WORKING PAPER

Step-by-Step Guide to Jobs to be Done

This playbook help you discover how the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) approach can transform your organization into a truly customer-centered business:

Reveal the deeper motivations behind customer behavior to uncover hidden opportunities for growth

Segment customers by their Jobs and contexts to design more targeted, differentiated solutions

Build a shared language and process that connects research, strategy, and execution around customer outcomes

OVERVIEW

How is JTBD different from other research methods?

Traditional market research frameworks often fall short when it comes to revealing the underlying motivations that drive customer behavior. But JTBD is different. Done right, what makes JTBD unique is that it doesn't rely on customers articulating their needs precisely, measuring them, or framing everything solely in the context of functional Jobs. Instead, effective deployment of JTBD offers a rigorous approach for understanding customer behavior, defining opportunities, identifying adoption obstacles for new solutions, and evaluating the full competitive landscape.

Key differentiators:

Jobs to be Done focuses on the underlying need: It delves into the underlying motivations that truly shape customer behavior.
Jobs to be Done provides a clearer understanding: It focuses on specific purchase and usage events, allowing companies to grasp the nuance in how their products fit into their customer's lives.
Jobs to be Done uncovers unmet needs: It helps identify unmet and latent needs that customers may struggle to express when asked directly

Step 1: Identify customers’ goals in contexts relevant for your solution

Step 2: Assess how customers are deciding to use (or not use) solutions today and their pain points in doing so

Step 3: Determine how customers are defining successful achievement of their goals, and what obstacles must be avoided

Step 4: Assess the competitive landscape and your unique opportunities to create value for the customer

Step 1: Identify customers’ goals in contexts relevant for your solution

Start by uncovering the range of Jobs customers are trying to get done and embed them in an in-depth analysis of the factors that affect how customers make decisions. Jobs can be functional or emotional in nature, so it's always critical to consider both sides of the coin.

In addition to cataloging people's different Jobs, we also need to examine the factors that make them more or less important for particular types of customers, which we call Job Drivers.

These contexts are composed of ABC:

Attitudes
Backgrounds
Circumstances

Together, Jobs and Job Drivers yield customer segments—groups of customers who will buy and behave in similar ways.

While customers may look to satisfy a number of Jobs, some Jobs will hold more importance than others. Higher-level Jobs—what we call North Star Jobs—cascade into more granular sub-Jobs. By using hierarchies to define the broader North Star Jobs, we can then outline more specific sub-Jobs, creating a clear view of how Jobs interrelate with one another.

Example for the Tech Industry

North Star Job

Provide compelling reports that agencies can show their clients

Sub Jobs:

Make agencies look technologically advanced
Help agencies’ clients secure support for their ad budgets
Make clients’ digital marketers look sophisticated about targeting ads

Job Drivers:

Attitudes: Ad agency prefers to configure software itself
Background: Agency has predominantly B2B clients with narrow audiences for ads
Circumstances: Agency wishes to demonstrate capability around newly-emerging ad formats such as AI-generated ad personalization

Step 1: Identify customers’ goals in contexts relevant for your solution

Step 2: Assess how customers are deciding to use (or not use) solutions today and their pain points in doing so

Step 3: Determine how customers are defining successful achievement of their goals, and what obstacles must be avoided

Step 4: Assess the competitive landscape and your unique opportunities to create value for the customer

Step 1: Identify customers’ goals in contexts relevant for your solution

In addition to cataloging people's different Jobs, we also need to examine the factors that make them more or less important for particular types of customers, which we call Job Drivers.

These contexts are composed of ABC:

Attitudes
Backgrounds
Circumstances

Together, Jobs and Job Drivers yield customer segments—groups of customers who will buy and behave in similar ways.

Example for the Tech Industry

North Star Job

Provide compelling reports that agencies can show their clients

Sub Jobs:

Make agencies look technologically advanced
Help agencies’ clients secure support for their ad budgets
Make clients’ digital marketers look sophisticated about targeting ads

Job Drivers:

Attitudes: Ad agency prefers to configure software itself
Background: Agency has predominantly B2B clients with narrow audiences for ads
Circumstances: Agency wishes to demonstrate capability around newly-emerging ad formats such as AI-generated ad personalization

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Our firm can help your organization uncover your customers' Jobs to be Done and turn that into a strategy. Explore our Jobs to be Done Research service page for more insights