Chapter 3
Build Your Job Map
Introduction
Traditionally, they had viewed this offering mostly as a vehicle to aid in the purchase of software upgrades. But IT budgets were facing increased scrutiny. Their renewals were declining. And Microsoft saw a lot of potential revenue at risk.They were under increasing pressure to give customers more reasons to renew. Fast.
Microsoft Director Dave Wascha explained that when they took a hard look at what their customers were actually trying to get done,
“…we realized that we were only really engaging with the customer in one tiny piece of their job—the purchase of the software. But this was just part of a much bigger challenge that they faced. We were not engaging with them in many of these other areas that were very important to them and where they were very dissatisfied.”
Creating a job map is revelatory for many brands.
JTBD GUIDE
What is Jobs-to-be-Done Theory?
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It’s the job map that turns the fundamentals of Jobs Theory into a reliable, repeatable innovation practice. Companies often realize they’re addressing less of the customer’s job than they could be, which allows them to systematically identify opportunities for growth.
Creating a job map helps you to:
The completed job map lays out a long-term strategy and vision for your organization— which is to devise a solution that gets the entire job done on a single platform or with a single offering.
DISCOVER OPPORTUNITIES.
It is often the case that competitive insights and innovative ideas can come from analyzing the job map, as it points out holes and deficiencies in existing solutions.
GUIDE CUSTOMER NEEDS GATHERING.
The individual or group who helps the job executor install, set up, store, transport, maintain, repair, clean, upgrade, and/or dispose of the product.
Just like Microsoft did to double their year-over-year Software Assurance revenue.
What a job map is NOT
It’s not a customer journey or customer experience map.
It does not does not describe the journey the customer goes through to buy, receive, set-up, use, upgrade, clean or maintain a product.
A job map also does not show what the customer is doing (a solution view).
For example, when an anesthesiologist checks a monitor during a surgical procedure, it’s not just for fun. The point is NOT just to look at the monitor. It’s a means to an end.
For the anesthesiologist, the job may be detecting a change in patient vital signs. Whether your customers are in the USA, India or South Africa, or whether they are using any number of competing products, a single job map will describe what each and every customer is trying to accomplish. The anesthesiologist’s job doesn’t change just because she’s in another part of the world using a different kind of monitor.
The components of a job map
Your completed job map represents your customer’s ideal process flow for their job. It depicts all the steps to complete the job in the ideal order for efficient execution.
We’ve analyzed hundreds—if not, thousands—of customer jobs over the years. We’ve mapped jobs for products and for services. We’ve mapped jobs for durable and consumable goods, chemicals, software, professional and consumer services, and many other industries.
NOTE: Not all job maps will have every step.
Your goal is to uncover what your customers are trying to do during each of these steps—then look for opportunities to help get each step done better (faster, more cheaply, and/or with more output/throughput).
Let’s take a deeper look at each process step and how to uncover key insights for each.
At each job step ask these questions when interviewing your customers.
- When starting the job, what is the first thing you are trying to accomplish?
- After completing [previous step], what is it that you are trying to accomplish next?
- Once complete: is there any step missing before, during or after the steps shown?
01. Define
Many jobs include an element of planning. This is the step in which your customers:
- Plan their approach to completing the job
- Determine their objectives
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
Weight Watchers offers a solid example of helping customers to get this step of their job done better. By offering a system that doesn’t require calorie counting, the brand helps to streamline the diet planning process. The brand also offers a variety of recipes that fit easily into their points-based program. People looking to lose weight can worry less about what they’re eating by following the Weight Watchers program.
02. Locate
Your customer often needs certain inputs to get a job done—these inputs can be tangible or intangible step in which your customers:
TANGIBLE INPUTS
- The surgical tools a nurse must locate for an operation
- The cookware and ingredients a chef needs to prepare a meal
INTANGIBLE INPUTS
- Business or other requirements that a software developer uses when writing code
- The audience personas a marketer needs to design a campaign
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
The goal of understanding this step of the job map is to find opportunities to streamline the gathering process. For example, your solution might make it easier to bring required components together—or eliminate the need for some components altogether.
Consider meal kit solutions like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron. These kits provide nearly all of the ingredients you need to streamline the process of preparing a meal. Instead of spending time going to the store and shopping for all of your ingredients, they come pre-packaged and pre-portioned—and they’re delivered right to your door. The kits also list out each of the tools you’ll need to prepare the meal, which makes the “location” step much easier for the cook..
Abbott Medical Optics (AMO) is a leading provider of lenses, insertion systems, laser vision correction systems, and other devices for cataract and refractive surgical procedures. When AMO examined this step of the job map, they realized it was a big problem for their customers if they did not have the right lenses on hand for a cataract surgical case. Their solution was to make it easier to get the lenses when customers needed them by creating an advanced schedule-planning and inventory management software module that facilitates accurate and timely replenishment.
03. Prepare
Once your customer has inputs for a job in hand, they often have to set up and organize these inputs. It may also be necessary to prepare a working surface or some other aspect of the physical environment.
- The financial planner must organize all financial accounts and records before creating a new investment plan.
- The painter removes furniture, cleans the wall, and sets up drop cloths before applying the first coat of paint.
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
- Make it easier to organize physical materials
- Make it easier to organize and analyze required data
- Create guides and safeguards to ensure the proper arrangement of the work area
In 2001, the Robert Bosch Tool Company decided to enter the circular saw market, which was considered mature and commoditized—nothing much had changed about circular saws in years.
Bosch wanted to develop a premium brand circular saw that would allow them to compete against the likes of DeWalt and Makita. The goal was to create an offering that:
- Got the job done better at a competitive price.
- Reflected the high-quality image of the Bosch brand.
- Would be carried by the big-box retailers (e.g., Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc.)
- Bosch’s success would depend on their ability to uncover and address opportunities that the other established brands had missed.
It was time to be innovative.
04. Confirm
At this step in completing the job, your customer wants to make sure everything is in place for a successful outcome.
THIS INCLUDES CONFIRMING THINGS LIKE:
- Priorities and plans are aligned regarding execution options
- Tangible and intangible inputs are of acceptable quality and functional capacity
- Materials and the working environment have been properly prepared
All of this confirmation might seem like overkill after three steps of preparation—but it is especially critical for jobs in which a delay in execution might risk a customer’s money, time, or safety.
For example, the surgical nurse must confirm the readiness of:
- The patient (jewelry removed, vitals in check)
- The equipment and instrumentation (battery power sufficient, scalpels available)
- The operating room (materials in place, sterile field intact)
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
- Help customers gain access to the types of information and feedback they need to confirm readiness and decide among execution alternatives.
- Search for ways to build confirmation into the locating and preparing steps (which would help the customer to proceed through the job more quickly and easily).
For example, Oracle’s ProfitLogic merchandising optimization software removes the responsibility from the merchandiser for confirming the optimal timing and level of markdowns by analyzing thousands of different demand scenarios at the individual product level and recommending the scenario for each product that is likely to yield the highest profit.
05. Execute
It’s time to actually DO the job—and your customer wants to get it right. Whether they’re feeding cattle or surgically removing cataracts, customers consider the execution step the most important part of the job. It’s also the most visible step (and no one wants to make mistakes in the limelight).
With all of this in mind, customers are especially concerned about avoiding problems and delays at this stage of the game—as well as achieving optimal results.
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
Kimberly-Clark’s Patient Warming System is a good example of value added in this way. The system relies on a control unit that automatically circulates heated water through thermal pads placed on the patient to avoid temperature spikes during surgery. The system can maintain normal patient temperature with only 20% of the patient body covered, which means the device performs consistently and efficiently in a variety of complex surgical procedures.
06. Monitor
Once the execution step is underway, many jobs also require some sort of monitoring to make sure things are going well. In this case, customers need to keep an eye on results during execution. This helps them determine whether things are on track—or whether they have to make some adjustments. A digital marketer needs to monitor campaign performance to ensure return on ad spend, for example.
For some jobs, customers must also monitor environmental factors to see if and when they might need to make some changes.
Some of this monitoring is passive and doesn’t require the customer to put in much effort (like the way a pacemaker monitors heartbeats).
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
You can also offer new value by linking your monitoring innovations with improved job execution or by providing diagnostic feedback.
Consider how fitness tools and apps like the Apple Watch, Fitbit and MyFitnessPal help users monitor their physical activity and diet. They offer real-time monitoring on heart rate, steps per minute, calorie burn, calorie intake, run distance and pace, etc. to help users improve results of their diet and exercise efforts. Customers can set reminders to move their bodies at certain intervals, and these tools even integrate with scales to monitor weight.
07. Modify
Executing the job doesn’t always go perfectly. If monitoring indicates something needs to change, your customer needs to look at performing updates, adjustments or maintenance.
The digital marketer monitoring an ad campaign might notice it’s not producing the intended results—and therefore need to make adjustments to the messaging, creative, or target audience, for example.
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
At the modification step, you can innovate by helping customers:
- Decide what should be adjusted
- Determine when, how, and where to make changes
- Reduce the time needed to make adjustments
- Reduce the need for modifications in the first place (by innovating around the location and preparation steps)
Many software programs perform well at supporting this step. Microsoft, for example, assists customers with the job of modifying their computer to protect against security threats. Automatic updates of its operating system remove the hassle of determining which updates are necessary, finding them, and ensuring that fixes are compatible with various elements of the operating system.
08. Conclude
It’s obvious when you finish up a simple job brushing your teeth. But more complex jobs often have some steps related to wrapping things up. The painter needs to remove painter’s tape, clean up and store/dispose of unused supplies, and return the furniture to its proper positions.
Customers often think of concluding steps as a bit of a pain—because the core job has already been completed.
HOW TO INNOVATE AT THIS STEP IN THE JOB MAP
- Simplify the conclusion process (to make it less painful)
- Design desired benefits into an earlier step in the process
- Make sure these concluding activities are closely connected to the starting point of a new job cycle (in the case of a cyclical job)
3M’s Coban Self-Adherent Wrap, for example, offers a convenient way for medical personnel to secure wound dressings at the end of treatment, because it is made of a material that stretches and adheres only to itself. This self-adherence property makes the wrap easy to remove, because it doesn’t stick to patient skin or the wound. 3M designed the product in such a way that putting on the wrap anticipates the act of taking it off.
TIPS FOR BUILDING YOUR JOB MAP
You may be tempted to write the process for how a job executor gets the job done. Anytime you think about “how,” immediately consider “why” instead.
A typical job map will include between 10 to 20 steps (there are usually multiple planning, gathering, and executing steps, for example).
List the steps in the order that would be the most ideal for efficient execution (not necessarily the same as the order the customer is completing them now).
Write steps in proper format: [verb] + [object] + [contextual clarifier].
Do not include any reference to a particular solution in your job map.
Interviewing customers to build your job map
But the best job maps include customer insights gleaned from interviews. Once you’ve defined your job-to-be-done, interviewing these job executors helps to validate your other internal and external research and refine your job map.
One team, for example, who thought its tax products were being used for the job of “prepare taxes” was surprised to learn the real job was to “formulate and execute a tax strategy.”
RESOURCES
Download the job map template and begin building your job map today.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Put Jobs-to-be-Done into practice.
You just built your customer’s job map.
Congratulations on another milestone in your innovation journey!
In Chapter 4, we will be showing you how the job map aligns the entire organization around a common understanding of the customer, and all the ways the job map will help you in your role.
