This post discusses a specific aspect of Jobs to be Done. If you haven’t already done so, we suggest starting with the post—What is Jobs To Be Done. This will give you a broad overview of JTBD concepts with links to other posts that take a deeper dive into those concepts.
…Continues from Jobs-to-be-Done Framework: Part 1
To summarize the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework, we can say that when individuals and organizations set out to get a job done, they have certain goals or success outcomes in mind. They use provider and/or non-provider solutions to take the necessary job action to generate those success outcomes. Next, let’s drill into the concepts and mechanics of job action.
Job action can be decomposed into two components — job logic and job activities. These two components characterize the job process, which is why both are always involved when executing any job process. Let’s first explore job logic.
Whether recognized or not, there’s always a logical structure to any process, otherwise it wouldn’t be a process. By definition, a process orchestrates purposeful behavior, which is why process logic is implied when activities are organized in a way that achieves a desired aim or purpose. Absent this logic, activities would be random and therefore would have no aim. When process logic is incomplete, a process can’t be successfully executed
Job logic can be delineated as a series of job steps that must be accomplished to successfully execute a job. The key thing to remember is that job steps are independent of specific solutions-in-use. Although solutions enable individuals to accomplish job steps, solutions do not define them. Rather, it’s the logic of the job that defines these steps. Any person or organization will have to accomplish all job steps to successfully execute a job, regardless of the solutions they might use to get that job done.
For example, say that a provider solution you’re currently using starts to malfunction. A Job-to-be-Done arises to obtain product support with the aim of resolving the issue. There are five logical job steps that must be accomplished to get this job done well.
Job Step 1—you must determine the kind of support needed, otherwise there’s no path forward.
Job Step 2—you must locate product support contact information to execute the next job step.
Job Step 3—you must gather specific information needed before you can obtain product support.
Job Step 4—you must obtain product support, which can take the form of instructions you execute yourself or can be a service such as software or a human agent that executes a fix for you.
Job Step 5—you must verify that the product issue has actually been resolved. If the issue is not resolved, you must repeat a prior job step(s) or stop executing the job altogether.
In short, all five job steps must be successfully accomplished to fully resolve the issue with your product.
The other component of job process consists of job activities which individuals must perform to accomplish job steps. Job activities differ widely for getting the same job done because individuals have unique circumstances surrounding job action and they often use different solutions to get that job done. For this reason, individuals naturally engage in different job activities to accomplish the same job steps.
You can think of job activities as the tactics for accomplishing job steps and, as such, job activities can be broken down into a number of separate tasks. The key thing to remember is that it’s job circumstance and solutions-in-use that determine the nature of activities among different individuals executing the same job. But regardless of the nature of their activities, all individuals must successfully accomplish every job step to get a job done well.
It should be noted that job steps differ from a customer journey map that depicts the activities that individuals or “customer personas” are doing between job steps using a particular solution in a specific circumstance. In contrast, job steps are the logical objectives that must accomplished to get a job done well, independent of solutions and job circumstance.
Now, the circumstance surrounding a Job-to-be-Done includes obstacles and barriers to job execution such as ability-to-pay, available time, level of knowledge, required skills and abilities, as well as physical conditions and restricted access to the resources required to get the job done.
It includes situations and conditions resulting from individual and organizational characteristics, attitudes, values, behaviors, as well as choices and decisions. It includes contextual factors such the time, place and with whom a job is executed, policies, economic and social trends, and events, to mention a few.
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