As the year comes to an end, and a new year begins, it brings new possibilities and opportunities for change. And as you head into 2024, you are likely evaluating your business’ priorities and goals. Looking inward is critical to assess what organizational factors need changing, tweaking, or complete overhauling. Another key component is looking outward: at your customers and customers. What is it that they are seeking in the year to come?
To answer this latter question, you could consider incorporating the theory of Jobs to be Done, or Jobs Theory, as you think about your business aspirations. Jobs Theory is a framework that helps explain customer behavior. “Jobs” arise in our lives every day. They are the progress we are trying to accomplish in a given situation.
When a job occurs in our lives, we “hire” a product or service to help us complete it. Many businesses are not focusing on their customers’ or consumers’ job(s), but instead they look at the market through the lens of customer demographics and their own products’ attributes. A company grounded in its customers’ and consumers’ jobs understands the functional, social, and emotional drivers behind customers’ choices. This Jobs perspective can give the company a competitive advantage because the company can tailor its products or services to its consumers’ and customers’ desires. This leads the business to gain consumers, expand the market, and grow its business.
A Jobs perspective in practice
For example, my colleague, Ann Somers Hogg, wrote about how women’s health startups are using Jobs Theory to gain a competitive advantage and grow their businesses. In her blog, she discusses two women’s health companies, Tia and Parsley Health, that are growing after organizing around their consumers’ job.
Hogg states that both companies organized around the job of “[w]hen I’m exhausted by seeing multiple doctors to address my health concerns, help me get to the root cause of my issues in one place, so I can feel like myself again.” By organizing around this job, Tia, a hybrid, whole-person health solution created for women, went from an idea started from a dining room table in 2017 to having nine physical clinics open across L.A. New York, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Parsley Health, a holistic women’s health practice focused on addressing root causes of chronic conditions, has raised over $100 million dollars and reached deals with major insurers in New York and California to be an in-network provider.
Applying a Jobs to Be Done lens to your goals
As you plan for 2024, consider asking the following questions to ensure you are organizing around your customers’ and consumers’ jobs:
- Is your service or product designed around the progress your customers and consumers seek? If not, what is it designed around, and how might that be impacting your position in the market?
- How does your service or product offer a solution to a problem with which your customers and/or consumers are struggling?
- To what extent are consumers and customers sticking with your product or service? If they are switching to something else, do you know why?
Most businesses are not tailored around their customers’ and consumers’ jobs. That is a lost opportunity to obtain customers and consumers that will use, and stick with, your product or service because it helps them accomplish their desired progress.
If you are a health care executive, you might want to consider employing a Jobs perspective to improve your products or services, and 2024 is the perfect time to get started. It just might be the key to gaining a competitive advantage and growing your business.
