…
  • Identify the metrics that customers use to judge the value of newly released products early on in the product planning process.
  • Author first studied: Six sigma, quality function deployment, TRIZ, voice of the customer.
    • Worked with statisticians on conjoint, factor and cluster analysis to segment markets
  • GOAL: Apply Six Sigma and process control principles to innovation.
  • Key Challenge: How to uncover the metrics that customers use to measure success and value
  • He tried the process out, and increased the market share of a company from 1% to 20%.
  • Tying customer-defined metrics to the underlying process the customer was trying to execute was the key to success.
  • Patented the process and called it Outcome-Driven Innovation. The company is called Strategyn.
  • Clayton Christensen used his material and popularised Jobs to be Done in The Innovator’s Solution
    • Clayton’s idea: People hire products to get jobs done … is compatible with ODI
  • Data showing success rates of traditional innovation processes average 17%, the success rate of ‘Outcome Driven Innovation’ is 86%.
    • 86% of products and services launched by clients were a success
    • The innovation process is 5x more predictable if you focus on Jobs-to-be-done
  • Companies can increase the chances of successful innovation if they know ‘what metrics customers use to measure success and value’ when getting a job done.

Part 1: Theory

Chapter 1: Why do innovation projects fail?

  • Goal of innovation → come up with solutions that address unmet customer needs
  • Two schools of thought
  1. Ideas-first approach: come up with ideas, test them with customers to see if they meet their needs
    • Most follow this approach (68% of companies use a gated innovation process )
      1. Generate lots of large ideas
      2. Quickly and inexpensively filter out ideas they think will fail
    • Gates: Scope → Business Case → Development → Testing + Validation → Launch
    • Referred to as a ‘numbers game’ or ‘failing fast’
    • Predicated on the fact that most ideas will fail.
    • Generate hundreds of ideas (without knowing customer needs) whilst being told, there are no bad ideas
    • Despite it’s popularity - there are three reasons why it doesn’t work:
      1. Generating lots of ideas doesn’t meaningfully improve the chances that you’ll generate the optimal idea that will satisfy unmet customers needs
        • Customers have 50 to 150 needs. 5-80% of which will be unmet. There are many combinations
        • It’s like trying to hit a target when you don’t know where the target is. OR a doctor making the right prescription without knowing the symptoms
      2. The evaluation and filtering process is flawed
        • because the customer needs are not known and which of them are unmet isn’t known
        • the best solution is likely not in the consideration set
        • customers might not be able to make the connection between the product/service and their needs
      3. Customers can’t articulate the solutions they want
        • Coming up with the winning solution is not the customers responsibility
    • Companies using the ideas-first approach to innovation struggle to achieve success rates greater than 10 to 20%
  2. Needs-first approach: learn what the customer’s needs are, determine which of those are unmet, devise a solution to meet them
    • Often flawed in execution.
    • Understand customer needs → figure out which are unmet → device a concept to address them
    • Despite the available needs gathering methods, companies nearly always fail to uncover all or even most of the customer’s needs
    • There’s no common language for communicating a need
    • Companies rarely have a complete list of agreed upon customer needs, and which of those are unmet
    • Characteristics a customer need statements need to be defined
    • Obtaining inputs in the customers own words results in the wrong inputs
    • Many companies assume it’s impossible to get a complete set of customer needs
    • Companies try to satisfy needs without a clear definition of what a need even is
  • Before a company can succeed at innovation → they must agree on what a need is and the types of needs that customers have

Chapter 2: Jobs-to-be-done needs framework

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole Theodore Levitt
People buy products and services to get a job done Clayton Christensem
  • Jobs-to-be-done theory provides a framework for:
    • categorising, defining, capturing and organising all of your customer’s needs
    • tying customer-defined performance metrics (in the form of desired outcome statements) to the Job-to-be-done
  • In addition to knowing the customer’s needs, you can build a common understanding of what a need is
  • Knowing the customers needs allows you to unlock better strategy:
    • Hidden segments of opportunity can be discovered
    • Determine which needs are underserved or over served
  • Ideation, testing, evaluation and marketing of concepts is simpler and easier
  • Customers are more loyal to getting a job done - than they are to companies → you can win market share
  • Jobs-to-be-done Needs Framework
    • We must consider different types of customer needs
      • Core functional job
      • Related jobs
      • Emotional jobs
      • Consumption chain jobs
      • Financial outcomes
    • Job = the overall task the customer is trying to execute
    • Outcome = the metric the customer uses to measure success and value while executing a job
    • There can be up to 50 desired outcome statements for every functional or consumption chain job
    • The framework reveals significant complexity involved in understanding all the needs in a market (there can be well over 100 needs)
      • image
    • Needs are multilayered and complex
    • MECE
      • Customer need statements are mutually exclusive - defined independently of each other
      • A complete set of customer needs is collectively exhaustive
  • Why does each need to be stated separately and categorised correctly?
    • The goal of innovation is to device solutions that address unmet customer needs. So we need to…
      • Know the needs
      • Know which are unmet
      • Check for segments of customers with different unmet needs
    • You’re looking for a segment of customers with unmet needs you can serve - that make up a big enough % of the market to make it attractive
  • Innovation is transformed from a game of chance to a science when the needs are known in advance of ideation
  • Markets aren’t homogenous → customers don’t agree on what needs are unmet
  • Persona’s are often misleading - segmentation requires quantitative research that’s statistically significant
  • JTDB Needs Framework provides…
    • What inputs are needed
    • How they should be categorised and organised
    • Why they are captured, and how they should be used
  • A deep understanding of the core functional job helps you create a better product/service than the competition
  • The core functional job:
    • is defined in a single statement: “monitor a patients vital signs”
    • is the anchor around which all other needs are identified
  • Define the core functional job first - then emotional, related and consumption chain jobs relative to it.
  • Two reasons for understanding functional jobs well:
    • to discover new jobs to address
    • to define a market they are serving in a new way to use JTBD theory
  • Market selection: the process of deciding what new markets a company should enter to establish new revenue streams
    • Step 1: pick customers and understand the jobs they’re trying to get done
    • Step 2: use quantitative research to determine which of those jobs are least satisfied and will make the most attractive markets to target for growth
  • Most companies use ODI to better position their existing offerings
  • If your product is a platform - it’s hard to determine the core functional jobs (as there can be many). In that case - use qualitative research to uncover all the reasons a customer may use the offering and then use quantitative research and factor analysis to group together like attributes and discover core jobs
  • A functional JTBD has three unique and extremely valuable characteristics:
    1. A job is stable, it doesn’t change over time
    2. A job has no geographical boundaries
    3. A job is solution agnostic
  • Desired outcomes on the core functional job:
    • Studying the job like it’s a process will uncover the metrics that customers use to measure success and value as they execute each step in that job
      • Metrics are included in specially formed need statements we call ‘desired outcomes’
  • Uncovering the customer’s desired outcomes (and metrics of success) is the real key to success at innovation - it’s more important than defining the actual job perfectly.
  • To uncover the customer’s desired outcomes - we dissect the core functional job into it’s component parts using a job map
    • the job map becomes the framework from which to capture desired outcome statements
    • desired outcome statements explain precisely how customers measure success and value as they go through each step. of the core functional job
    • they describe to get the job done more quickly, predictably, efficiently and without waste
    • 50-150 desired outcome statements are applicable to the core functional job
      • E.g Trying to listen to music → minimise the time it takes to get songs in the desired order
    • Rules for constructing desired outcome statements:
      • designed and structured to be measurable, controllable, actionable, devoid of solutions and stable over time
      • they are structured so they can be prioritised for importance and satisfaction using statistically valid market research methods
  • Related Jobs - Knowing related jobs (the user may want to get done) can lead to platform level solutions that get many jobs done - it’s not uncommon to find 5-20 related jobs might me on the mind of the user
  • Emotional / Social Jobs
    • Emotional jobs define how customers want to feel or avoid feeling as a result of executing the core functional job.
    • Social jobs define how the customer wants to be perceived by others
    • Expect 2025 emotional and social jobs to be on the mind of the user when executing the core functional job
  • Consumption Chain Jobs
    • Represent the different stages of the product lifecycle (receive, install, set-up, transport, clean, store, maintain)
      • Each consumption chain job is comprised of its own distinct set of desired outcome statements
      • The purchase process itself can be considered a consumption chain job (research, evaluate and transact)
    • Consumption chain jobs can become points of product improvement or competitive differentiation.
  • Financial Desired Outcomes
    • Buyers consider 40-80 financial outcomes (metrics) when making a purchase decision
      • Buying a medical device you might consider ‘reducing the length of the patent’s stay’

Chapter 3: The JTBD Growth Strategy Matrix

  • You can use them to:
    • explain what causes new product and service offerings to win or fail in the marketplace
    • help select the growth strategy that fits the situation and get a win in the marketplace
  • New products and services win in the marketplace if they help customers get a job done better (faster, more predictably, with higher output) and/or more cheaply
  • The JTBD Market GrowthStrategy Matrix:
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  • Note read this as significantly better/worse/more/less … small changes won’t have the same effect.
  • Uber example:
    • Uber Lux → charging significantly more for significantly better
    • UberX → charging less for better
    • UberPool → charging significantly less for worse
  • Imagine trying to launch a differentiated strategy in a market that was over-served… there would be nobody looking to spend more as they’re already satisfied. You’d fail. This is the power of JTBD to select macro strategy.

Part 2 Process

Chapter 4: Outcome Driven-Innovation

  • “Cobbling together a hodgepodge of incompatible practices and relying on qualitative insights alone doesn’t work” → with regards to how companies do innovation
  • Outcome Driven Innovation = a comprehensive, customer-centric, data-driven innovation process that is built around Jobs Theory
    • It puts JTBD theory into practice
    • Claims 86% success rate
    • ODI links a companies ‘Value Creation Metrics Activities’ to ‘Customer-defined performance metrics’
  • An approach to:
    • Needs gathering
    • Needs-based segmentation
    • competitive analysis
    • Opportunity identification
    • Idea generation and validation
    • Market sizing
    • Formulation of market and product strategy
  • 10 Key Steps
    • ‣
    1) Define the customer
    • Before you can define customer needs - you need to define who the customer is
    • We must identify the customer - so we can gain the insights we need to create products and services that will get the job done better or more cheaply
    • There are three key customer types:
      • ‣
      the end user (or functional job executor)
      • Uses the product or service to get the core functional job done
      • Provides the functional metrics for success
        • E.g. A surgeon: minimise the likelihood of removing healthy tissue
      • Can be different from the purchasing decision maker
      • Emotional and related jobs should be sourced from the end user
      ‣
      the product lifecycle support team (1)
      • Those who install, setup, store, transport, maintain, repair, clean, upgrade, and dispose of the product
        • Only some apply each time -
      • Those involved can provide desired outcome statements
      • Include to produce a product that requires less support - provides a better customer experience
      • Simplifying or eliminating consumption chain jobs has 2 benefits
        • lowers the cost of product ownership
        • makes the product more convenient to use
      ‣
      the purchase decision maker
      • evaluates alternatives and makes the decision
      • can help you understand financial desired outcomes - that drive the purchasing decision
    • If you create something that meets unmet needs of the three customers, you’ll find other stakeholders and customer types like it too (influencers, retailers, distributors etc)
    ‣
    2) Define the Jobs-to-be-Done
    • Start with the core functional job
      • Make it stable.
      • Defining it correctly is a pre-requisite for success
        • too narrow - limits discovery and growth opportunities
        • too broadly - insights won’t be actionable
      • Most products only get part of a job done - the goal is to discover the entire job
      • Work out how your product fits into what they’re trying to accomplish
    • To avoid going too narrow ask:
      • Why are you using that product? What you ultimately trying to get done?
      • Competitors can win the market by finding capabilities, resources, funding, technology and know how to create an offering that gets the entire job done
    • To avoid going too broad ask:
      • Can and will the company address this job from beginning to end over time?
        • Is it willing to acquire the capabilities, resources, funds, tech and know how to tackle the broader job?
    • Take the customers perspective when defining the core functional job.
    • Don’t overcomplicate it - don’t try and cram everything into it
      • Separately define all the causal factors that contribute variability to getting the job done
    • Leave emotion and other needs out of it
    • Define the job - not the situation. ‘Having a long boring ride to work’ is a situation not a job.
      • the job should be accurate for all customer situations, regardless of the products they are using
    • Define the job statement in the correct format
      • Job statement = verb + object of the verb (noun) + context clarifier
        • E.g. Listen to music whilst on the go
    ‣
    3) Uncover customer needs
    • Create a job map - visual depiction of the core functional job, deconstructed into its discrete process steps, shows what the customer is trying to get done
      • It shows the needs (not the solution)
    • It is not a customer journey or experience map.
    • Job maps focus on what the customer is trying to get done - not solutions
    • A completed job map represents the ideal process flow - all the steps in the ideal order for efficient execution
    • Job maps help:
      • help identify longterm strategy
      • help bring spur innovative ideas
      • a guide for capturing desired outcomes.
    • The universal job map format - 8 Process Steps
    Define
    Locate
    Prepare
    Confirm
    Plan Select Determine
    Gather Access Receive
    Set up Organise Examine
    Validate Prioritise Decide
    Execute
    Monitor
    Modify
    Conclude
    Perform Transact Administer
    Verify Track Check
    Update Adjust Maintain
    Store Finish Close
    • Capture desired outcomes for each stage of the job map
    • Expect to uncover between 50-150 desired outcome statements
    • Customers know how they measure success - those metrics become the desired outcome statements
      • e.g. minimise the time it takes for corn seeds to germinate
    • Be strict on the format of a desired outcome statement
    • Outcome Statement = Direction of Improvement + performance metric + object of control + contextual clarifier
    • Uncover them using interviews or observation
    • Should be useful for years to come
    ‣
    4) Find segments of opportunity
    • Market Segmentation = target offering to groups of customers that will value them
    • Most traditional segmentation methods fail to distinguish customers with unmet needs
    • Differences in needs don’t come from demographics or psychographics
      • Demographic, psychographic and behavioural and attitudinal data nearly always fail to explain why customers have different unmet needs
    • To discover segments of customers with unmet needs, you need to segment the market around unmet needs
    • Some segments of customers struggle more than others to get a job done
    • 4 step outcome-based segmentation:
      • Capture desired outcome statements
      • Survey a large number of customers (180-3000) to find out
        • How important each outcome is
        • How well existing solutions satisfy that outcome
      • Use factor and cluster analysis to segment the market - into groups of customers with unmet needs
      • Use information from the survey to understand what makes getting jobs done difficult.
    ‣
    5) Define the value proposition
    • Markets latch onto value propositions that resonate. That can result in homogeneity and opportunity. Changing your positioning to target unmet needs can have a big impact
    • Skate to where the puck is going
    • Strategy: securing a winning value proposition:
      • know where customers are underserved
      • secure the value proposition that communicates to customers that their needs can be satisfied
      • do everything to satisfy the unmeet needs better that competitors
    • How to fulfil your value proposition promise:
      • Change positioning and messaging to highlight what you already serve
      • Re-prioritise feature pipeline to further address unmet needs
      • Innovate around unmet needs
    ‣
    6) Conduct the Competitive Analysis
    • Quantitative evaluation of competing offerings → to show which offerings get the job done better and which get it done worse
    • This helps
      • Pinpoint which desired outcomes to address to offset strengths of competitors
      • Reveal underserved desired outcomes in the market
    • Knowing how customers measure value, and how the competition stack up enables an organisation to create products and services that get the job done better or more cheaply
    ‣
    7) Formulate the innovation strategy
    • Knowing what segment and unmet outcomes to target
    • Knowing what product/service changes to help customers achieve their goals
    ‣
    8) Target hidden growth opportunities
    • Determine which unmet needs should be targeted in each segment
      • to help customers get the job done better
      • help the customer get the job done more cheaply
    • Use the opportunity algorithm, which determines:
      • which outcomes are important to customers
      • with low satisfaction from other solutions
    • Opportunity Score = outcome importance + (outcome importance - outcome satisfaction)
    • An opportunity score of 10 or greater indicates that the outcome is underserved.
    • Opportunity Landscape = a visual representation of which outcomes are under and over served.
      • Underserved: all outcomes with an opportunity score of 10 or greater
      • Appropriately served:
      • Over served: outcomes satisfaction exceeds their importance
        • image
    • Upper right section is table stakes
    • Over served areas can be targeted for cost reduction
    • The lower right are underserved - address them to help the customer get the job done better
    ‣
    9) Formulate the market strategy
    • Effective market strategy - aligns the strengths of a company with the customers’ unmet needs
    • Reposition your marketing to highlight how you serve unmet needs
    • Include an outcome based value proposition in communications
    ‣
    10) Formulate the product strategy
    • Effective portfolio strategy:
      • improves products to better serve unmet needs of customers in each outcome-based segment
      • offer a solution that will eventually get the entire job done on a single platform
    • 7 courses of action:
      • Borrow features from other company offerings
      • Accelerate offerings in the pipeline and R&D
      • Partner with or licence from other firms
      • Acquire another firm to fill a gap
      • Devise a new feature set
      • Devise a new subsystem and/or ancillary services
      • Conceptualise the ultimate solution

Chapter 5: Case Studies

  • I won’t detail the case studies - but will collect any insights
  • Companies can often meet customer needs better - just by using what they have and changing the positioning
  • When bringing something new to the market - your customers might not know your technology or your features → so you can rely on a more stable set of jobs to be done
  • Define your customer as a job executor. Ask customers what jobs they are trying to get done - instead of asking them what solutions they want.
  • Other benefits to using ODI:
    • Cost reduction - you’re only working on the things that matter
    • Enhanced speed to market - everyone understands what’s important and what needs to be delivered
    • Enhanced credibility - you don’t get questioned by internal stakeholders so much

Chapter 6: Becoming an ODI practitioner

  • Lots of companies want to do it - few want to rely on a third party consulting firm
  • Strategyn will make a toolkit available to their clients to help them do it themselves
  • But here’s an overview of the 6 phases and 84 steps 😖
  • 6 Phases and steps
    • ‣
    1) Initiate an ODI project (15 steps)
    • Phase goal: gain agreement with the project team on…
      • the project plan and scope
      • who the customer is
      • the definition of the Job-to-be-Done
      • the preliminary job map
    • Steps
      1. Evangelise JTBD theory and ODI
      2. Select the right project
      3. Define the right goals
      4. Scope it
      5. Define project timeline timeline
      6. Select the team
      7. Determine what types of needs you’ll need to capture
      8. Create screeners to help recruit candidates for job map interviews
      9. Recruit candidates for job map interviews
      10. Prepare for job map interviews
      11. Understand the job statement structure
      12. Conduct interviews to find the core functional job to be done
      13. In complex markets - conduct quant research to validate the jobs that a platform solution gets done
      14. Conduct customer interviews and create initial job map
      15. Get the project team to agree on the JTBD, the job map and project plan
    ‣
    2) Uncover the customer’s needs (18 steps)
    • Phase goal: create quantitative market research deliverable → Capturing the complete set of customer needs and desired outcomes of the core, related, functional, emotional, financial and consumption chain jobs
    • Steps:
      1. Create screeners to recruit candidates for outcome-gathering interviews
      2. Determine the format of the outcome-gathering interviews
      3. Prepare for outcome-gathering interviews
      4. Recruit for outcome-gathering interviews
      5. Understand structure of a desired outcome statement
      6. Understand characteristics of a desired outcome statement
      7. Conduct outcome-gathering interviews
      8. Uncover desired outcome statements on the JTBD
      9. Organise, refine and finalise desired outcome statements
      10. Uncover related jobs
      11. Uncover social and emotional jobs
      12. Uncover consumption chain jobs
      13. Uncover desired outcomes on consumption chain jobs
      14. Uncover financial desired outcomes
      15. Uncover factors that explain why some customers struggle more than others
      16. Gain the project team agreement on final job map, outcomes and other statements
      17. Evaluate existing and pipeline products against needs (do this with the team)
      18. Create the qualitative research deliverable
    ‣
    3) Gather quantitative data (18 steps)
    • Create, test and deploy and manage a survey to customers
    • Phase goal:
      • conduct outcome-based segmentation analysis
      • conduct competitive analysis
      • determine what customer needs are under and over served
      • determine the degree to which a need is under and over served
    • Steps:
      1. Determine the unit of analysis for the quantitative survey
      2. Design the sample plan
      3. Determine how to weight the data
      4. Define any unique data analysis that are required
      5. Construct the screening questions for the quantitative survey
      6. Construct profiling questions for the quantitative survey
      7. Construct the willingness to pay questions for the quantitative survey
      8. Formate the outcome questions in the survey for optimal results
      9. Gain project teams agreement on the survey
      10. Select a vendor for data collection
      11. Translate the survey into required languages
      12. Program the survey for fielding
      13. Pilot/test the survey for fielding
      14. Field the survey
      15. Monitor the survey progress
      16. Prepare analytical tools for data analysis
      17. Receive the data from the data collection vendor
      18. Verify the data is valid (clean the data)
    ‣
    4) Discover hidden opportunities for growth (10 steps)
    • Phase Goal: run segmentation and competitive analysis.
    • Steps
      1. Weight the quantitative data
      2. Create outcome based segmentation models
      3. Determine which segmentation model to use
      4. Conduct analyses needed for segment profiling
      5. Determine what variables (complexity factors) underlie the segmentation model
      6. Create a data-driven profile/description for each segment
      7. Determine what outcomes are under/over served in each segment
      8. Determine strengths/weaknesses of competitors in each segment
      9. Identify most influential outcomes in the customer’s willingness to pay in each segment
      10. Complete commonly requested data analysis
      11. Create the opportunity discovery deliverable
    ‣
    5) Formulate the market strategy (12 steps)
    • Phase goal:
      • formulate a market strategy, the market strategy is usually constructed in conjunction with the project team
      • formulate, document, present, refine and gain agreement on marketing strategy
    • Steps:
      1. Determine the strengths of existing and pipeline products (with the team)
      2. Determine what outcome-based segments and outcomes to target
      3. Define value proposition for each outcome-based segment
      4. Define the value proposition for the product category
      5. Determine what existing and pipeline products to target at each segment
      6. Determine how to message each product
      7. Determine how to integrate new value proposition into existing company promotional channels/materials
      8. Propose an outcome-based digital marketing strategy
      9. Create a customer acquisition tool that assigns customers to segments
      10. Gain the project team’s agreement on the market strategy
      11. Create the market strategy deliverable
      12. Educate the sales and marketing team on executing the market strategy
    ‣
    6) Formulate the product strategy (10 steps)
    • Phase goal: formulate, document, present, refine and gain cross-functional agreement on the product strategy
    • Steps:
      1. Determine the weakness of existing and pipeline products (team exercise)
      2. Determine what outcomes to target to address competitive weakness
      3. Determine what value creation opportunities to address each segment
      4. Determine what cost reduction opportunities to address each segment
      5. Facilitate ideation to improve existing products
      6. Facilitate ideation to improve pipeline products
      7. Facilitate ideation to conceptualise new products/platforms
      8. Gain the project team’s agreement on the product strategy
      9. Create the product strategy deliverable for each product
      10. Create the product strategy deliverable for the product portfolio
  • What skills are required to be an ODI practitioner:
    • Process orientation and systems mentality
    • Skilled and experienced in qualitative and quantitative research practices
    • Superior creative problem-solving, analytical and quantitative skills
    • Previous experience on a product team
    • Trained in six-sigma
    • Team leadership and group facilitation capabilities
    • Strong communication skills with ability to synthesise, document and present
    • Detail orientation - highly organised

Chapter 7: Transforming the organisation

  • Innovation shouldn’t be everyone’s responsibility - a small group of people doing ODI can inform market and product strategy. It’s a mistake to train everyone and get them ‘doing innovation’
  • Keep the majority of the company building. Most companies are great at building products.
  • Build a team of ODI practitioners - who form the core of an innovation centre of excellence
  • Build it in three phases:
    1. Understand your customers jobs to be done
    2. Discover hidden opportunities in your market
    3. Use new customer insights to drive growth
  • Proposes a model where an ODI consultant joins the new innovation team at intervals to help them move one or multiple products through the process
  • ODI enables companies to…
    • Discover hidden opportunities
    • Formulate market and product strategies
    • Mitigate the risk of failure
    • Create what customers want
    • Predict what new products will win in the marketplace
    • Discover new markets