Summary: More about value – including what values are constant? To take an example, people have been trying to do the job of communicating for thousands of years – whether by cave drawings or email.
Jobs and outcomes don’t change – solutions do
Fulfilling the job of transport has been evolving for hundreds of years. And it is doing so along the same parameters. The value has slowly being increasing. It is the same for any job, from listening to music to shaving. For example shaving has other jobs and outcomes that have remained the same – avoiding (therefore minimising) cuts, maximising the moisturising of the skin, minimising passes over the skin and so on. Therefore all shaving products have being evolving through those parameters and offering better value along them. Think how far we have come from having to go to a barbers for a bladed shave! Talk about saving time, and money! Plus not more nasty cuts! It seems almost inconceivable that men used have to go all that trouble for a shave. In 20 years time it will seem the same for making websites, even as something as complex as Ebay. You’ll be able to do it in minutes all from your own home!
Often there are substitute products, those products that can help you fulfil a job but are different. For example, trains, planes, car and ferry all allow the job of transportation to be completed.
There are lots of people out there doing jobs and they need your help!
The jobs that people want to do with products and services have been around hundreds of years and they don’t change. The outcomes people want don’t alter.
Remember that statement forever. It’s very powerful.
All solutions are about giving more power to the user in someway be helping them do these jobs better.
It’s very, very calming to know that at the root of it all, in these days we are told the world is getting quicker, there are more products, faster this, faster that, in all a feeling of “panic rush panic rush panic” that you can ignore it all! Remember that people are trying to do the same jobs they were hundreds of years ago and that’s not going to change anytime soon, certainly not in our lifetime unless our environment drastically changes.
Once you see the world like this, suddenly your eyes are opened to hundreds if not thousands of opportunities, because you have a real constant from which to work with – the job – what people are trying to achieve.
The solutions that have really worked and made millions are the ones that have improved these jobs in the ways people wanted; they have been huge life changers. These solutions, unlike the jobs, do change. The value they provide gets better and better. Obviously, the more important the job to consumers and the more you can improve it – the better – but it has to be a job you really care about – it has to be important to you.
Solutions to jobs improve in a handful of ways – The Value Constants
People are trying to do the same jobs as they were one hundred years ago.
This is all gets even more exciting when you see that fulfilling all jobs have being changing along a small set of shared ways, which all derive from just one sentence.
They are perceived as better by the user because they feel they make their lives better.
By looking at these improvements, we can ascertain how doing these jobs is going to improve in the future.
Let’s look at some of these constant jobs.
Transport (horse and carriage to space liner!)
Communicate (cave drawings to email!)
Enjoy Music (listen to a travelling bard to the iPod)
Losing weight (not eating and exercising to everything under the sun!)
Finding information (Library to Google!)
Yes, value is changing, but it’s changing in the same ways it always has and it’s changing to meet the same jobs and outcomes.
By fulfilling these outcomes better and allowing people to do these jobs better they choose your service. This is your chance to make a difference to people.
Let’s look at some of the Value Constants that stretch across improvement in all industries and the solutions they provide.
- Quicker
- Faster
- Easier
- Better
- Quicker to buy
- More convenient
- Cheaper price
- Cheaper cost of ownership
- Smarter
- More Choice
- Lighter
- Smaller
- Number of users
- Greater conformance of results/quality
- Number of collaborators
- More Fun
- Less middlemen
- Quality
- More Effective
- More Accurate
- More Storage
- More Availability
- More Exclusive
- Warmer
- Cooler
- Cooler (as in more hip/more fashionable!)
- Real Time
- Better Image
- More Expensive
- More Beautiful
- Healthier
- Bigger
- Faster
- More Powerful
- More Trusted
- More Accessible
- More Indulgent
- More Luxurious
- Simpler
- Greener
- Purer
- Older
- Newer
- Younger
- Sexier
- Tougher
- Softer
- More Comprehensive
- More comfortable
- More customisable
- More opinions
- Bigger community
- More users
- More interaction (with others)
- More interactive (with interface)
- Durable
- Automated
- Less thought
- Less repetition
- Less noisy
- Less messy
- Less waste
- More realistic
- More organised
- More prestigious
- Visual results
- Easier to find
- Greater Transparency
- Greater Trust
- Greater Accountability
- Authenticity
- Not fake (rip off)
- Un-metered/unlimited
- Flat rate
- Converges or adds other jobs
Take a look at your products now, can they be improved in any of these ways? The chances are they can!
You’ll see some Value Constants are opposite ends of the scale, sometimes people will want to the job of keeping cooler for example, other times they have the job of keeping warmer to be done!
Of course, you’ll see later how you need to ask the market what they are thinking and feeling. Don’t always presume they have the same priorities as you think! They may also have jobs and outcomes to perform that you hadn’t even considered.
Some truths
I like to work with truths, facts, that we now are real and will not change.
- There are always the same Ultimate Goals and jobs to be done.
- Only the solutions change but they always change inline with the Value Constants.
- There are always same Ultimate Goals or jobs that can’t be done easily, well or at all and so there is always a beachhead into a market.
- There are always other jobs that can be added to the Ultimate Goal.
(For example I have just seen a new hair minimising deodorant for Dove! Apple TV allows you to download movies, as well as do in HDTV, as well as watch You Tube, preview movies, and play your music from ITunes)
- There are always some jobs that can be automated, reduced or phased out from the Ultimate Goal.
- For each job there are always the same desired outcomes.
- There is always new technology or better used of old technology.
- There is always innovation for a better way and this innovation can make current solutions obsolete.
- There are always great features you can take from other products and solutions, from any market or industry.
- There is always change.
Remember these truths and stick with them. I hope I am making all this simple, that’s my goal Above is the aggregation of many hours of reading and learning but, once you get it, it is actually easier than you thought. During my study, I found that as with many things in life, there is nothing complicated about any of this, it’s about getting the perceptions right. There is a lot to take it, but once you get it, you get it. Your eyes open wide up and you realise that it’s how you see the world that matters! The lens through which you view products with is all that matters.
So then – how do you put this to use in your business?
Ultimate Goal, jobs, outcomes and market research
No customer would have come up with the Internet, but they would have told you about the job of finding information and one of the best solutions at the time for that – using a library.
Let’s see what we get from a description of that job. How it happens, step by step, and likes and dislikes.
- I need to travel
- I need to spend time finding books
- I need to search through the books
- I need to remember where I put the books
- I need to go again if I forget something
- I need to copy the information form the book
- I need to pay to take a book home
- Lots of books
- Some books aren’t there
- I get very stressed by it all
All jobs to help in the Ultimate Goal of getting information. (The last one is the job of keeping calm – performed poorly!)
If you asked a customer to waive a magic wand, do you think that they would want to do all of the above or not? Now, they won’t say – “I know – how about we use technology to make a search engine that does all of this!”, but if you asked “In the ideal world, would you travel to do all this?” “Would you like to find books quicker?” – they would answer “Yes”. “Would you like to search through books quicker?” – they would answer “Yes of course!”.
You get the idea!
Now if you look at the jobs and how Google allows so many of them to be performed better, you can see why Google worked.
- I need to travel (not any more – time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to pay (our service is free – financial cost minimised!)
- I need to sit down and find books (not any more now you just type – time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to find what is most relevant (we help by ranking results – functional benefit and time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to search through the books (not any more we list results for you – time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to remember where I put the books (now you can bookmark results – time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to go again if I forget something (no you don’t just type again – time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to copy the information from the book (copy and paste – time and convenience maximised!)
- I need to pay to take a book home (no longer – time and convenience maximised!)
- Lots of books (billions of pages and growing – time and convenience maximised!)
- Some books aren’t there (many users can access results at the same time – time and convenience maximised!)
- I get very stressed by it all (emotional benefit – we make it so easy for you – now you can enjoy it all!)
And we haven’t even mentioned the job of shopping…
These were worldwide jobs, applicable to many, many people. They really mattered in everyday lives on a huge scale. At times, when information was required and a trip to the library was not possible, the job could not be done at all.
This didn’t have people seething or get them angry. They lived with it. It was just the way things were. And then the old saying that follows a life changing product – “You wonder how you ever lived without it!”
This is one reason focusing on products alone will never bring you a ground breaking innovation. If Google had accepted the fact that the library was the only product that could do the job above, they would have made a better library. Instead, knowingly or otherwise, they were focused on a job that mankind had to do, and the made a solution that could satisfy it better than the current best way could ever do.
So you can see why Google took off as it did. Of course, this doesn’t explain the amazing work that went on within the company, but they knew what they were shooting for. The founders probably knew about doing all these jobs from their own experience of looking for information, including experiences with other search engines of the time, which I have been reliably informed were complex and threw up irrelevant results. I don’t know because the first one I ever used was Google. The Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will have used other search engines and seen how they could do it better! They executed what is known as Value Innovation – in order to get better you need to be different – different in ways that matter to people – ways that help people do jobs better. Often being different successfully involves the use of technology (including old technology), yet it always, always, involves greater value.
Features, attributes and benefits
Features and attributes are the aspects of the product or service that satisfy the Ultimate Goal, jobs and outcomes. These features only become benefits when they help consumers achieve the Ultimate Goal, jobs and outcomes they want to achieve. If they do not do this or get in the way of doing this, then no matter how great you think they are, for that consumer they are not benefits, they are detriments. Therefore the same feature can be both a detriment and a benefit depending on the consumer, and their usage occasion.
Unlike jobs and outcomes, and the Value Constants, the solutions to solve them and the features and attributes they contain are always progressing and always changing.
For every feature you add to a solution, there is the possibility of it becoming a detriment. For example a feature that adds unnecessary cost, unnecessary complexity, unnecessary time, unnecessary frustration because it does not work properly, or hides or hinder the use of the most important features is a detriment.
A good old saying, “The main thing is that the main thing stays the main thing”.
As Steve Jobs says “We are very careful about what features we add because we can’t take them away.”
An example – the features provided by nearly all the airlines in the 1980’s were detriments to some people – these people didn’t want food on flights, they didn’t want reserved seating, they didn’t want excessive leg room – they wanted cheaper prices. So whilst these features were benefits to some, they were detriments to others. Another example is most software which is often renowned for being very complex and feature packed, but not well know for doing the simple things well.
Features can be tangible or intangible, so go beyond just your exact product. For example, brand image, customer service attitude, and speed of delivery are also features because they are all potentially valued by customers.
So remember, it’s not about adding feature after feature, it’s about adding the right amount of the right features.
This is where your company’s creative and technical skills come into play. It’s a balancing act between cost, simplicity, and effectiveness.
Each day your products go without improvement, the benefits they offer are becoming of less and less value, and eventually, often because of a better solution, will be seen as mere qualifiers or either detriments.
Conclusion
We’ve now got a clear idea of what products are actually here to do for people. We’ve learned that products are here to do the same jobs that have been around for hundreds of years and that all products are improving along a small set of ways – the Value Constants. Only the solutions themselves are actually changing, but at their heart, the jobs and outcomes that they are trying to meet remain the same.
We now have an excellent grounding from which to provide value. To help us further, in the next chapter we go on to looking at the value products provide from the consumers perspective.
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