Jobs to Be Done changed how I think about needs....
I read a post this morning from a head of innovation, who said they had created a canvas to align their team. The story they shared was around how good and talented the team was, and how they were great at creating things, yet the failed to meet needs....
I too, many years ago ran an innovation lab within a transformation team and would see the same thing...
Business owners would tell our BA teams they needed something, and we would end up building it and then... things wouldn't get used...
What we were trying to explain to them was to move away from thinking about features and instead think about the progress the these business owners were trying to make.
See, when you understand the job, you understand:
→ Why people switch from one solution to another → What criteria they use to evaluate options → What anxieties stop them from making changes → What habits they need to break
But understanding and diagnosing are different things... and this is where a behavioral science approach helped me move from needs only to needs and behaviors and from a list of factors to a well structured behavioral diagnosis, that would help me understand what we could and could not do and what strategies we could use to deliver a well implemented intervention for the organization and the users and ultimately the end customers.
This is why I encourage the companies I work with to combine JTBD with behavioral science. The job tells you what progress people want, the behavior and factors tells you what's stopping them from making that progress, and sets you up to find the right strategies to use.
This is how that process could go (left side part is the JTBD by Ulwick from strategyn)... rest is how I would combine it....
How do you assess needs and behaviors and develop a solid diagnosis for your transformations?