Why Do I See Solutions in my Job Map?
Let's get serious about levels of abstraction in Jobs-to-be-Done
My name is Mike Boysen, and my goal is to help executive decision-makers get answers faster and less expensively that are highly differentiated and accurate, with less bias and at scale.
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Now, let's get to the topic of day.
The other day I was hosting a live workshop for my Masterclass community and something was pointed out that deserved a response. I was demonstrating how contexts can re-shape a job map and the related customer success statements which re-shapes the scope of your research.
I got asked a question about solutions being incorporated into the job map. Let’s see if you can pick out what was being referred to…
That’s right, it had to do with batteries.
Let’s frame this
In order to understand what’s going on we need to remember that customer jobs exist in a hierarchy. While there is some grey in the middle, the three major components of the hierarchy are:
Aspirational - you’ve heard of Be Goals. They are things you want to be, not what a product helps you to accomplish. Typically these are too high-level for innovators to take action on. Yet, people are constantly talking about it for some strange human-behavior reason. 🤦🏻
Functional - these are objectives that are actionable, and solution-agnostic. We typically try to find the right level of abstraction within this area if our focus is on innovations that will drive breakthroughs or disruptions. This is what people are always saying they want to do.
Consumption - these are objectives that are actionable, and much closer to the solution-space. Consumption doesn’t occur without a solution. We still tend to keep the research as solution-agnostic as possible. For example, we don’t study procedures, e.g., flick this switch, configure the discombobulator, etc. because we’ve got six-sigma for that 😁
But words do tend to crop up that conflict with the mantra of ”jobs are solution-agnostic.”
So what does this all mean?
In the example above, I was demonstrating the difference between the universal job of listening to music and the more tightly scoped version of listening to music while traveling on an around the world flight.
First, the word flight implies you’re in an airplane. Therefore, this is more of a customer journey than it is a core functional job. While listening to music is a core functional job, the context is a journey. Therefore, we’d expect to see things that are related to this particular solution (a flight) that could impact our ability to listen to music.
But the focus was on batteries.
The thing to keep in mind about consumption jobs (aka customer journeys) is that they - unlike core functional jobs - have constraints.
We don’t hear a lot about that anymore, but constraints actually used to be a part of the Jobs-to-be-Done framework - until the desired focus turned to core functional jobs so that disruptive innovation outcomes could become the focus of the marketing theater.
It’s sexier.
But, the dollars 💰💵💲 are actually spent in the consumption space, which is where customer experience lives. Are you involved with cx? It seems like everyone is. Companies with existing products and services live in the consumption space.
What are the constraints here?
At today’s level of technology and materials science, we require power in order to use the technology that has made listening to music so simple regardless of our context. It wasn’t always the case. But now that we are mobile-first, we need to deal with the power access.
In order to remain in a mobile context, we need portable power. While Nikolai Tesla may have invented the transmission of power through the air and ground it was apparently - according to conspiracy theorists - suppressed, stolen, or defunded. So, until the day we have ubiquitous access to power and energy we need to carry stored power with us when we travel.
Yes, planes have power outlets these days. How’s that working out for you though?
So, when we’re studying consumption chain journeys (the journey is the job) we’re going to run into concepts that demonstrate a constraint within which we still have to operate.
Until someone reinvents ubiquitous power delivery, it’s simply a fact of life. Do we need Jobs-to-be-Done to identify such an invention?
The fact that we’ve been talking about it for hundreds years would suggest not.
Innovation does not equal invention. However, innovators should have a notion of what inventions they would need in order to make progress on their strategic roadmap, and what inventions are emerging in those areas so they can pounce on the opportunity before anyone else.
Until then, we have batteries.
If you'd like to learn more...
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