Summary: To understand how you can make a difference with your products or services, you need to understand the jobs that people are trying to do. Most jobs don’t change – for example, the job of cleaning a house (or cleaning your cave!) remains the same thousands of years on – but the solutions we use do change.
Don’t focus on industries
An industry is something that produces the same or very similar product. Because products can be made obsolete by those from different industries, focusing too much on your own competitors will lead to short sightedness. Focusing on competitors to see how they are improving and in order to copy their best ideas is recommended, yet some businesses do nothing else. This leads to group think and ignorance as to the real reason their product exits – to help people do a job. Accordingly, you need to focus on the jobs that people are doing, and realise your product is just one way to do that job. This way, you see other potential or existing solutions to that job as the real competitors – which they are.
Focus on consumers and more importantly, the jobs they are trying to do
This is so simple, yet so important. It’s a way of thinking.
Everything you do must be done from the consumer’s point of view and the job they are trying to do right then and there. This is true whether its product design, website design or writing marketing communications. If you execute these based on some internal factors, such as your own wishes, or best guesses, you lose connectivity and relevance with the consumer and you will alienate them. Here you are doing what’s important to you – not them – and you’re doomed before you begin because of your way of thinking. What’s important to you must be what’s important to them – it’s the only reason you have a business in the first place – it’s the only reason to make anything.
Working in this way is a fine art but can be learned easily. It’s a way of thinking, a way of looking at things. For example, Value Innovation (thinking of great products!) must be based on the jobs customers want to do and on meeting them better as a start off – otherwise it’s just wild dreaming. Sure add those new features, but only if they absolutely and definitely do jobs for people better than competing features on other products. Website design must follow current conventions of popular sites so visitors are familiar with the layout of your site – it’s not about doing what looks nice to you, or where you think things should go – instead its about making thinks look good to support what consumers care about and putting things in the places consumers are used to seeing them – both based on jobs consumers want to do. A page on “how it works” on your website will spend less time talking about technical issues behind the scenes that are important to you, and more talking about how the solution actually works for your customers. Marketing communications must talk “with” not talk “at” your consumers about things that are relevant to them – they are not your chance to show off – they are your chance to show value off.
A great quote from Steve Jobs which sums this up – “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
The “it” is the way of thinking. Get it wrong, and no amount of trying or money will help. Get it right and you have an advantage that many people will never have.
The Ultimate Goal
Using a job focus we shift from looking just on the customer, to the actual job that they seek to do. The job becomes the main unit of analysis. These are the real things people want to get done, the reasons they buy solutions. When they can do a job faster, quicker, or better than before, because of our solution, there is greater value in what we offer. So we need to focus on the job the customer is trying to do first and foremost, rather than the voice of the customer itself or their needs, pains, or wants or opinions, which can lead to distortion of the real value.
There are several types of Ultimate Goals, jobs and outcomes people try and perform they are functional, social, emotional, psychological, time, convenience, and financial.
Almost all Ultimate Goals are comprised of a selection of jobs from each area jobs.
Companies can reap huge rewards by finding out all the jobs customers are trying to get done. Often new jobs can be added to the Ultimate Goal that consumers may not have even considered.
Being clear on the Ultimate Goals, jobs and outcomes is the start of great market research.
The Ultimate Goal the most important end goal, the main objective, the mission, the ultimate achievement. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the reason the solution is being used. The Ultimate Goal is some sort of perceived positive state that people want. Different people will have different Ultimate Goals for different products.
You often need to ask a few “whys” to get there.
So,
Q. You want to order an essay, why?
A. To get a great mark.
Q. You want to get a great mark, why?
A. To get a good degree.
Q. Why is getting a good degree important?
A. To get a good job.
And there is the Ultimate Goal most people have when buying an essay – ultimately to secure employment through obtaining a qualification.
Spotting the Ultimate Goal could seem deceptively easy. After all it’s the main reason the product is used. Yet be careful. Look are how many US Video on Demand companies thought the Ultimate Goal people wanted to achieve, was to download movies. They got it wrong. They just needed to ask “Why do you want to that?”
The answer would have come back…
“To watch them on my TV”
The Ultimate Goal was downloading and watching movies on the TV. In other words, people didn’t want to have to download to their computer and then transfer them, they wanted to be able to do it all from their TV quickly and easily. All companies initial products failed to hit the mark because getting them from the PC to the TV was both time consuming and cumbersome.
Find an Ultimate Goal that can’t be done well and you could have a huge idea, depending on how many people can’t do it, and how important it is compared to other Ultimate Goals.
Jobs
Let’s look at the Ultimate Goal of daily short and mid distant transport. The car is one product we know people use for this. (By the way – don’t think transport is always the Ultimate Goal for car users – impress members of opposite sex or look wealthy are for some users are far more important – especially based on usage occasion.)
Each Ultimate Goal has many jobs that must be successfully completed to make the person feel like the Ultimate Goal has being done well.
Jobs of car users could include -
- Protect the environment
- Look successful
- Low cost
- Look like you care about the environment
- Reliability
- Attract opposite sex
- Go quick
Obviously different customers use their cars to do different jobs, so they prioritise these jobs differently in order of importance and weighting. Each job needs to be minimised or maximised. Each of these jobs is there to complement the Ultimate Goal by ensuring its successful completion in the eyes of the consumer. The better these jobs are performed the better the Ultimate Goal as a whole can be performed.
If you find important jobs that can’t be done well, then you could have a huge idea, depending on how many people can’t do them, how important the Ultimate Goal they meet is, and how important to meeting them they are.
Another example is when using a razor the Ultimate Goal is to remove hair – with other important jobs being minimising damage to skin, minimising time taken, and minimising dry skin.
Let’s take a long at some of the less obvious jobs people have. For example, psychological, emotional and social jobs they need to do.
- Safety and security – the need for structure, predictability, stability, and freedom from fear and anxiety.
- Belongingness and love – the need to be accepted by others and to have strong personal ties with one’s family, friends, and identity groups.
- Self-esteem – the need to be recognised by oneself and others as strong, competent, and capable and the need to know that one has some effect on her/his environment.
- Personal fulfilment – the need to reach one’s potential in all areas of life.
- Identity – a sense of self in relation to the outside world. Identity becomes a problem when one’s identity is not recognised as legitimate, or when it is considered inferior or is threatened by others with different identifications.
- Cultural security – the need for recognition of one’s language, traditions, religion, cultural values, ideas, and concepts, freedom – the condition of having no physical, political, or civil restraints; having the capacity to exercise choice in all aspects of one’s life.
- Distributive justice – the need for the fair allocation of resources among all members of a community.
- Participation – the need to be able to actively partake in and influence civil society.
Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter or just simply recommend it.
Further Discussion
Leave a Response
Make sure you enter the * required information where indicated. Responses are moderated so please no link dropping, no keywords or domains as names; do not spam, and do not advertise!