Alright, let’s pick up where we left off. In the first part of our discussion on Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD), we unpacked what JTBD truly means – that customers “hire” products to make progress in their lives, moving from one situation to a better one. We also explored the “demand generators”: the Push from dissatisfaction with the status quo and the Pull from the new solution’s perceived ability to transform their lives. Now, in this second and final part, we’ll confront the forces that reduce demand, broaden our understanding of competition, and see how Systems Thinking is crucial for applying JTBD effectively.

Hired, But Not Utilized: Understanding Demand Reducers and the System

Even when customers feel a strong “push” for change and see a compelling “pull” from a new solution, there are powerful, often unseen, forces working against product adoption. These are the demand reducers: Inertia and Anxiety. For product people, understanding and mitigating these forces is just as important as generating demand, because these forces are “competitors themselves as any product produced by a competing business”.

Inertia is, quite simply, the tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged. It’s the comfort of the status quo, the ingrained habits that make switching difficult. This manifests in two ways:

  • Habits-in-choice refers to the switching costs – the effort, time, or perceived risk involved in moving from an old solution to a new one. If you want customers to switch, you must understand their fears and proactively offer solutions, like data migration tools, to minimize perceived risk. Your first impression is crucial here.
  • Habits-in-use occurs even after a purchase. Customers might revert to old behaviors or combine your product with other “compensatory behaviors”. Tracking product usage metrics and staying close to the customer is essential to identify what might limit your product’s long-term success. Old habits, as they say, die hard.

Then there’s Anxiety, which stems from the fear of the unknown or the risk associated with a new product. This also comes in two flavors:

  • Anxiety-in-choice is the worry about whether a product will actually work for them to get the Job Done. Offering trials, refunds, discounts, and clear documentation can help customers “get their feet wet” and minimize this risk perception.
  • Anxiety-in-use arises after the product is acquired, focusing on the struggle or difficulty in using it. The quicker you can activate and empower users to see the value, the better you can alleviate this anxiety, improving acquisition and retention. Staying “close with the customer” and co-creating whenever possible fuels your go-to-market engine.

These “silent competitors” – Inertia and Anxiety – highlight that innovation isn’t just about flashy features; it’s also about the “not-so-sexy work” of helping customers overcome resistance and make progress toward their desired state.

Now, let’s talk about Competition. In the JTBD framework, competition isn’t just other companies with similar products. This model challenges traditional competitive analysis that focuses solely on features. Instead, customers “use whatever helps them to make progress against a JTBD”. This means your competition can be anything that solves the customer’s problem, even if it’s not a product at all.

Consider Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings, who famously said, “Sleep is my greatest enemy” because it competes for customers’ time. Or think about the failed ChotuKool refrigerator in rural India. Its creators “not understanding the competition holistically” – which included existing customer habits like buying fresh vegetables daily or boiling milk – led to its downfall. These examples reinforce that customers look for a solution, not a product. If an existing “analog system” or simple compensatory behavior already “gets the job done,” that’s your true competition.

This brings us to Systems Thinking, a crucial mental model deeply interlinked with JTBD. A system is a group of “interacting, interrelated, or interdependent parts that form a complex and unified whole that has a specific purpose”. In product building, understanding these interdependencies is vital because “every fragment impacts some other pieces”. Just ask Blockbuster or Kodak; their failure to understand evolving user behavior within a larger system was fatal.

Systems thinking involves viewing reality at different levels:

  • Events are daily occurrences, like a customer reporting a defect.
  • Patterns are repeated events, such as growing customer dissatisfaction.
  • Systemic Structures are the hardest to see; they are the underlying causes of events and patterns, including actors, their interactions (culture), and how the team works. You cannot solve systemic problems by looking at fragments in isolation.

Within systems, there are Feedback Loops:

  • Reinforcing loops accelerate growth or decline.
  • Balancing loops try to maintain a desired state.

As product managers, our role is to “clearly understand how the system operates and what levers we can pull for a specific outcome”. The forces of progress (push, pull, anxiety, inertia) influence how customers move through this system. The goal is to identify gaps between the current and desired states and explore options to close them.

In essence, a customer lives within a complex system of needs, desires, and pain points. Our job isn’t to simply build what they say they want, but to study the system with empathy, identify dysfunctions, and help the customer move to their desired state using our solution. This means our responsibility isn’t over with product delivery; we commit to learning and evolving with our customers, recognizing that product management is a “cradle-to-grave” responsibility for the solution.

Product work is indeed hard, as we often sign up for the challenging stuff. However, frameworks like Jobs-to-be-Done, combined with Systems Thinking, provide powerful mental models that help us understand the deep “why” behind what we build, ensuring we “ship what matters” and truly help customers make progress in their lives.