Competing Against Luck - Post 6/6 (Based Chapter 10)
"People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They want a quarter-inch hole."
Despite its simplicity, this quote is a profound concept. It gives us a lens through which to reimagine any product or service. And although it may not be obvious, there is a hierarchy of jobs in that statement. The top job is getting a hole. Sub-jobs might include things related to safety, repeatability, speed, durability, and cost-effectiveness. The key is understanding that we're not just selling features; we're selling a complete solution for a hierarchy of jobs.
What Are Job Hierarchies, Metrics, and Culture?
Chapter 8 of Competing Against Luck shows that customers hire products for a main job and a series of sub-jobs. Understanding this hierarchy ensures we solve the full job. Chapter 9 emphasizes that we must measure success based on job outcomes, not irrelevant metrics like clicks or downloads. Metrics that don't reflect the JTBD are distractions or red herrings, pointing us in the wrong direction. Finally, Chapter 10 focuses on building a job-focused culture, where the entire organization is aligned around the customer's job to be done.
When we know our purpose, we can align our culture and our metrics with that purpose. It's only then that we can be sure we're doing the job our customers are hiring us for.
A Real-World Example
American Express is a great example of a Purpose Brand because it's known for a specific job: managing payments with confidence. The case study isn’t in this book, but Christensen refers to it in his book, The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. The main job is a secure transaction, but it also handles sub-jobs like tracking spending and creating a feeling of prestige. The company measures success based on these job outcomes, like transaction speed and user trust, not on useless vanity metrics. This job-focused approach is embedded in its culture, so every team member understands their role in helping the customer feel confident.
At Vasion, our mission is to "make digital transformation attainable for everyone." This mission is our overarching job. Our products, like Vasion Print and Vasion Automate, are sub-jobs. The main job for Vasion Print is still to "eliminate print servers." But the ultimate purpose of that product is to contribute to our mission by making a complex process simple and accessible.
If we only measure the number of print jobs printed or printers in the system, we miss the sub-jobs of security, accessibility, and efficiency gains. Instead, we could measure job outcomes like "time saved per process", "security incidents avoided", or “decrease in internal IT Support tickets.”
When we foster a culture where teams prioritize this hierarchy of jobs and use the right metrics, we avoid the vanity of feature parity and sustain our product's value – as long as that job needs to be done, we’ll be hired!
Try This Out
Focusing on job hierarchies, metrics, and culture is a transformative exercise.
- Action Item: Pick a job your product is hired for.
- Identify one sub-job. (e.g., "streamline form data collection" has a sub-job of "ensure data security").
- Define one JTBD metric to measure that sub-job. (e.g., security incidents avoided).
- Check if your current metrics are distractions or red herrings.
This helps us measure all aspects of the job, ensuring we deliver on our promises and build a strong Purpose Brand.
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), how to align teams (Post 5), and now, how to measure and sustain job focus (Post 6). The JTBD framework helps us build products customers love by keeping their jobs first. It's been a fun journey, and I'm excited to see how we can build our résumé to be hired again and again!
Bringing it Home
The idea of a job hierarchy can apply to our lives, too. Consider the main job of raising children. What is the main job? Perhaps it’s training our children to function well in and contribute positively to society. Essentially, to have morals, principles, and a solid work ethic. Sub-jobs include "ensuring safety," "providing an education," and "creating lasting memories." Each sub-job requires its own focus, but all of them contribute to the main job. By prioritizing these jobs and using the right "metrics"—like time spent together or the number of shared meals—we can be intentional about building a fulfilling life.
By focusing on these jobs, we ensure that all our hard work is directed toward the things that really matter to our long-term success and happiness. 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!
