Jobs to be Done

What it is

A way of describing demand in terms of the progress a customer is trying to make, rather than the product category they happen to buy in. The framing comes from Clayton Christensen: people do not buy products, they hire them to do a job, and they fire them when something does the job better. Get the job right and your competitive set, your roadmap and your positioning all change.

The functional job

What the customer is practically trying to accomplish. Concrete and measurable — "get a fixing into masonry without cracking it".

The emotional job

What they are trying to feel, or avoid feeling. "Not look like an amateur in front of the client." Businesses routinely over-serve the functional job and ignore this one, which is where loyalty actually lives.

The circumstance

The situation that triggers the job. Jobs belong to circumstances, not to demographics — the same person hires different things on a rush job and a showcase job.

Push and pull

What pushes the customer away from their current solution (frustration) and what pulls them toward a new one (appeal). Both must be present for anyone to switch.

Anxiety and habit

The two forces holding them where they are: worry about the new thing, and the pull of the familiar. Most failed launches lose to these rather than to a competitor.

How you run it

1. Start from the switch, not the productAsk what the customer was doing before they bought from you, and what pushed them to change. The struggle is the job.
2. Write the job as progress, not a feature"A hammer that lasts" is a product. "Not looking like an amateur in front of a client" is a job.
3. Separate functional from emotionalEvery job has both. Businesses over-serve the functional half and ignore the emotional one, which is where loyalty lives.
4. Name the real competitive setWhat would they hire instead if you vanished? Often not a competitor at all — doing nothing, or an in-house workaround.
5. Mark evidence versus assumptionLabel each job: heard from customers, or inferred by us. Take the inferred ones into a real conversation before building strategy on them.

The prompt

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