Episode 47: Philosophy, Jobs-to-be-done and customer rationality

Product Quest Podcast

This time we are going to try something a little different. There’s no guest and we are going to take a philosophical perspective on Jobs-to-be-done. Some listeners will know that philosophy is dear to Yann's heart and something that he's brought up in the podcast here and there. Today we want to make these comments and hints front and center. It’s also worth noting that Scott and his book Statue in the Stone was the one that first connected JTBD and philosophy and it’s the very reason we three found each other.

Philosophy is often about arguments and we will reconstruct Jobs-to-be-done as an argument in the podcast. Here it is in it's full length:

The core argument of Jobs-to-be-done

Human beings want to achieve certain things, call these things a “Job”

To achieve them, they use different means and different means can allow them to achieve the same Job, call these means “solutions”.

Some of those solutions are better, some are worse. We decide and judge which are worse, and which are better depending on how well the solutions help us get the job done, call this the “utility of a solution”.

For us to use new solutions to achieve the job, the solutions must significantly improve getting the job done compared to how we get it done now.

There is a way to know, even predict if a new solution does get the job done significantly better or not. This depends on how well the solution performs against the set of criteria that we use to evaluate the utility of a new solution, call these “outcomes” or “job metrics”.

We can express and know all our outcomes.

If a new solution allows us to get the job done significantly better, i.e. performs better measured by the outcomes, we are much more likely to adopt it.

Therefore, with Jobs-to-be-done it is possible to know if a new solution will be adopted to get a job done.