Jobs-to-be-Done Radio

Is education really a “job” if the student is forced or prompted to consume it in the way that we’ve designed it?    There are a lot of great start-ups in the education space that are attempting to answer this … Read More

Is education really a "job" if the student is forced or prompted to consume it in the way that we've designed it?    There are a lot of great start-ups in the education space that are attempting to answer this question as they roll new products out into the market. How can start-ups in the education vertical apply the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework to their products if the student's consideration set is pre-determined for them?  Should we focus on the teacher's jobs, the student's jobs, the administrator's jobs? This week we unpack each of these questions and discuss how JTBD can be applied in education. Listen to the Show Leave us your feedback and let us know what you think about the show! Coming Up Next Week Next week we'll dive back into the tools and tactics of JTBD, and discuss interview tips, and the creation of the timeline. Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes!  Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using this feed. iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes! In Case You Like Reading More Than Listening Hey, this is Doug Crets. We're talking again on Jobs-to-be-Done Radio. We're here with Chris and Bob. It's been another week. Thank you, guys, for joining us. Good to see you guys here again. Today, my thoughts are I wondered if Bob could right my ship here and tell me if I'm on the right track or if I'm on the wrong track. I was thinking education and I was thinking about how education in the public school system K-12 is like an obligatory forced product. I was wondering, could you even use Jobs-to-be-Done theory to think about education since kids are required to go to school. They are required to learn. How do you do Jobs-to-be-Done theory if the product isn't in a choice set? It's more, "This is what you have to do. You have to go to school every day and get it done"? Is that something off limits for Jobs-to-be-Done or am I thinking about Jobs-to-be-Done in the wrong way? Bob:                          No. The thing is, as much as you can say education is obligatory there are many choices that the kids have to make along the way. The fundamental premise of Jobs is that people want to make progress. Kids want to make progress. Kids want to get through school to get to college or to get into a job. It depends on their definition of "progress" and what they choose to engage with to help them make progress. So in some cases it's not that they are buying it and using money, but they are spending their time on it. Spending time can be seen as part of the equivalent. The other thing is there is a notion of consumption. The kids have to learn how to consume the education to demonstrate new behavior so they can get on to the next class or get on to the next college or get on to the next job. We've actually done some work in that area. Looking at how kids, for example, consume education and what teachers can do. If you think of the student as the consumer... Doug:                       Right. Bob:                          ...and it's the teachers' job and school's job to help the students make progress and consume. You'll find that one thing that is most interesting, most people talk about education as having a motivation problem. We interviewed 9th and 10th graders. Everything from kids who had good grades to, I'll say, medium grades, to bad grades, to kids who have dropped out. They were 11th graders and they dropped out. What you found was that they had all hired education to make progress. At some point, the kids who dropped out, I interviewed a couple of kids from a gang. What you found is that they felt they could make more progress in the gang than they could school. I don't believe there's a fundamental motivation problem. I think there is a blockage problem. I don't think the kids can consume what were giving them. Doug:                       So wait. We've got in 2010 I think there were 6.2 million, or something like,

This week we talk through one of the tools that we use as we try to find Jobs-To-Be-Done:  The Progress Making Forces Diagram. This diagram is used to understand the forces that are at play when a consumer seeks to make progress (by purchasing a product or service).   Each force is unpacked and discussed in detail: The Push of the Current Situation The Pull of the New Solution The Anxiety of the New Solution The Allegiance to the Current Situation We also discuss how the Progress Making Forces diagram is used in conjunction with JTBD interviews, and take a deep dive into interviewing techniques that we use to tease out forces such as the anxiety that consumers have about the new solution. Use the diagram below to follow along with the discussion.  Also, feel free to use this diagram as you see fit (without altering the diagram to remove the Copyright or Re-Wired logo). Listen to the Show Coming Up Next Week Topics for discussion for next week will include Jobs-to-be-Done basics, and the Jobs that Custom Software Shop is hired to do. If you have a topic that you'd like us to discuss in future episodes, leave a comment below! Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes!  Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using this feed. iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes! In Case You Like Reading More Than Listening All right, this is Doug Crets and we're back finally two Jobs-to-be-Done Radio. We've done about three weeks worth of these and we've got a really cool show this time. We've got partner Bob Moesta and his partner Chris Spiek talking about the Progress Making Forces diagram many of you have called in and e-mailed us about. Asking, "What does that look like? What do these forces mean? What are they?" We're going to just kick it off with having Bob tell us what are these forces and how do they figure into the whole Jobs-to-be-Done theory. Then we'll take it from there. Bob:                 so… Chris:               Hey, Bob, before you get started. Bob:                 Yeah. Chris:               Before you get started I want to say for people that are listening, if they want to see this in front of them while you talk, go to www.TheReWiredGroup.com and then on the top menu bar you will see The Blog. From there you can find the Jobs-to-be-Done Radio Posts and we will post that image so people can actually take a look at it as you're talking through it. Go ahead. I just wanted to inject that. Bob:                 As methods and tools have been evolving over time, this diagram is really what has been in my head the whole time. How do you see and find the jobs? It's the foundations of Jobs-to-be-Done in the context of it. We've talked about the different ways in which people consume and how they are pushed and pulled and why they don't consume. It's really an engineer's way of looking at the market. To me, it really helps us understand where we need to design and figure out things when people go to switch or go to make progress. The big way to look at it is going from left to right across the screen. If I am going to the left it's more like "business as usual" and I'm not making "progress." In the middle is the person who is trying to make "progress" and it's like, "Am I really going to make 'progress' or not?" Any time that they are struggling, to me, the struggling it's like the seed of innovation. Where people struggle to do something it's like they care about it, they want to do something different. There is something being pulled there. It's like that struggle, that conflict is the fundamentals of, to me, it's innovation. Doug:              And then…?

This week we talk through one of the tools that we use as we try to find Jobs-To-Be-Done:  The Progress Making Forces Diagram. This diagram is used to understand the forces that are at play when a consumer seeks to … Read More

This week we talk through one of the tools that we use as we try to find Jobs-To-Be-Done:  The Progress Making Forces Diagram.  This diagram is used to understand the forces that are at play when a consumer seeks to make progress (by purchasing a product or service). Each force is unpacked and discussed in detail: The Push of the Current Situation The Pull of the New Solution The Anxiety of the New Solution The Allegiance to the Current Situation We also discuss how the Progress Making Forces diagram is used in conjunction with JTBD interviews, and take a deep dive into interviewing techniques that we use to tease out forces such as the anxiety that consumers have about the new solution. Use the diagram below to follow along with the discussion.  Also, feel free to use this diagram as you see fit (without altering the diagram to remove the Copyright or Re-Wired logo). Listen to the Show Leave us your feedback and let us know what you think about the show! Coming Up Next Week Topics for discussion for next week will include Jobs-to-be-Done basics, and the Jobs that Custom Software Shop is hired to do. If you have a topic that you'd like us to discuss in future episodes, leave a comment below! Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes!  Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using this feed. iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes! In Case You Like Reading More Than Listening All right, this is Doug Crets and we're back finally two Jobs-to-be-Done Radio. We've done about three weeks worth of these and we've got a really cool show this time. We've got partner Bob Moesta and his partner Chris Spiek talking about the Progress Making Forces diagram many of you have called in and e-mailed us about. Asking, "What does that look like? What do these forces mean? What are they?" We're going to just kick it off with having Bob tell us what are these forces and how do they figure into the whole Jobs-to-be-Done theory. Then we'll take it from there. Bob:                 so… Chris:               Hey, Bob, before you get started. Bob:                 Yeah. Chris:               Before you get started I want to say for people that are listening, if they want to see this in front of them while you talk, go to www.TheReWiredGroup.com and then on the top menu bar you will see The Blog. From there you can find the Jobs-to-be-Done Radio Posts and we will post that image so people can actually take a look at it as you're talking through it. Go ahead. I just wanted to inject that. Bob:                 As methods and tools have been evolving over time, this diagram is really what has been in my head the whole time. How do you see and find the jobs? It's the foundations of Jobs-to-be-Done in the context of it. We've talked about the different ways in which people consume and how they are pushed and pulled and why they don't consume. It's really an engineer's way of looking at the market. To me, it really helps us understand where we need to design and figure out things when people go to switch or go to make progress. The big way to look at it is going from left to right across the screen. If I am going to the left it's more like "business as usual" and I'm not making "progress." In the middle is the person who is trying to make "progress" and it's like, "Am I really going to make 'progress' or not?" Any time that they are struggling, to me, the struggling it's like the seed of innovation. Where people struggle to do something it's like they care about it, they want to do something different. There is something being pulled there. It's like that struggle, that conflict is the fundamentals of, to me, it's innovation. Doug:              And then…? Bob:                 This diagram really outlines how we break down those forces. Doug:              You break them down into about, it looks like four parts. There's F1 which is the "Push Of The Situation."

This week Lou Franco, Vice President of Atlasoft Product Strategy at Kofax, joins us as a special guest on Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio.  Lou is gracious enough to take talk to us about his attempts to find differentiation in his sector of the software … Read More

This week Lou Franco, Vice President of Atlasoft Product Strategy at Kofax, joins us as a special guest on Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio.  Lou is gracious enough to take talk to us about his attempts to find differentiation in his sector of the software industry, and how he has employed the JTBD framework successfully with some recent product launches. His story is a familiar one to many people in the product strategy role who are constantly challenged with finding new ways to set their product apart.  Tune in to see how he found answers by applying Jobs-to-be-Done. Listen to the Show Coming Up Next Week Topics for discussion for next week will include Jobs-to-be-Done basics, and the Jobs that Custom Software Shop is hired to do. If you have a topic that you'd like us to discuss in future episodes, leave a comment below! Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes!  Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using this feed. iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes! In Case You Like Reading More Than Listening Hello, everybody! This is Doug Crets with Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio. We've come to that time of the week that you have all come to know and love, we're recording our Jobs-To-Be-Done podcast. We have actually a very special one this week. A couple weeks ago we started this off and we talked about, I don't even remember what we talked about. We talked about Quora and LinkedIn. The next week after that we talked to about Jobs-To-Be-Done, the job we hire 5-hour ENERGY® drinks or Red Bull to do for us. Now we actually have a special guest. We're joined by Lou Franco who is a VP of Product Strategy for a company called Kofax. You actually work for Atalasoft, which is a subsidiary of Kofax. We are joined also with our partners from The Rewired Group, Bob Modesto and Chris Spiek, and of course me. I thought we would kick it off just really briefly. I got to know Lou from Quora were he was actually answering some really great questions about Jobs-To-Be-Done. Chris and Bob, you've known him from a little bit longer before that. Why don't you help in also introducing Lou and just bring us to the topic that we are going to be discussing today? Which is, I believe, the jobs we hire PDF to do for us in our work. Chris:                       Go ahead, Bob. Bob:                          Lou reached out from one of the podcast that we did with Horace Dediu at Asymco.  Lou basically has had an interest. He happened to be in Boston and he drove I think a long way, almost 2 hours, right, Lou? Lou:                          Yeah. Bob:                          To come see us and we sat down and had dinner. We had a great conversation and he really is one of the ones who has spurred us to create the new Jobs-To-Be-Done course which we are doing online in an asynchronous and synchronous way. He's actually one of the, I will say, founding students in the class. Doug:                       Cool. Bob:                          In the meantime we've been going back and forth. As we have talked Lou has come up with… You are a product strategist so, to me, you're in the midst of formulating all these different plans and being able to execute on new products. You have some really good examples that I think that our listeners would really like to hear about. To me the one I love is the notion of the PDF generator and that. Can you tell us a little bit, Lou, about what you do, but the software company does, and then, tell us a little bit about the PDF story? Lou:                          Okay, great. Atalasoft publishes .net STKs for image processing and PDF manipulation. We've been in business for about 10 years. We were acquired by Kofax last year in May. We continue to produce STKs that manipulate images and manipulate PDFs.

This week Lou Franco, Vice President of Atlasoft Product Strategy at Kofax, joins us as a special guest on Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio.  Lou is gracious enough to take talk to us about his attempts to find differentiation in his sector of the software indust...

In this week’s episode of Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio we examine energy-related jobs and the 5 Hour Energy Drink product through the lens of Jobs-To-Be-Done. Bob talks through how the Kano Model can be used to categorize dimensions of value once the … Read More

In this week's episode of Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio we examine energy-related jobs and the 5 Hour Energy Drink product through the lens of Jobs-To-Be-Done. Bob talks through how the Kano Model can be used to categorize dimensions of value once the jobs have been defined, and the pitfalls that can be avoided by doing so (spending time and money optimizing around the wrong product attributes).  We also discuss how to approach the identification of jobs that have a ritualistic or emotional aspect to them. Listen to the Show Coming Up Next Week Next week we'll have a special guest on the show to discuss how he has applied the Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework in his role as the platform manager at a software company. Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes!  Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using this feed. iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes! Leave us your feedback and let us know what you think about the show! In Case You Like Reading More than Listening All right this is Douglas Crets. We're back with Re-Wired Radio or as we like to call it at the Re-Wired Group, Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio, and we're talking with Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek, two of the partners at Re-Wired Group. We're doing another Jobs-To-Be-Done discussion about competitive sets involving things that consumers choose to get jobs done for them. The last time we talked we were talking about LinkedIn and Quora and the competition for the Q&A for consumers. Sort of like what are those two things doing to get the consumers Q&A job done. Now we're talking about the difference between competitors in the energy drinks space. The ones that come to mind are Red Bull and 5-hour ENERGY® and coffee. Bob, why don't you bring us into this little set up here? Why are these things different? And why are we trying to search for the difference here? Bob:                          I think part of it gets back to how do you take a very powerful thing like 5-hour ENERGY® and walk into a space where there are very big competitors and literally disrupt it? It's to really articulate the different thinking that 5-hour ENERGY® from the outside and throwing the Jobs Framework on it, how it actually becomes so successful despite the fact that if you were to look at the category you'd say, "We don't need another energy drink." Yet it's there. Part of it is to realize how do you look at spaces and find those cracks were things like 5-hour ENERGY® can go in and have a very dominant position despite the fact that Red Bull and Monster and Rip It®, there's all these different kinds of energy drinks that are out there and literally they've got a very solid position in the market. Most people would say there would be no opportunity, yet 5-hour ENERGY® has come up to say, "There is a way to get to it." Doug:                       Okay. Is there a way to just… I would like to make sure that people listening maybe for the first time or even people who have come back. Can't you just briefly, Bob, tell people why do we use Jobs-To-Be-Done? Is it specifically to find room for competition or is it room to find innovation? Help people to understand that and then we're going to figure this energy drink thing. Bob:                          The Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework really is about almost taking the telescope and looking through the other end. Most of the time when you are developing products you look through your product out to the market and say, "Who needs this product? Who needs this software?" Then you basically ladder and connect based on looking through the product lens. The Jobs-To-Be-Done lens really is irrelevant to the product form that you're looking at and irrelevant of the set.

In this week's episode of Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio we examine energy-related jobs and the 5 Hour Energy Drink product through the lens of Jobs-To-Be-Done. Bob talks through how the Kano Model can be used to categorize dimensions of value once the jobs have been defined, and the pitfalls that can be avoided by doing so (spending time and money optimizing around the wrong product attributes).  We also discuss how to approach the identification of jobs that have a ritualistic or emotional aspect to them. Listen to the Show Leave us your feedback and let us know what you think about the show! Coming Up Next Week Next week we'll have a special guest on the show to discuss how he has applied the Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework in his role as the platform manager at a software company. Make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes!  Subscribe to Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio using this feed. iTunes/iPhone users can new subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes! Leave us your feedback and let us know what you think about the show!   In Case You Like Reading More than Listening All right this is Douglas Crets. We're back with Re-Wired Radio or as we like to call it at the Re-Wired Group, Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio, and we're talking with Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek, two of the partners at Re-Wired Group. We're doing another Jobs-To-Be-Done discussion about competitive sets involving things that consumers choose to get jobs done for them. The last time we talked we were talking about LinkedIn and Quora and the competition for the Q&A for consumers. Sort of like what are those two things doing to get the consumers Q&A job done. Now we're talking about the difference between competitors in the energy drinks space. The ones that come to mind are Red Bull and 5-hour ENERGY® and coffee. Bob, why don't you bring us into this little set up here? Why are these things different? And why are we trying to search for the difference here? Bob:                          I think part of it gets back to how do you take a very powerful thing like 5-hour ENERGY® and walk into a space where there are very big competitors and literally disrupt it? It's to really articulate the different thinking that 5-hour ENERGY® from the outside and throwing the Jobs Framework on it, how it actually becomes so successful despite the fact that if you were to look at the category you'd say, "We don't need another energy drink." Yet it's there. Part of it is to realize how do you look at spaces and find those cracks were things like 5-hour ENERGY® can go in and have a very dominant position despite the fact that Red Bull and Monster and Rip It®, there's all these different kinds of energy drinks that are out there and literally they've got a very solid position in the market. Most people would say there would be no opportunity, yet 5-hour ENERGY® has come up to say, "There is a way to get to it." Doug:                       Okay. Is there a way to just… I would like to make sure that people listening maybe for the first time or even people who have come back. Can't you just briefly, Bob, tell people why do we use Jobs-To-Be-Done? Is it specifically to find room for competition or is it room to find innovation? Help people to understand that and then we're going to figure this energy drink thing. Bob:                          The Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework really is about almost taking the telescope and looking through the other end. Most of the time when you are developing products you look through your product out to the market and say, "Who needs this product? Who needs this software?" Then you basically ladder and connect based on looking through the product lens. The Jobs-To-Be-Done lens really is irrelevant to the product form that you're looking at and irrelevant of the set. It's really about what are the situations where people are looking to pull products into their lives? What are they thinking about as a consideration set?

In the first episode of the Jobs-To-Be-Done radio show, Doug talks with Bob and Chris about how LinkedIn and Quora compete for the job of getting questions answered online. The discussion includes some tactial-level ideas on how LinkedIn could better understand the job, and how the timeline of consideration and consumption could be constructed using Jobs-To-Be-Done interviews. Listen to the Show Leave us your feedback and let us know what you think about the show! Coming Up Next Week Next week we'll discuss 5 Hour Energy Drink, and the challenges that come with targeting a ritualistic job (morning coffee). Subscribe to upcoming shows using this feed. In Case You Like Reading More Than Listening All right this is Doug Crets and I am bringing you live this Re-Wired Radio podcast and we're joined today by Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta who are partners of the Re-Wired Group which is an innovation think tank based in Detroit, Michigan. Chris and Bob, we're here to talk about Quora and LinkedIn broadly speaking. I guess maybe the clue in the audience here, we had talked at some point last week about what is the difference really between Quora and LinkedIn and why does it seem that Quora is so much better at bringing people together and sharing viewpoints? Why don't we start with Chris? Chris, you and I started this out and we actually went to Quora and we actually asked this question and we got one answer. The guy, Fred Landis, said it was because LinkedIn is about 100% promotion, self-promotion, and Quora promotes ideas. Do you buy into that? Why don't you just share with us your viewpoint? Chris:                       I kind of buy into it. Let's do a little bit more background. I think the listeners might be interested. Doug:                       Yeah. Chris:                       I think the conversation was pretty cool between you and I when we were at the          Re-Wired offices in Detroit. It was mostly about were trying to share as much information about Jobs-To-Be-Done as we can. So we started the LinkedIn group and got a ton of members that joined right away. I think we were both pretty impressed that people did join the group. Doug:                       Yeah. Chris:                       And then we tried to seed it with discussion, it kind of fell flat. Anytime we wrote a blog post, we put it up there and said, "Hey, what you guys think about this?" And just crickets. It's like there's a bunch of people looking at this and nobody really engaging and participating, which is weird because we know people want to talk about this. On a whim we kind of started the Quora discussion more just prompted by people asking questions on Quora and us grouping them together on one topic. It seems like it just took off to the races immediately. That kind of prompted us to have this discussion. It seems like all the professionals are obviously on LinkedIn. They hang-out there. They update their profile. They engage, but we can't get discussions going. What are the kind of critical differences between these two platforms that make Quora really powerful for discussion and LinkedIn fall flat? I like the answer that you just read, or that we received. I actually had a conversation with another colleague at lunch who is kind of a social media maiden. I posed the same question. He had a similar answer in that he said he thinks people like platforms on the web that are singularly focused. That comment to me has a number of pitfalls, but when I boil it back so he wasn't speaking in jobs language, I almost want to say I think people like platforms on the web that do a particular job for them. I think that is what we're here to talk about. Somebody wanted to chime in. Bob? Bob:                          If you think about it, there's, I'll say, a pretty complex notion of who is giving and who is receiving. If you think about LinkedIn and all the people who signed up,