Читать книгу The Jobs To Be Done Playbook - Jim Kalbach - Страница 8

In April 2013, I gave a workshop at UX London, a premier design conference that attracts participants from around the world. As a speaker, I also got to attend the conference. The lineup of presenters was stellar, as it typically is, and I didn’t want to miss out on the world-class content presented there. So prior to the event, I scoured the program to see which sessions would be most interesting.

One workshop in particular caught my eye: Des Traynor’s “Where UX Meets Business Strategy.” This was a three-hour session focused on how design influences business and vice versa. More specifically, Des was going to look into “How to orient a company around a job-to-be-done,” as he wrote in the session description.

It couldn’t have been a better mix of topics to match my interests at the time—the intersection of design, strategy, and jobs to be done (JTBD). I remember distinctly how intent I was on making it to that session. I had been learning all I could about JTBD and trying some techniques in my work. This was right up my alley. Like Des, I believe that business success comes from understanding human needs and motivations.

I flew to UX London from Hamburg, Germany, where I was living at the time, the day before the event. The organizers had arranged for a car to pick me up from the airport. After I found the driver, he informed me that we’d have to wait a few minutes for another passenger. He pulled out a piece of paper with the person’s name on it before standing at the end of the arrivals area. It read “Des Traynor, UX London.” I broke into a huge grin.

On the drive from Heathrow to the conference hotel, Des and I talked a lot about jobs to be done. He has a design background and was able to relate to my perspective of the field quite well. We were seeing eye to eye. In fact, during his workshop, Des asked me to speak to the audience of about 80 people for a few minutes, based on my experience with JTBD research.

At its core, the concept of JTBD is straightforward: focus on people’s objectives independent of the means used to accomplish them. Through this lens, JTBD offers a structured way of understanding customer needs, helping to predict better how customers might act in the future. The framework provides a common unit of analysis for teams to focus on—the job to be done—and then offers a shared language for the whole team to understand value as perceived from the customer perspective.

Des knew that with decades of history, JTBD could greatly help organizations shift their mindset from inside-out to outside-in. Beyond informing product design, JTBD also has a broad appeal, including marketing, sales, customer success, support, and business strategy.

Des is one of four co-founders of a company called Intercom, an online messaging solution that allows businesses to connect directly with customers by coordinating multiple channels of communication. It turns out that JTBD has played a large role in how Intercom approached doing business.

Des and his cofounders innately understood the power of integrating a customer-centric perspective into all aspects of their business. They applied a JTBD mindset to build their company. Writing in the introduction to their recent ebook, Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done, Des reflected on the significance that JTBD had in the company’s formation and success:¹

When we were first introduced to Jobs-to-be-Done, it quickly resonated with something we already intuitively knew—that great products were built around solving problems. What Jobs-to-be-Done gave us was a better way of framing what we felt—a vocabulary and framework to unite the team behind a product strategy. Over time, it turns out it’s not just a great way for thinking about product. It’s become a marketing strategy at Intercom, as well as informing research, sales, and support.

JTBD permeated how Intercom did business, aligning employees across the company. For instance, when UX researcher Sian Townsend left Google to join the company in 2014, she hadn’t heard of JTBD. But two years later, she was not only convinced that the framework could help a company be successful, but she also became a dedicated convert. In her talk, “Jobs to Be Done: From Doubter to Believer,” Sian highlighted the significance of JTBD at Intercom:²

We’ve used JTBD to bring great focus to our company. And in the course of using JTBD, we’ve actually raised a huge amount of money over the last two years. So I feel like we must have been doing something right. It certainly feels like it’s helped us.

And after years of rapid growth, Intercom received $125 million US dollars in funding in 2018. The company trajectory continues upward. JTBD is a clear part of their success story.

But JTBD doesn’t just help startups or small teams align around customer needs. Even large organizations have relied on JTBD for strategic guidance. Just consider Intuit, the tax software giant. After 25 years of existence, the company continues double-digit growth in spite of the fact that the average lifespan of S&P 500 companies is now under 20 years.

So why isn’t Intuit dead? For one, Intuit also makes courageous moves, expanding into new markets quicker than others, often through acquisition (e.g., Mint.com and Quicken Loans). And employees are also encouraged to take risks. Experimentation is part of the company culture.

But Intuit doesn’t just make strategic guesses. Underpinning its seemingly leap-of-faith decisions is a firm grounding in customer needs at the executive level. Focusing on the job to be done allows Intuit to find continued opportunity for growth and consistently provide solutions that customers value. As founder and chairman Scott Cook says, “Jobs Theory has had—and will continue to have—a profound influence on Intuit’s approach to innovation.”³

More and more, there’s a growing belief that customer-centric businesses perform better than traditional organizations. For example, a 2014 study by Deloitte showed that customer-centric companies were more profitable.⁴ JTBD offers a consistent way to innovate around customer needs across the company, regardless of department or function. This book will show you how to implement JTBD.