Jobs to be done

Clayton M. Christensen and others · 2005

People do not buy products; they hire something to make progress in a situation.

Its place in the frameworkBusiness Core›Value Proposition

What it does

The unit of analysis is the job and the circumstance, not the customer and their demographics. It reframes competition too: whatever else someone could hire for the same job is a competitor, however different it looks. The famous milkshake study is not the theory — it is an illustration of asking what someone was trying to get done at seven in the morning.

Reach for it when: When a value proposition is written as a list of features, or when segmentation by who people are has stopped explaining who buys.
Where it stops: Jobs are inferred from interviews and are easy to write to fit the product you already have. Nothing in the method stops you from discovering the job you hoped for.

Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook & Taddy Hall, “Marketing Malpractice”, Harvard Business Review, 2005; Competing Against Luck, HarperBusiness, 2016.

Why it sits at Value Proposition

What the organisation offers, stated in terms of what it does for someone. A value proposition is a claim about the customer, not a description of the product.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Customer jobs and painsChristensen’s jobs-to-be-done framing, and the customer-profile half of the Value Proposition Canvas.
The offerOsterwalder’s Value Proposition Canvas, where pain relievers and gain creators are matched to the customer profile.
DifferentiationPorter on competitive positioning, and the standard test of substituting a rival’s name into the statement.
ProofWork on buyer risk and evidence in complex sales; the harder the claim, the more the proof carries.

All of Value Proposition

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Value Proposition lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Market CoreThe target audience defines whose jobs and pains the proposition addresses.
Brand CoreThe brand promise is the proposition made external and repeatable.
Omni CoreThe journey is where the proposition is either delivered or contradicted.
Goal CoreA change of proposition is a strategic goal, not a marketing task.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Value Proposition too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

The Kano modelSome features delight, some merely satisfy in proportion, and some are only noticed when they are missing.
The value proposition canvasA structured way of checking that what you offer answers something the customer actually struggles with.
The Lean StartupTreat a new offer as a set of assumptions to be tested cheaply, rather than a plan to be executed.
Design thinkingUnderstand the person’s situation before defining the problem, and prototype the answer before committing to it.

Elsewhere in Business Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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