At its core, the concept of JTBD is straightforward: focus on people’s objectives independent of the means used to accomplish them. Through this lens, JTBD offers a structured way of understanding customer needs, helping to predict better how customers might act in the future. The framework provides a common unit of analysis for teams to focus on—the job to be done—and then offers a shared language for the whole team to understand value as perceived from the customer perspective.
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Jobs thinking informs a broad culture of innovation with a common language and perspective.
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(highlight:: I also encourage you to keep the benefits of JTBD in mind as well.
• First, having a clear unit of analysis—the job—provides a tangible focal point. Needs, emotions, and aspirations are then seen in relation to the job, layered on only after an understanding of the main job.
• Second, because JTBD doesn’t originate from one particular discipline, such as design or marketing, other teams can readily adopt the approach and form insights of their own.
• Third, because JTBD views an individual’s objective independent of technology, the technique future-proofs your thinking. Framing the job as universally as possible better prepares you to create solutions around how customers may act in the future, not tied to the past.)
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- [note::Benefits of JTBD in a nutshell]

JTBD is compatible with other modern techniques, such as Design Thinking, Agile, and Lean. Together, these approaches can help you transform the way you do business from end-to-end. As you try the techniques presented here, consider how they may fit into a broader program of modern customer-centered activities.
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businesses exist to create value—value as perceived by customers in satisfying needs (innovation) and value for the company by staying profitable (go-to-market).
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(highlight::
FIGURE I.1 Providing solutions that customers value is an ongoing process between innovation and go-to-market activities.)
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In modern knowledge-worker-based companies, strategy isn’t confined to the upper echelons only—it happens throughout the enterprise. Managers and individual contributors alike need to be aligned to the same perspective, and everyone contributes to providing solutions that customers will value. JTBD provides a North Star to follow.
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- [note::Cross-functional alignment at ALL levels of an organization is incredibly important. I think not having a framework to talk about customer needs was a significant contributing factor to FORT's demise.]

(highlight:: It’s no wonder that companies gravitate toward predictable and reliable research on market size and customer demographics. But traditional methods miss important, qualitative insight into why people act as they do.
JTBD provides a way to understand, classify, and organize otherwise irregular feedback. It not only directs you to look at your markets differently, but it also provides a clear and stable unit of analysis: the job.)
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(highlight:: Every day, you have dozens of objectives that you strive to accomplish. You drink coffee to get energy in the morning. Then you might drive to a park-and-ride to take the train while you commute to work. At the office, you collaborate with colleagues to complete a project or deliver a pitch to a new client. Back home, you might eat a piece of chocolate to reward yourself after work and then prepare a meal to enjoy with your family.
These are all jobs to be done (JTBD).)
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- [note::Examples of jobs-to-be-done]

JTBD is not about your product, service, or brand. Instead of focusing on your own solution, you must first understand what people want and why that’s important to them.
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JTBD deliberately avoids mention of particular solutions in order to first comprehend the process that people go through to solve a problem. Only then can a company align its offerings to meet people’s goals and needs.
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“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”1 This quote captures the essence of JTBD: focus on the outcome, not the technology. The drill is a means to an end, not the result.
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(highlight:: My definition of a job is simple and broad:
The process of reaching objectives under given circumstances
My use of the word “objectives” is deliberate. It better reflects the functional nature of JTBD. I don’t use the word “goals” in my definition in order to avoid associations with broader aspirations, e.g., “life goals.” This isn’t to say that aspirations and emotions aren’t important in JTBD. Instead, my interpretation of JTBD sequences the steps for creating offerings that people desire: first, meet the functional objectives and then layer the aspirational and emotional aspects onto the solution.)
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I believe these two sides are not mutually exclusive, and there is a place for both. Sometimes, it makes sense to understand people’s objectives and needs from the bottom-up (i.e., ODI), for instance, when developing a new product or when redefining your market. Other times, it’s appropriate to start with a particular product in mind and understand why people “hired” that product to get a job done (i.e., Switch.
In the end, techniques from both interpretations can help your organization shift its mindset from inside-out to outside-in.)
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To innovate, don’t ask customers about their preferences, but instead understand their underlying intent. Ultimately, JTBD seeks to reduce the inherent risk in innovation and ensure product-market fit from the outset.
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To be clear, JTBD is not about customer journeys or experiences with product, which assume a relationship to a given provider. Customer journey investigations seek to answer questions such as: When do people first hear about a given solution? How did they decide to select the organization’s offerings? What keeps them using it? These are all important questions to answer, but they also don’t get to the underlying job.
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The jobs people are trying to get done are not only solution agnostic, but they also don’t change with technology advancements.
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For instance, 75 years ago when people prepared their taxes, they used pen and paper for all calculations and submissions. Later, they used pocket calculators to help with the numbers and sums. These days, completing taxes is done with sophisticated software and online filing solutions that didn’t exist 50 years ago. Though technology changed, the job remains the same: file taxes.
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The Apple digital music ecosystem, for example, allows music enthusiasts to streamline how they listen to music. Not only can they listen to music on an iPod or iPhone, but they can also acquire and manage music with the iTunes system. Integrating various jobs—acquiring, managing, and listening to music—all in a single platform provided incredible market advantage. These days, streaming music services get that job done even better, but the job is the same.
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Additionally, making factors like “empathy” the unit of analysis, as seen in Design Thinking, is problematic. When does empathy begin and end? How do you know when teams have achieved empathy? Instead, JTBD provides a concise focus: the job as an objective. Aspects like empathy, emotions, and personal characteristics of users can then be added later in a second phase when developing a particular solution.
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(highlight:: JTBD has broad applicability inside of an organization, beyond design and development. Various teams inside an organization can leverage JTBD:
• Sales can leverage JTBD thinking in customer discovery calls to uncover the objectives and needs that prospects are trying to accomplish.
• Marketing specialists can create more effective campaigns around JTBD by shifting language from features to needs.
• Customer success managers can use JTBD to understand why customers might cancel a subscription.
• Support agents are able to provide better service by first understanding the customer’s job to be done.
• Business development and strategy teams can use insight from JTBD to spot market opportunities, e.g., to help decide the next acquisition target.)
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value isn’t measured by some feature set or capability, but rather how people perceive the benefits of an offering.
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(highlight:: My simplified model of JTBD consists of five core elements, illustrated in Figure 2.2.1
• Job performer (who): The executor of the main job, the ultimate end user
• Jobs (what): The aim of the performer, what they want to accomplish
• Process (how): The procedure of how the job will get done
• Needs (why): Why the performer acts in a certain way while executing the job, or their requirements or intended outcomes during the job process
• Circumstances (when/where): The contextual factors that frame job execution
)
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Be sure to make a distinction between the various functions involved in performing the job, in particular differentiating the performer from the buyer. Don’t conflate the two, because they have different needs. Think about two separate hats that are worn: one is for the job performer while carrying out the job; the other is for the buyer when purchasing a product or service.
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Now, in B2C contexts, a single person may switch between the two hats. But their needs while wearing each hat are distinct. In the B2B situations, the job performer and the buyer are often separate people. For instance, a procurement office may purchase equipment and materials for others in the company without their direct input.
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(highlight:: In addition to the job performer and the buyer, other functions within the job ecosystem to consider include the following:
• Approver: Someone who authorizes the acquisition of a solution, e.g., a controller, a spouse or parent, or a budget holder
• Reviewer: Someone who examines a solution for appropriateness, e.g., a lawyer, a consultant, or a compliance officer
• Technician: The person who integrates a solution and gets it working, e.g., an IT support, an installer, or a tech-savvy friend
• Manager: Someone who oversees a job performer while performing the job, e.g., a supervisor, a team lead, or a boss
• Audience: People who consume the output of performing the job, e.g., a client, a downstream decision-maker, or a team
• Assistant: A person who aids and supports the job performer in getting the job done, e.g., a helper, a teammate, or a friend
Map out the different actors who may be involved in a simple diagram, such as the one shown in Figure 2.3.
)
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- [note::These seem similar to "customer/user personas", but not identical. Most of these are support or oversee the job being performed (and thus, the needs of these individuals are worth talking into account).
Also, creating a visual model of customer personal seems very useful for understanding how different people might view your solution (even if they aren't the one directly leveraging it)]

(highlight:: To reiterate, consider these as separate roles or hats to wear. The primary focus on attention is on the job performer first. Later, you can consider the needs of the other roles in relation to the job to be done and the job performer.
For instance, let’s say your company provides an online task management tool to enterprises. The job performer is the ultimate end user, perhaps a programmer on a development team. The buyer could be the collaboration software manager of the customer’s company, for example, who may need to get approval from a procurement office and have the legal department review any software agreement. The job performer also has a manager, who determines the practices around assigning tasks. Program managers may be the audience of the job performer when she presents progress to them.)
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Jobs
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The main job is the overall aim of the job performer.
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The main job is broad and straightforward, serving as an anchor for all other elements of your JTBD investigation. For example, prepare a meal, listen to music, or plan long-term financial well-being are examples.
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The main job shouldn’t include adjectives like quick, easy, or inexpensive. Those are considered to be needs, or the metrics by which job performers compare solutions, which are handled separately.
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(highlight::
FIGURE 2.4 The main job sets the focus of inquiry and innovation with other aspects in relation to it.)
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Related jobs are adjacent to the main job, but are significantly different. For instance, if you define grow retirement portfolio as a main job, related jobs may be finance a new home or balance cash flow.
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The world is not as neat and compact as your JTBD model will suggest. As you define the main job, identify related jobs to understand the overall landscape of objectives. Only then should you decide on a single main job to focus on, keeping related jobs in your peripheral line of sight.
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Keep in mind that related goals may even compete with the main job and each other. For instance, buying a large-ticket item like a car or house may detract from growing a retirement portfolio. As a result, progress in our lives is the sum of the outcomes of related jobs, and balance is often required.
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Emotional jobs reflect how people want to feel while performing the job. Statements usually start with the word “feel.” For example, if the main job of a keyless lock system is to secure entryways to home, emotional jobs might be to feel safe at home or feel confident that intruders won’t break in while away.
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Social jobs indicate how a job performer is perceived by others while carrying out the job. For instance, adult diapers have an important social job of avoiding embarrassment in public. Or, in the previous example, the person with a keyless door lock might be seen as an innovator in the neighborhood.
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meet the needs of the functional job first and then layer emotional and social aspects after that. Targeting emotional and social jobs first often yields an endless number of solution possibilities. There are many ways to help customers feel confident in public, for instance. Starting with a functional job grounds innovation in concrete options that are feasible, but emotional and social jobs are not overlooked.
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(highlight:: To be consistent in describing goals, follow this simple pattern for writing job statements.
verb + object + clarifier
Examples include: visit family on special occasions, remove snow from pathways, listen to music on a run, and plan long-term financial well-being.)
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(highlight:: RULES FOR FORMULATING JOB STATEMENTS
DOS
DON’TS
Reflect the individual’s perspective
Never refer to technology or solutions
Start with a verb
Steer clear of methods or techniques
Ensure stability over time
Don’t reflect observations or preferences
Clarify with context, if needed
Avoid compound concepts (no ANDs or ORs))
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(highlight:: EXAMPLES OF FORMULATING JOB STATEMENTS
INCORRECT
ISSUE
CORRECT
Search by keyword for documents in the database
Includes specific methods (keyword search) and technology (documents in database)
Retrieve content
People prefer to attend meet-ups and conferences that are nearby
Reflects an observation and preference
Includes compound concepts
Attend an event
Find the cheapest airfares quickly
Includes needs, which should be considered separately (i.e., cheap and quick)
Find airfares
Help me plan a vacation that the whole family will enjoy
“Enjoy” is a need and should be separate
Includes “help me” instead of starting with a verb
Plan family vacation)
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(highlight::
FIGURE 2.5 Visualize the process of getting a main job done.)
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It’s critical to recognize that a job map is not a customer journey map. The aim is not to document how people come to your solution, decide to purchase, and stay loyal. That’s not their job to be done; it’s what your company wants them to do. Instead, a job map is a view into the behaviors and needs of individuals in the context of their daily lives. That may or may not include your solution.
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(highlight:: In some cases, such as in software development, a “need” is interpreted as a system requirement. For instance, user stories in Agile methodologies describe what users need to have in place in order to interact with a system.
In other cases, such as with voice of the customer research, a “need” is a benefit a customer gets from a given product or solution, e.g., customers need to have quick and easy access to support. And in yet other situations, such as with Design Thinking techniques, a need is seen as a fundamental human motivation, e.g., people need personal fulfillment. Without a common understanding and clear definition of what a need is, conversations within teams and organizations can go astray quickly. It’s no wonder there isn’t agreement on what a need is exactly.
JTBD helps in two ways. First, in JTBD a “need” is seen in relation to getting the main job done. Needs aren’t demands from a solution, but an individual’s requirements for getting a job done. For instance, if a main job is defined as file taxes, needs in getting that job done may be minimize the time it takes to gather documents or maximize the likelihood of a getting a return.)
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- [note::Differing perspectives on what "needs" are in JTBD, Agile, Design Thinking, & Voice of Customer research]

(highlight:: Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick have developed a consistent way to notate needs in what they call desired outcome statements. There are four elements:
Direction of change + unit of measure + object + clarifier
• Direction of change: How does the job performer want to improve conditions? Each need statement starts with a verb showing the desired change of improvement. Words like “minimize,” “decrease,” or “lower” show a reduction of unit of measure, while words like “maximize,” “increase,” and “raise” show an upward change.
• Unit of measure: What is the metric for success? The next element in the statement shows the unit of measure the individual wants to increase or decrease. Time, effort, skill, and likelihood are a few typical examples. Note that the measure may be subjective and relative, but it should be as concrete as possible.
• Object of the need: What is the need about? Indicate the object of control that will be affected by doing a job.
• Clarifier: What else is necessary to understand the need? Include contextual clues to clarify and provide descriptions of the circumstance in which the job takes places.)
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A strength of the JTBD approach is that it separates goals from needs. Consider the job as the target that someone wants to get done, and the need as the measure of success or the expected outcome. For instance, the statement “speed up the next big promotion at work” mixes goals and needs. In JTBD terms, the job is simply to get a promotion. Needs in completing that job are to minimize the time it takes to get promoted and increase the size of the promotion.
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(highlight:: If you find yourself using an and or or, you probably need two separate need statements. Need statements should be as atomic as possible to not only see all of the factors involved in getting a job done, but also to pinpoint which ones are most important. As a result, any main job may have 50–150 intended needs.
For instance, there may be many needs for the main job of prepare a meal, such as minimize time to process ingredients, reduce the risk of injury, increase the likelihood that others will enjoy the meal, or minimize the effort to clean up after the meal. The list goes on.)
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(highlight:: Circumstances typically consist of aspects around time, manner, and place. For example, for the job listen to music on a run, you might uncover factors that determine how that will be performed:
• When it’s raining
• When there is traffic on the road
• When it gets sweaty
• When it’s bouncy
• And so on...
A job without context is not complete and cannot provide strategic direction. There is necessarily a dependency on formulating a main job and knowing the circumstances.)
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When working with JTBD, you’ll confront the issue of granularity. The question you need to answer is, “At what level of abstraction do you want to try to innovate?” There’s no right or wrong answer—it depends on your situation and aim. Getting the right altitude is key. Objectives at one level roll up into higher-order goals, generally called laddering.
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- [note::This is what I was talking to Rose about last night i.e. "there's some point at which you have to stop going up the chain and say 'this is the job I'm focused on. Everything above it is too abstract.'"]

Rather than just two levels—big and little—I have found that JTBD can be viewed on about four different levels (see Figure 2.6.
• Aspirations: An ideal change of state, something the individual desires to become
• Big Job: A broader objective, typically at the level of a main job
• Little Job: A smaller, more practical job that corresponds roughly to stages in a big job
• Micro-Job: Activities that resemble tasks but are stated in terms of JTBD
)
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(highlight:: Consider some of the different levels of abstraction in this example, reflected in Table 2.5.
TABLE 2.5 LEVELS OF JOBS TO CONSIDER
LEVEL
EXAMPLE
Aspiration
Be a better family member
Big Job
Visit with family on special occasions
Little Job
Arrange transportation at a specific time
Micro-Job
Start vehicle)
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But scoping your initial innovation effort at the aspirational level can yield an endless number of possible directions. It’s more effective to target a big job and layer aspirations secondarily on top of that.
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Two simple questions can help you get the right altitude: asking “why?” moves you up in the hierarchy; asking “how?” moves you down. (See Figure 2.7.

FIGURE 2.7 Ask “why?” to go up a level and “how?” to go down.
For instance, in the case of attending a conference, you might ask, “Why would a job performer want to go to a conference?” The answer might reveal that it’s part of a broader aspiration around professional development. If you then ask again, “Why does the job performer want to develop professional skills?” you might find it’s for career advancement and ultimately to have a better life. Those higher-level aspirations are good to know, and they have potential market appeal. But keep the functional job in mind first. If it doesn’t get done, the aspiration won’t be reached either.
On the other hand, asking, “How does the job performer attend a conference?” you might find the smaller job of convincing a boss to give permission. If you then ask, “How does the job performer convince the boss?” you might find a micro-job of providing a cost-benefit estimation of the event.)
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Note that JTBD is not a game of asking the “5 Whys,” a popular technique for root cause analysis that poses the questions “why?” successively five times. Instead, the level of innovation should match your goal, but be broad enough to allow for expansion.
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Getting the right level of abstraction is key. Don’t define the main job too narrowly. A small job will limit your field of vision, but also will constrain your efforts. When in doubt, go broader and define a main job that is larger than smaller. Ask “why?” and “how?” to move the level of granularity of the main job up or down.
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(highlight:: Reflect on a few simple questions to get started:
• What business are you in? Consider your overall playing field by noting the sector, industry, and offering category you want to operate in.
• What customer problems do you want to solve? Write down all of the challenges you want to overcome for customers.
• What impact do you hope to generate? Write down the benefits you hope to bring customers.
Then create a simple ladder of objectives that people are trying to achieve, similar to the one in Table 2.6. Using the example of parking a car, you can see how this job might fit into a hierarchy of jobs.)
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Reflect an end state. Avoid framing main jobs as ongoing activities. It’s problematic to start a main job with words like manage, maintain, keep up, and learn because they don’t have a clear end state. For example, learn all there is to know in a given field isn’t a good main job. When is learning done? Similarly, formulating a job as manage financial portfolio is problematic because it’s hard to point to an end: managing is ongoing. Instead, phrase the job as grow financial portfolio, which is stronger because there is a way to be “done.”
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Separate jobs from needs. Don’t mix up needs or desired outcomes with the main job. For instance, the main job of a street vendor with a hotdog cart is to sell food on the street. Of course, the vendor wants to maximize the amount of hungry people she attracts, but that’s considered a need.
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(highlight:: Test your main job statement against these questions:
• Does the statement reflect the job performer’s perspective?
• Does the job statement begin with a verb?
• Is there a beginning and end point of the goal?
• Might the job performer think, “The [object] is [verb]-ed”? (e.g., did the financial portfolio grow? Or was food sold on the street?)
• Are the statements one-dimensional without compound concepts?
• Would people have phrased the job to be done like this 50 years ago?)
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One approach while scoping the JTBD domain is to interview experts in a given domain initially. This often accelerates your learning about how to get a job done. So even if you frame the main job as prepare a meal at home, you can still learn a great deal from master chefs initially. However, unless chefs are your job performers, you shouldn’t complete the JTBD research with experts. Instead, target a general group of job performers to get their insights and priorities.
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In a final step, start exploring the process and circumstances. You may be able to intuit some of the stages in executing the job based on existing knowledge. Try making assumptions about the sequence of stages the performer may go through. This will help guide your discussion with interviewees. But be prepared to adjust your hypothesis with new information that you’ll encounter through field research.
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(highlight:: At the core of the JTBD model are five separate elements, addressing the who, what, how, why, and when/where questions of your field of inquiry:
• Job Performer (who): The person who will be executing the job
• Jobs (what): Includes a main job, related jobs, and emotional jobs and social jobs
• Process (how): A chronological representation of the stages in getting a job done
• Needs (why): The desired outcomes an individual has from performing a job
• Circumstances (when/where): The conditions that frame how the job gets executed)
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(highlight:: In JTBD, there are four levels to consider:
• Aspirations: An ideal change of state, something the individual desires to become
• Big Job: A broader objective, typically at the level of a main job
• Little Job: A smaller job that corresponds roughly to stages in a big job
• Micro-Job: Activities that resemble tasks, but are formulated in terms of JTBD)
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(highlight:: Jobs don’t come in neat, little packages. You have to hunt for them. You won’t find jobs from analytics or marketing surveys, and you can’t just “brainstorm” jobs and needs. You have to get out and talk to job performers in formal interviews.
Start by getting the right people—job performers. Then lead an open interview that lets them speak in their own words about their objectives. Don’t read from a questionnaire, but instead probe on the job process and needs. Afterward, you’ll need to translate what you heard into the JTBD language.)
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Note that jobs interviews are not intended for gaining empathy for participants per se, although that is often inevitable. Critics point out that jobs interviews miss a lot of the details about the person’s overall experience. Jobs interviews also don’t get at psychological states, even if there are questions about emotions and social aspects. Instead, the JTBD approach assumes that people are first and foremost motivated to get the job done so they can make progress. The interviews favor a more surgical approach to reach their goals and needs.
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- [note::What are the limitations of these assumptions?]

Jobs interviews are not research about your product or existing customers. In fact, you don’t even have to talk to people who know your brand or offering. That might cloud their responses to your questions. Because you’re not yet concerned about purchasing decisions or brand awareness, you just need to get job performers—the people executing your main job. It’s as simple as that.
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- [note::Job interviews are job-focused, not solution-focused. While it's valuable to understand existing solutions employed by the job performer, the focus should be on the content of the job itself, not necessarily the existing solutions used to complete it now or theoretical solutions that could complete it in the future]

(highlight:: Avoid recruiting only from your existing customer base to strengthen your focus on the job, not your solution.
Note that if you use existing customers for the interviews, be cautious about their bias toward your solution. You’ll need to explicitly steer them away from talking about your product or solution. It’s harder to interview existing customers from this perspective, but possible.)
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Incentives vary greatly depending on the domain and target participant. General consumers are willing to participate for a simple gift card worth $25 or so. Highly qualified professionals may expect hundreds of dollars for an hour or two of their time. Budget accordingly.
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It’s a best practice to do the interviews with more than one researcher. One is the primary interviewer, and the other acts as an observer. Maintain these roles. This focus allows the lead researcher to build a rapport with the participant and steer the conversation. The observer may ask questions at the end or when asked.
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People don’t know how to create solutions to solve their problems, so don’t ask them. They do know about their own objectives and needs. Focus on understanding their jobs to be done from their perspective.
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- [note::I'm skeptical this assumption is valid in all/most cases.]

(highlight:: Build rapport and get the participant talking freely.
• Tell me a little about yourself and what you do.
• When was the last time you did the main job?
• How did you feel overall while getting that job done?)
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(highlight:: To get participants to talk about their jobs to be done, ask questions like the following:
• What are you trying to accomplish? What tasks are involved?
• What problems are you trying to prevent or resolve?
• What helps you achieve your goals?
• What would the ideal service be to do the job for you?
• What else are you trying to get done?)
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(highlight:: Go through the stages of getting the job done.
• How do you get started?
• What is the previous step? What’s the next step?
• How do you continue after that?
• How do you make decisions along the way?
• How do you feel at each stage in the process?
• How do you know you are doing the job right?
• How do you wrap things up?)
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(highlight:: Uncover the desired outcomes that people are looking for while performing the job.
• What workarounds exist in your process?
• What do you dread doing? What do you avoid? Why?
• What could be easier? Why?
• Why do you avoid doing certain parts of the job?
• What’s the most annoying part? Why is that frustrating?
• How do you feel when the job is completed?)
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(highlight:: Find out when and where performing the job makes a difference. Try to uncover the most salient factors that frame getting the job done.
• In which situations do you act differently?
• What conditions influence your decisions?
• How do the environment and setting affect your attitude and feelings while getting the job done?)
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While interviewing, steer the granularity of answers. Ask “why?” to get more general and move toward outcomes. Ask “how?” to encourage the interviewee to be more specific and to dig into the process.
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Try also sketching a diagram of the process together with the participant as the interview goes along. Point to specific steps in the sketch to clarify the process. Then dig deeper to understand their goals and feelings at each step, along with the context of getting the job done.
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(highlight:: To get more specific and keep the conversation about their experiences, use the critical incident technique. There are three simple steps to follow.
1. Recall a specific incident. Have them remember a time when executing the job went particularly wrong.
2. Describe the experience. Ask them to describe what happened, what went wrong and why, and how they felt at the time.
3. Discuss the ideal state. Finally, ask what should have happened and what would have been ideal. This helps reveal their underlying needs.)
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Schedule time to debrief immediately after each session or two. Review notes with your interview partner. Take the time to complement each other’s understanding of what the participant said. If you wait too long to review your notes, you may forget details and lose the context.
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For one project I conducted, the team coded JTBD insights in real time. There was one interviewer and one notetaker. The notetaker recorded desired outcome statements as heard during the interviews. The result was that we arrived at a usable data set quickly after each interview without having to analyze our notes or recordings.
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- [note::How might AI be used to speed up interview analysis? A couple of ideas:

• Identify passages that might be useful for generating job statements from and propose potential job statements based on each passage
• Clean up interview transcript
• Divide interview transcript by question or "section"]

Create a spreadsheet to extract relevant observations. Put direct observations and quotes in the first column. Then create four columns for interpretations: micro-jobs, emotional and social aspects, needs, and circumstances.
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(highlight:: The elements of JTBD discussed in the previous chapter become the filter by which you’ll organize insights.
• Job steps: Indicate steps in getting a job done and the micro-jobs you find during the interview. Be sure to begin each with a verb and omit any reference to technologies or solutions.
• Emotional and social aspects: Record emotional aspects beginning with “feel” or “avoid feeling” and then social aspects with “be perceived as” or “avoid being seen as.”
• Needs: Listen for answers to your “why” questions, as well as hacks, workarounds, avoidances, and procrastinations. Be sure to note needs beginning with a verb that shows the direction of change.
• Circumstances: Note any situational constraints beginning with “when.”
)
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Steve Portigal, Interviewing Users (NY: Rosenfeld Media, 2013.
This book is one of the best and most complete volumes on interviewing. It’s very practical and hands-on, including a range of sample documents and materials to refer to online. Portigal covers the interviewing process from end to end, including setting objectives, recruiting, interviewing, and analysis.)
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Giff Constable, Talking to Humans (Self-published, 2014.
This thin volume of only 75 pages provides an excellent overview for getting in front of people and talking to them. There is a wealth of practical information for getting started and conducting quick interviews.)
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Mike Boysen, “A Framework of Questions for Jobs to Be Done Interviews,” Medium (blog, 2018.
Mike is a practitioner of ODI at Strategyn, and his guide to jobs interviews is one of the most complete to date specifically focused on JTBD. He provides an overview of jobs interviews, as well as a detailed worksheet for dissecting interview data. Although there are many similarities, the approach I present in this chapter differs from how Strategyn conducts jobs interviews in practice.)
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(highlight:: The Switch technique was developed and made popular by Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek to answer the question, “Why do customers ‘hire’ a given product?” The idea is to reverse engineer why people switch from one way of doing a job to another in order to uncover their underlying intent.
The approach seeks to recreate the purchase journey, starting with a concrete product in mind.)
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(highlight:: There are six phases to work through, each articulated by a key event, as seen in Figure 3.2.
• First thought: This is the initial moment that a change is needed, often implicit.
• Passively looking: The buyer is not putting energy into a search, but notices options. The first event makes the search explicit.
• Actively looking: The buyer invests time and energy into seeking a solution. The second event transitions the buyer into a purchase decision.
• Deciding: Here, the buyer consciously weighs alternatives. This phase ends with a decision to buy.
• Consuming: After making a purchase, the buyer uses the product or service. Either the product experience is completed, or it’s ongoing.
• Satisfaction: The solution either leads to progress, or it doesn’t.
)
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Use a timeline like the one shown in Figure 3.2 to guide your discussion and record notes. Work backward as needed, digging deeper as you go. Ask, “What happened before that?” along with “Why did you make that decision?” Try to find the motivation or the energy, as Moesta puts it, behind the switch from old to new.
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At its core, the concept of JTBD is straightforward: focus on people’s objectives independent of the means used to accomplish them. Through this lens, JTBD offers a structured way of understanding customer needs, helping to predict better how customers might act in the future. The framework provides a common unit of analysis for teams to focus on—the job to be done—and then offers a shared language for the whole team to understand value as perceived from the customer perspective.
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Jobs thinking informs a broad culture of innovation with a common language and perspective.
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(highlight:: I also encourage you to keep the benefits of JTBD in mind as well.
• First, having a clear unit of analysis—the job—provides a tangible focal point. Needs, emotions, and aspirations are then seen in relation to the job, layered on only after an understanding of the main job.
• Second, because JTBD doesn’t originate from one particular discipline, such as design or marketing, other teams can readily adopt the approach and form insights of their own.
• Third, because JTBD views an individual’s objective independent of technology, the technique future-proofs your thinking. Framing the job as universally as possible better prepares you to create solutions around how customers may act in the future, not tied to the past.)
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- [note::Benefits of JTBD in a nutshell]

JTBD is compatible with other modern techniques, such as Design Thinking, Agile, and Lean. Together, these approaches can help you transform the way you do business from end-to-end. As you try the techniques presented here, consider how they may fit into a broader program of modern customer-centered activities.
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businesses exist to create value—value as perceived by customers in satisfying needs (innovation) and value for the company by staying profitable (go-to-market).
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(highlight::
FIGURE I.1 Providing solutions that customers value is an ongoing process between innovation and go-to-market activities.)
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In modern knowledge-worker-based companies, strategy isn’t confined to the upper echelons only—it happens throughout the enterprise. Managers and individual contributors alike need to be aligned to the same perspective, and everyone contributes to providing solutions that customers will value. JTBD provides a North Star to follow.
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- [note::Cross-functional alignment at ALL levels of an organization is incredibly important. I think not having a framework to talk about customer needs was a significant contributing factor to FORT's demise.]

(highlight:: It’s no wonder that companies gravitate toward predictable and reliable research on market size and customer demographics. But traditional methods miss important, qualitative insight into why people act as they do.
JTBD provides a way to understand, classify, and organize otherwise irregular feedback. It not only directs you to look at your markets differently, but it also provides a clear and stable unit of analysis: the job.)
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(highlight:: Every day, you have dozens of objectives that you strive to accomplish. You drink coffee to get energy in the morning. Then you might drive to a park-and-ride to take the train while you commute to work. At the office, you collaborate with colleagues to complete a project or deliver a pitch to a new client. Back home, you might eat a piece of chocolate to reward yourself after work and then prepare a meal to enjoy with your family.
These are all jobs to be done (JTBD).)
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- [note::Examples of jobs-to-be-done]

JTBD is not about your product, service, or brand. Instead of focusing on your own solution, you must first understand what people want and why that’s important to them.
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JTBD deliberately avoids mention of particular solutions in order to first comprehend the process that people go through to solve a problem. Only then can a company align its offerings to meet people’s goals and needs.
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“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”1 This quote captures the essence of JTBD: focus on the outcome, not the technology. The drill is a means to an end, not the result.
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(highlight:: My definition of a job is simple and broad:
The process of reaching objectives under given circumstances
My use of the word “objectives” is deliberate. It better reflects the functional nature of JTBD. I don’t use the word “goals” in my definition in order to avoid associations with broader aspirations, e.g., “life goals.” This isn’t to say that aspirations and emotions aren’t important in JTBD. Instead, my interpretation of JTBD sequences the steps for creating offerings that people desire: first, meet the functional objectives and then layer the aspirational and emotional aspects onto the solution.)
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I believe these two sides are not mutually exclusive, and there is a place for both. Sometimes, it makes sense to understand people’s objectives and needs from the bottom-up (i.e., ODI), for instance, when developing a new product or when redefining your market. Other times, it’s appropriate to start with a particular product in mind and understand why people “hired” that product to get a job done (i.e., Switch.
In the end, techniques from both interpretations can help your organization shift its mindset from inside-out to outside-in.)
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To innovate, don’t ask customers about their preferences, but instead understand their underlying intent. Ultimately, JTBD seeks to reduce the inherent risk in innovation and ensure product-market fit from the outset.
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To be clear, JTBD is not about customer journeys or experiences with product, which assume a relationship to a given provider. Customer journey investigations seek to answer questions such as: When do people first hear about a given solution? How did they decide to select the organization’s offerings? What keeps them using it? These are all important questions to answer, but they also don’t get to the underlying job.
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The jobs people are trying to get done are not only solution agnostic, but they also don’t change with technology advancements.
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For instance, 75 years ago when people prepared their taxes, they used pen and paper for all calculations and submissions. Later, they used pocket calculators to help with the numbers and sums. These days, completing taxes is done with sophisticated software and online filing solutions that didn’t exist 50 years ago. Though technology changed, the job remains the same: file taxes.
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The Apple digital music ecosystem, for example, allows music enthusiasts to streamline how they listen to music. Not only can they listen to music on an iPod or iPhone, but they can also acquire and manage music with the iTunes system. Integrating various jobs—acquiring, managing, and listening to music—all in a single platform provided incredible market advantage. These days, streaming music services get that job done even better, but the job is the same.
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Additionally, making factors like “empathy” the unit of analysis, as seen in Design Thinking, is problematic. When does empathy begin and end? How do you know when teams have achieved empathy? Instead, JTBD provides a concise focus: the job as an objective. Aspects like empathy, emotions, and personal characteristics of users can then be added later in a second phase when developing a particular solution.
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(highlight:: JTBD has broad applicability inside of an organization, beyond design and development. Various teams inside an organization can leverage JTBD:
• Sales can leverage JTBD thinking in customer discovery calls to uncover the objectives and needs that prospects are trying to accomplish.
• Marketing specialists can create more effective campaigns around JTBD by shifting language from features to needs.
• Customer success managers can use JTBD to understand why customers might cancel a subscription.
• Support agents are able to provide better service by first understanding the customer’s job to be done.
• Business development and strategy teams can use insight from JTBD to spot market opportunities, e.g., to help decide the next acquisition target.)
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value isn’t measured by some feature set or capability, but rather how people perceive the benefits of an offering.
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(highlight:: My simplified model of JTBD consists of five core elements, illustrated in Figure 2.2.1
• Job performer (who): The executor of the main job, the ultimate end user
• Jobs (what): The aim of the performer, what they want to accomplish
• Process (how): The procedure of how the job will get done
• Needs (why): Why the performer acts in a certain way while executing the job, or their requirements or intended outcomes during the job process
• Circumstances (when/where): The contextual factors that frame job execution
)
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Be sure to make a distinction between the various functions involved in performing the job, in particular differentiating the performer from the buyer. Don’t conflate the two, because they have different needs. Think about two separate hats that are worn: one is for the job performer while carrying out the job; the other is for the buyer when purchasing a product or service.
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Now, in B2C contexts, a single person may switch between the two hats. But their needs while wearing each hat are distinct. In the B2B situations, the job performer and the buyer are often separate people. For instance, a procurement office may purchase equipment and materials for others in the company without their direct input.
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(highlight:: In addition to the job performer and the buyer, other functions within the job ecosystem to consider include the following:
• Approver: Someone who authorizes the acquisition of a solution, e.g., a controller, a spouse or parent, or a budget holder
• Reviewer: Someone who examines a solution for appropriateness, e.g., a lawyer, a consultant, or a compliance officer
• Technician: The person who integrates a solution and gets it working, e.g., an IT support, an installer, or a tech-savvy friend
• Manager: Someone who oversees a job performer while performing the job, e.g., a supervisor, a team lead, or a boss
• Audience: People who consume the output of performing the job, e.g., a client, a downstream decision-maker, or a team
• Assistant: A person who aids and supports the job performer in getting the job done, e.g., a helper, a teammate, or a friend
Map out the different actors who may be involved in a simple diagram, such as the one shown in Figure 2.3.
)
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- [note::These seem similar to "customer/user personas", but not identical. Most of these are support or oversee the job being performed (and thus, the needs of these individuals are worth talking into account).
Also, creating a visual model of customer personal seems very useful for understanding how different people might view your solution (even if they aren't the one directly leveraging it)]

(highlight:: To reiterate, consider these as separate roles or hats to wear. The primary focus on attention is on the job performer first. Later, you can consider the needs of the other roles in relation to the job to be done and the job performer.
For instance, let’s say your company provides an online task management tool to enterprises. The job performer is the ultimate end user, perhaps a programmer on a development team. The buyer could be the collaboration software manager of the customer’s company, for example, who may need to get approval from a procurement office and have the legal department review any software agreement. The job performer also has a manager, who determines the practices around assigning tasks. Program managers may be the audience of the job performer when she presents progress to them.)
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Jobs
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The main job is the overall aim of the job performer.
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The main job is broad and straightforward, serving as an anchor for all other elements of your JTBD investigation. For example, prepare a meal, listen to music, or plan long-term financial well-being are examples.
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The main job shouldn’t include adjectives like quick, easy, or inexpensive. Those are considered to be needs, or the metrics by which job performers compare solutions, which are handled separately.
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(highlight::
FIGURE 2.4 The main job sets the focus of inquiry and innovation with other aspects in relation to it.)
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Related jobs are adjacent to the main job, but are significantly different. For instance, if you define grow retirement portfolio as a main job, related jobs may be finance a new home or balance cash flow.
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The world is not as neat and compact as your JTBD model will suggest. As you define the main job, identify related jobs to understand the overall landscape of objectives. Only then should you decide on a single main job to focus on, keeping related jobs in your peripheral line of sight.
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Keep in mind that related goals may even compete with the main job and each other. For instance, buying a large-ticket item like a car or house may detract from growing a retirement portfolio. As a result, progress in our lives is the sum of the outcomes of related jobs, and balance is often required.
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Emotional jobs reflect how people want to feel while performing the job. Statements usually start with the word “feel.” For example, if the main job of a keyless lock system is to secure entryways to home, emotional jobs might be to feel safe at home or feel confident that intruders won’t break in while away.
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Social jobs indicate how a job performer is perceived by others while carrying out the job. For instance, adult diapers have an important social job of avoiding embarrassment in public. Or, in the previous example, the person with a keyless door lock might be seen as an innovator in the neighborhood.
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meet the needs of the functional job first and then layer emotional and social aspects after that. Targeting emotional and social jobs first often yields an endless number of solution possibilities. There are many ways to help customers feel confident in public, for instance. Starting with a functional job grounds innovation in concrete options that are feasible, but emotional and social jobs are not overlooked.
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(highlight:: To be consistent in describing goals, follow this simple pattern for writing job statements.
verb + object + clarifier
Examples include: visit family on special occasions, remove snow from pathways, listen to music on a run, and plan long-term financial well-being.)
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(highlight:: RULES FOR FORMULATING JOB STATEMENTS
DOS
DON’TS
Reflect the individual’s perspective
Never refer to technology or solutions
Start with a verb
Steer clear of methods or techniques
Ensure stability over time
Don’t reflect observations or preferences
Clarify with context, if needed
Avoid compound concepts (no ANDs or ORs))
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(highlight:: EXAMPLES OF FORMULATING JOB STATEMENTS
INCORRECT
ISSUE
CORRECT
Search by keyword for documents in the database
Includes specific methods (keyword search) and technology (documents in database)
Retrieve content
People prefer to attend meet-ups and conferences that are nearby
Reflects an observation and preference
Includes compound concepts
Attend an event
Find the cheapest airfares quickly
Includes needs, which should be considered separately (i.e., cheap and quick)
Find airfares
Help me plan a vacation that the whole family will enjoy
“Enjoy” is a need and should be separate
Includes “help me” instead of starting with a verb
Plan family vacation)
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(highlight::
FIGURE 2.5 Visualize the process of getting a main job done.)
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It’s critical to recognize that a job map is not a customer journey map. The aim is not to document how people come to your solution, decide to purchase, and stay loyal. That’s not their job to be done; it’s what your company wants them to do. Instead, a job map is a view into the behaviors and needs of individuals in the context of their daily lives. That may or may not include your solution.
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(highlight:: In some cases, such as in software development, a “need” is interpreted as a system requirement. For instance, user stories in Agile methodologies describe what users need to have in place in order to interact with a system.
In other cases, such as with voice of the customer research, a “need” is a benefit a customer gets from a given product or solution, e.g., customers need to have quick and easy access to support. And in yet other situations, such as with Design Thinking techniques, a need is seen as a fundamental human motivation, e.g., people need personal fulfillment. Without a common understanding and clear definition of what a need is, conversations within teams and organizations can go astray quickly. It’s no wonder there isn’t agreement on what a need is exactly.
JTBD helps in two ways. First, in JTBD a “need” is seen in relation to getting the main job done. Needs aren’t demands from a solution, but an individual’s requirements for getting a job done. For instance, if a main job is defined as file taxes, needs in getting that job done may be minimize the time it takes to gather documents or maximize the likelihood of a getting a return.)
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- [note::Differing perspectives on what "needs" are in JTBD, Agile, Design Thinking, & Voice of Customer research]

(highlight:: Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick have developed a consistent way to notate needs in what they call desired outcome statements. There are four elements:
Direction of change + unit of measure + object + clarifier
• Direction of change: How does the job performer want to improve conditions? Each need statement starts with a verb showing the desired change of improvement. Words like “minimize,” “decrease,” or “lower” show a reduction of unit of measure, while words like “maximize,” “increase,” and “raise” show an upward change.
• Unit of measure: What is the metric for success? The next element in the statement shows the unit of measure the individual wants to increase or decrease. Time, effort, skill, and likelihood are a few typical examples. Note that the measure may be subjective and relative, but it should be as concrete as possible.
• Object of the need: What is the need about? Indicate the object of control that will be affected by doing a job.
• Clarifier: What else is necessary to understand the need? Include contextual clues to clarify and provide descriptions of the circumstance in which the job takes places.)
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A strength of the JTBD approach is that it separates goals from needs. Consider the job as the target that someone wants to get done, and the need as the measure of success or the expected outcome. For instance, the statement “speed up the next big promotion at work” mixes goals and needs. In JTBD terms, the job is simply to get a promotion. Needs in completing that job are to minimize the time it takes to get promoted and increase the size of the promotion.
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(highlight:: If you find yourself using an and or or, you probably need two separate need statements. Need statements should be as atomic as possible to not only see all of the factors involved in getting a job done, but also to pinpoint which ones are most important. As a result, any main job may have 50–150 intended needs.
For instance, there may be many needs for the main job of prepare a meal, such as minimize time to process ingredients, reduce the risk of injury, increase the likelihood that others will enjoy the meal, or minimize the effort to clean up after the meal. The list goes on.)
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(highlight:: Circumstances typically consist of aspects around time, manner, and place. For example, for the job listen to music on a run, you might uncover factors that determine how that will be performed:
• When it’s raining
• When there is traffic on the road
• When it gets sweaty
• When it’s bouncy
• And so on...
A job without context is not complete and cannot provide strategic direction. There is necessarily a dependency on formulating a main job and knowing the circumstances.)
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When working with JTBD, you’ll confront the issue of granularity. The question you need to answer is, “At what level of abstraction do you want to try to innovate?” There’s no right or wrong answer—it depends on your situation and aim. Getting the right altitude is key. Objectives at one level roll up into higher-order goals, generally called laddering.
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- [note::This is what I was talking to Rose about last night i.e. "there's some point at which you have to stop going up the chain and say 'this is the job I'm focused on. Everything above it is too abstract.'"]

Rather than just two levels—big and little—I have found that JTBD can be viewed on about four different levels (see Figure 2.6.
• Aspirations: An ideal change of state, something the individual desires to become
• Big Job: A broader objective, typically at the level of a main job
• Little Job: A smaller, more practical job that corresponds roughly to stages in a big job
• Micro-Job: Activities that resemble tasks but are stated in terms of JTBD
)
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(highlight:: Consider some of the different levels of abstraction in this example, reflected in Table 2.5.
TABLE 2.5 LEVELS OF JOBS TO CONSIDER
LEVEL
EXAMPLE
Aspiration
Be a better family member
Big Job
Visit with family on special occasions
Little Job
Arrange transportation at a specific time
Micro-Job
Start vehicle)
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But scoping your initial innovation effort at the aspirational level can yield an endless number of possible directions. It’s more effective to target a big job and layer aspirations secondarily on top of that.
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Two simple questions can help you get the right altitude: asking “why?” moves you up in the hierarchy; asking “how?” moves you down. (See Figure 2.7.

FIGURE 2.7 Ask “why?” to go up a level and “how?” to go down.
For instance, in the case of attending a conference, you might ask, “Why would a job performer want to go to a conference?” The answer might reveal that it’s part of a broader aspiration around professional development. If you then ask again, “Why does the job performer want to develop professional skills?” you might find it’s for career advancement and ultimately to have a better life. Those higher-level aspirations are good to know, and they have potential market appeal. But keep the functional job in mind first. If it doesn’t get done, the aspiration won’t be reached either.
On the other hand, asking, “How does the job performer attend a conference?” you might find the smaller job of convincing a boss to give permission. If you then ask, “How does the job performer convince the boss?” you might find a micro-job of providing a cost-benefit estimation of the event.)
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Note that JTBD is not a game of asking the “5 Whys,” a popular technique for root cause analysis that poses the questions “why?” successively five times. Instead, the level of innovation should match your goal, but be broad enough to allow for expansion.
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Getting the right level of abstraction is key. Don’t define the main job too narrowly. A small job will limit your field of vision, but also will constrain your efforts. When in doubt, go broader and define a main job that is larger than smaller. Ask “why?” and “how?” to move the level of granularity of the main job up or down.
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(highlight:: Reflect on a few simple questions to get started:
• What business are you in? Consider your overall playing field by noting the sector, industry, and offering category you want to operate in.
• What customer problems do you want to solve? Write down all of the challenges you want to overcome for customers.
• What impact do you hope to generate? Write down the benefits you hope to bring customers.
Then create a simple ladder of objectives that people are trying to achieve, similar to the one in Table 2.6. Using the example of parking a car, you can see how this job might fit into a hierarchy of jobs.)
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Reflect an end state. Avoid framing main jobs as ongoing activities. It’s problematic to start a main job with words like manage, maintain, keep up, and learn because they don’t have a clear end state. For example, learn all there is to know in a given field isn’t a good main job. When is learning done? Similarly, formulating a job as manage financial portfolio is problematic because it’s hard to point to an end: managing is ongoing. Instead, phrase the job as grow financial portfolio, which is stronger because there is a way to be “done.”
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Separate jobs from needs. Don’t mix up needs or desired outcomes with the main job. For instance, the main job of a street vendor with a hotdog cart is to sell food on the street. Of course, the vendor wants to maximize the amount of hungry people she attracts, but that’s considered a need.
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(highlight:: Test your main job statement against these questions:
• Does the statement reflect the job performer’s perspective?
• Does the job statement begin with a verb?
• Is there a beginning and end point of the goal?
• Might the job performer think, “The [object] is [verb]-ed”? (e.g., did the financial portfolio grow? Or was food sold on the street?)
• Are the statements one-dimensional without compound concepts?
• Would people have phrased the job to be done like this 50 years ago?)
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One approach while scoping the JTBD domain is to interview experts in a given domain initially. This often accelerates your learning about how to get a job done. So even if you frame the main job as prepare a meal at home, you can still learn a great deal from master chefs initially. However, unless chefs are your job performers, you shouldn’t complete the JTBD research with experts. Instead, target a general group of job performers to get their insights and priorities.
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In a final step, start exploring the process and circumstances. You may be able to intuit some of the stages in executing the job based on existing knowledge. Try making assumptions about the sequence of stages the performer may go through. This will help guide your discussion with interviewees. But be prepared to adjust your hypothesis with new information that you’ll encounter through field research.
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(highlight:: At the core of the JTBD model are five separate elements, addressing the who, what, how, why, and when/where questions of your field of inquiry:
• Job Performer (who): The person who will be executing the job
• Jobs (what): Includes a main job, related jobs, and emotional jobs and social jobs
• Process (how): A chronological representation of the stages in getting a job done
• Needs (why): The desired outcomes an individual has from performing a job
• Circumstances (when/where): The conditions that frame how the job gets executed)
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(highlight:: In JTBD, there are four levels to consider:
• Aspirations: An ideal change of state, something the individual desires to become
• Big Job: A broader objective, typically at the level of a main job
• Little Job: A smaller job that corresponds roughly to stages in a big job
• Micro-Job: Activities that resemble tasks, but are formulated in terms of JTBD)
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(highlight:: Jobs don’t come in neat, little packages. You have to hunt for them. You won’t find jobs from analytics or marketing surveys, and you can’t just “brainstorm” jobs and needs. You have to get out and talk to job performers in formal interviews.
Start by getting the right people—job performers. Then lead an open interview that lets them speak in their own words about their objectives. Don’t read from a questionnaire, but instead probe on the job process and needs. Afterward, you’ll need to translate what you heard into the JTBD language.)
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Note that jobs interviews are not intended for gaining empathy for participants per se, although that is often inevitable. Critics point out that jobs interviews miss a lot of the details about the person’s overall experience. Jobs interviews also don’t get at psychological states, even if there are questions about emotions and social aspects. Instead, the JTBD approach assumes that people are first and foremost motivated to get the job done so they can make progress. The interviews favor a more surgical approach to reach their goals and needs.
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- [note::What are the limitations of these assumptions?]

Jobs interviews are not research about your product or existing customers. In fact, you don’t even have to talk to people who know your brand or offering. That might cloud their responses to your questions. Because you’re not yet concerned about purchasing decisions or brand awareness, you just need to get job performers—the people executing your main job. It’s as simple as that.
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- [note::Job interviews are job-focused, not solution-focused. While it's valuable to understand existing solutions employed by the job performer, the focus should be on the content of the job itself, not necessarily the existing solutions used to complete it now or theoretical solutions that could complete it in the future]

(highlight:: Avoid recruiting only from your existing customer base to strengthen your focus on the job, not your solution.
Note that if you use existing customers for the interviews, be cautious about their bias toward your solution. You’ll need to explicitly steer them away from talking about your product or solution. It’s harder to interview existing customers from this perspective, but possible.)
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Incentives vary greatly depending on the domain and target participant. General consumers are willing to participate for a simple gift card worth $25 or so. Highly qualified professionals may expect hundreds of dollars for an hour or two of their time. Budget accordingly.
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It’s a best practice to do the interviews with more than one researcher. One is the primary interviewer, and the other acts as an observer. Maintain these roles. This focus allows the lead researcher to build a rapport with the participant and steer the conversation. The observer may ask questions at the end or when asked.
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People don’t know how to create solutions to solve their problems, so don’t ask them. They do know about their own objectives and needs. Focus on understanding their jobs to be done from their perspective.
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- [note::I'm skeptical this assumption is valid in all/most cases.]

(highlight:: Build rapport and get the participant talking freely.
• Tell me a little about yourself and what you do.
• When was the last time you did the main job?
• How did you feel overall while getting that job done?)
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(highlight:: To get participants to talk about their jobs to be done, ask questions like the following:
• What are you trying to accomplish? What tasks are involved?
• What problems are you trying to prevent or resolve?
• What helps you achieve your goals?
• What would the ideal service be to do the job for you?
• What else are you trying to get done?)
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(highlight:: Go through the stages of getting the job done.
• How do you get started?
• What is the previous step? What’s the next step?
• How do you continue after that?
• How do you make decisions along the way?
• How do you feel at each stage in the process?
• How do you know you are doing the job right?
• How do you wrap things up?)
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(highlight:: Uncover the desired outcomes that people are looking for while performing the job.
• What workarounds exist in your process?
• What do you dread doing? What do you avoid? Why?
• What could be easier? Why?
• Why do you avoid doing certain parts of the job?
• What’s the most annoying part? Why is that frustrating?
• How do you feel when the job is completed?)
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(highlight:: Find out when and where performing the job makes a difference. Try to uncover the most salient factors that frame getting the job done.
• In which situations do you act differently?
• What conditions influence your decisions?
• How do the environment and setting affect your attitude and feelings while getting the job done?)
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While interviewing, steer the granularity of answers. Ask “why?” to get more general and move toward outcomes. Ask “how?” to encourage the interviewee to be more specific and to dig into the process.
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Try also sketching a diagram of the process together with the participant as the interview goes along. Point to specific steps in the sketch to clarify the process. Then dig deeper to understand their goals and feelings at each step, along with the context of getting the job done.
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(highlight:: To get more specific and keep the conversation about their experiences, use the critical incident technique. There are three simple steps to follow.
1. Recall a specific incident. Have them remember a time when executing the job went particularly wrong.
2. Describe the experience. Ask them to describe what happened, what went wrong and why, and how they felt at the time.
3. Discuss the ideal state. Finally, ask what should have happened and what would have been ideal. This helps reveal their underlying needs.)
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Schedule time to debrief immediately after each session or two. Review notes with your interview partner. Take the time to complement each other’s understanding of what the participant said. If you wait too long to review your notes, you may forget details and lose the context.
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For one project I conducted, the team coded JTBD insights in real time. There was one interviewer and one notetaker. The notetaker recorded desired outcome statements as heard during the interviews. The result was that we arrived at a usable data set quickly after each interview without having to analyze our notes or recordings.
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- [note::How might AI be used to speed up interview analysis? A couple of ideas:

• Identify passages that might be useful for generating job statements from and propose potential job statements based on each passage
• Clean up interview transcript
• Divide interview transcript by question or "section"]

Create a spreadsheet to extract relevant observations. Put direct observations and quotes in the first column. Then create four columns for interpretations: micro-jobs, emotional and social aspects, needs, and circumstances.
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(highlight:: The elements of JTBD discussed in the previous chapter become the filter by which you’ll organize insights.
• Job steps: Indicate steps in getting a job done and the micro-jobs you find during the interview. Be sure to begin each with a verb and omit any reference to technologies or solutions.
• Emotional and social aspects: Record emotional aspects beginning with “feel” or “avoid feeling” and then social aspects with “be perceived as” or “avoid being seen as.”
• Needs: Listen for answers to your “why” questions, as well as hacks, workarounds, avoidances, and procrastinations. Be sure to note needs beginning with a verb that shows the direction of change.
• Circumstances: Note any situational constraints beginning with “when.”
)
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Steve Portigal, Interviewing Users (NY: Rosenfeld Media, 2013.
This book is one of the best and most complete volumes on interviewing. It’s very practical and hands-on, including a range of sample documents and materials to refer to online. Portigal covers the interviewing process from end to end, including setting objectives, recruiting, interviewing, and analysis.)
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Giff Constable, Talking to Humans (Self-published, 2014.
This thin volume of only 75 pages provides an excellent overview for getting in front of people and talking to them. There is a wealth of practical information for getting started and conducting quick interviews.)
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Mike Boysen, “A Framework of Questions for Jobs to Be Done Interviews,” Medium (blog, 2018.
Mike is a practitioner of ODI at Strategyn, and his guide to jobs interviews is one of the most complete to date specifically focused on JTBD. He provides an overview of jobs interviews, as well as a detailed worksheet for dissecting interview data. Although there are many similarities, the approach I present in this chapter differs from how Strategyn conducts jobs interviews in practice.)
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(highlight:: The Switch technique was developed and made popular by Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek to answer the question, “Why do customers ‘hire’ a given product?” The idea is to reverse engineer why people switch from one way of doing a job to another in order to uncover their underlying intent.
The approach seeks to recreate the purchase journey, starting with a concrete product in mind.)
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(highlight:: There are six phases to work through, each articulated by a key event, as seen in Figure 3.2.
• First thought: This is the initial moment that a change is needed, often implicit.
• Passively looking: The buyer is not putting energy into a search, but notices options. The first event makes the search explicit.
• Actively looking: The buyer invests time and energy into seeking a solution. The second event transitions the buyer into a purchase decision.
• Deciding: Here, the buyer consciously weighs alternatives. This phase ends with a decision to buy.
• Consuming: After making a purchase, the buyer uses the product or service. Either the product experience is completed, or it’s ongoing.
• Satisfaction: The solution either leads to progress, or it doesn’t.
)
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Use a timeline like the one shown in Figure 3.2 to guide your discussion and record notes. Work backward as needed, digging deeper as you go. Ask, “What happened before that?” along with “Why did you make that decision?” Try to find the motivation or the energy, as Moesta puts it, behind the switch from old to new.
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