Competing Against Luck - Post 5/6 (Based on Chapters 7-9)
Even Technological Marvels Need To Match a Job to Be Done
In 1961, the Amphicar Model 770, a West German wonder that could drive on roads and glide across lakes, rolled onto the New York Auto Show stage. Despite being a technical marvel, it "sank" in the market, with only 8 years of production and fewer than 4,000 produced. Why?
In 2014, the publication Petrolicious nailed it: the Amphicar was “good for one thing: fun.” But fun alone wasn’t enough when most drivers hire vehicles for practical jobs like commuting, hauling, or safe family travel—not niche aquatic adventures with a sluggish 70 mph on land and 7 mph. While it may deliver on fun in water, on land it didn’t deliver on the core jobs, proving that even dazzling innovations flop without aligning teams to what customers truly value. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphicar)
When most drivers needed a vehicle for practical jobs like commuting or safe family travel, being “fun” just isn’t enough. The Amphicar didn't deliver on the core jobs, demonstrating that even dazzling innovations flop without teams that are focused on what customers truly value.
As we’ve been looking through Clayton Christensen’s Competing Against Luck teaches, we’re reminded that customers don’t simply buy products—they “hire” them to get a job done. Despite the fact that it’s a trailing indicator, when we “follow the money”, we can quickly determine if our teams are actually being aligned around jobs, if we really understand the job! So, our goal needs to be to tease these jobs out early and align our teams around them.
As Competing Against Luck teaches us, customers don't buy products—they "hire" them to get a job done. This requires that our goal is to understand these jobs early and ensure our teams are aligned to deliver on them.
What Does Aligning Around Jobs Mean?
Chapter 7 shows how to align teams—from product managers to engineers—around the customer's job to deliver a consistent experience. This means integrating our processes (e.g., design, development, and testing) to solve the job's pain points, not simply adding features for the sake of it.
Alignment builds on the job mapping we discussed in Post 4, where we created a product's "résumé," and on the forces of progress from Post 3. When a team is aligned, every member understands the job and contributes to solving it. Chasing feature parity by copying competitors inevitably disrupts this alignment, adding complexity and wasting effort. By focusing on the vital 20% of processes that solve the job, we can deliver 80% of the value, as the Pareto Principle suggests.
A Real-World Example
A great example from the book is Intuit's QuickBooks, which aligned its teams around the job of helping small businesses "manage finances with confidence."
- Product managers simplified the interface, prioritizing ease of use.
- Engineers optimized data entry and reporting to reduce errors.
- Marketing emphasized the product's simplicity and reliability.
Every team was focused on the same job, allowing Intuit to create a product that was a clear choice for its target customer.
In a recent Product and Engineering all-hands, Ryan Wedig, Vasion’s CEO, pointed out that our early success was remarkable, but with hindsight wasn’t surprising. We went to market with only about 20% of the feature-set of our competitors. The difference? We knew the JTBD and we did it very well.
Going forward, for Vasion Forms, our teams might consider aligning around the job of "streamline form data collection." A pain point we've looked at is slow validation. Using the 5 Whys, we might discover this is due to a lack of shared focus between our design and engineering teams. The solution is to align them around the job of "fast, accurate validation." Product managers would prioritize intuitive validation features, and engineers would streamline the backend checks, possibly including AI and context for smarter validation. This ensures our teams are working together to deliver a seamless user experience, creating a "blue ocean" of value that avoids the swamp of competitor feature parity.
Try This Out
Aligning around jobs ensures that every team member is working toward the same purpose.
- Action Item: Pick a specific job your product is hired for.
- Ask: What is one process (e.g., feature design, a daily meeting) that might be misaligned with this job?
- Brainstorm one change that could make this process more job-focused (e.g., creating a shared metric for design and engineering).
This helps teams work smarter and ensures that our efforts are focused on delivering what customers need.
What's Next?
We've explored how customers hire products (Post 1), how context reveals jobs (Post 2), why they choose solutions (Post 3), how to map jobs (Post 4), and now, how to align teams (Post 5). Next week, we'll explore how to measure success and build a culture that sustains this job-focused approach.
Bringing it Home
Team alignment isn't just for business; it's essential for community and family life. Think about a shared family project, like planning a vacation or managing household chores. If everyone on the team has a different idea of the "job" to be done, the process becomes chaotic.
For a vacation, if one person's job is "find a cheap place to stay" and another's is "create a memorable family bonding experience," their actions will be misaligned. The key is to get the team aligned on a single job, like "create a fun and relaxing trip for everyone." This allows the team to work together, avoid conflict, and ensure everyone is contributing to the same goal.
The more we understand these jobs, the more effective we’ll be in our work, our relationships and our personal lives, helping to make our own, and others', lives better, as we keep Aiming Up!
