Revisiting Clayton Christensen’s ‘Jobs to be Done’ Theory

On January 23, we lost one of our finest innovation thinkers and scholars, and an icon whom I have revered and admired deeply. I’m referring to the passing away of Prof. Clayton M. Christensen, 67, Harvard Business School professor and the father of the theory of “disruptive innovation” from complications of leukemia. The closest that I’d come to associate myself with the legendary business consultant was during my rather prolonged tenure at Tata Consultancy Services he was serving as an Independent Director enabling the company to achieve greater success globally ¹, a position which he held from January 2006 until September 2018. It’s a terrible loss no doubt, but I wanted to personally pay a tribute to “Clay” and remember him through one of his famous theories on “Jobs to be Done” which not only has roots in innovation but also consists of insights for customer experience strategy.

To begin with, in 2007, Christensen popularized the phrase “Jobs to be Done”. In an MIT-Sloan Management Review article, he summarized the peculiar nature of innovation that is steeped in demographical data in the following words:

Most companies segment their markets by customer demographics or product characteristics and differentiate their offerings by adding features and functions. But the consumer has a different view of the marketplace. He simply has a job to be done and is seeking to “hire” the best product or service to do it. Marketers must adopt that perspective. ²

In 2016, he revisited his concept from a McDonald’s “Milkshake” perspective. He wrote that innovation success rates are lower across the globe because “marketers and product developers focus too much on customer profiles and on correlation unearthed in data, and no enough on what customers are trying to achieve in a particular circumstance.” ³ To interpret Prof. Christensen’s theory, in the absence of intangible data of the motivations behind people’s latent behaviour we tend to root our attention and emotion in ‘personas’ thus falling into a trap of confirmation biases.

Long story short, McDonald’s wanted to increase the sales of their famous milkshakes so they build a demographic profile of the milkshake customer. They’d invite the customers into their offices and ask them about their feedback in a bid to improve the milkshakes. They’d make the necessary changes based on customer guidance but the problem was that it had a negligible effect on the sales or profits.

Clayton Christensen and his team had this idea of jobs to be done emerging in their minds and they took upon them to find out if “there’s a job that arises in the lives of some people sometimes that causes them to hire a milkshake to get the job done.” ⁴ They set up a task to observe customers at McDonald’s and found that the real motivation behind customers buying milkshakes at McDonald’s had zero involvement of the ingredients itself rather they wanted to kill some time on their long boring drive to work. A milkshake is a perfect companion, “they just needed something to have while they were driving to stay engaged with life and not fall asleep”, says Prof. Christensen.

There were 3 big takeaways in the milkshake instance which could be essential learning for building a customer experience strategy.

• Products should be adequately satisfying the consumer’s latent behaviour, ingredients don’t matter. In McDonald’s case customers “hired” the milkshake to stay full and remain engaged behind the wheel. They compared the experience of a long drive with a banana, a bagel or a donut, and the milkshake won the race for its usability (the cup fit the holder perfectly), taste (subjective & not much of a deal), and the quantity (which kept the driver full).
• Make it convenient for the customer to spot & purchase the product. If a customer is motivated enough to achieve the goal he/she will do it eventually but without the visibility you’re just counting on your prayers. Make the product visible and accessible to the customer with minimal challenges, such as beating the line, swiping cards for faster payments, and other primary interaction elements that could be introduced to keep the customer engaged in the purchase cycle.
• Don’t rely on personas. Because they are subject to confirmation bias, a human tendency to look for relative information that confirms one’s prior personal beliefs or hypotheses. It’s misleading and highly focused on user demographics as opposed to user tasks. Therefore observe the user working in the environment which is pertinent to their goals to get the full picture of their underlying motivations & behaviours. Also, be aware of organizing the activities around the jobs that customers do and not around the customer itself.

Christensen was probably the first in his class of venerable Harvard alumni — the other being Prof. Roger Martin, who propounds the theory of applying design thinking for business innovation, to speak widely on the topic of innovation and technology. His seminal book on the principles of disruption ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ has found worldwide appreciation for chronicling the nature of business innovation, and it is said to have “deeply influenced” no less than the legendary Steve Jobs himself. Without a doubt, his doctrine on disruption and his accomplishments on the subject of innovation management will continue to bolster the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Bid you farewell, Clay!