Principles for Jobs-to-be-Done style customer interviews
5 principles for better interviews from JTBD co-creator Bob Moesta.
Humility
You’re not smart enough to instinctively know the underlying reasons why people do what they do. Assume nothing, be an investigator.
Causality
Everything is caused; nothing is random. The notion of randomness was created to help us be “okay” with no explanation.
Tradeoffs
Everyone makes tradeoffs to make progress. No one can have everything. What tradeoffs are your customers willing to make?
Disconnected
Most people don’t know why they do what they do. They will tell you a purchase was random, an impulse purchase, or they’ll give a simple answer. You need to dig and not accept their surface response.
Lies
Do not fall for the lies people tell themselves.
If you hear, “I bought this product because it’s important to be healthy.” Respond by asking them what three other things they’ve done recently to be healthy.
We don’t lie with malice or intent, we build a story that fits our world.
An excellent example is this exchange that Bob shared on a podcast about an interview with a customer about planning and booking a trip:
Interviewer: Why’d you decide to go to Thailand in the summer?
Participant: Because it was cheap!
Interviewer: How did you know that it was cheap?
Participant: Someone told me.
Interviewer: How much did you save?
Participant: Uhh, I don’t know.
Interviewer: How much did you spend?
Participant: I don’t know.
By digging in, we see that the participant actually didn’t care about saving money; they only wanted to feel like they were getting a good deal.
The wonderful book The Elephant in the Brain also gets at this idea, exploring the self-deception and hidden motives in human behavior.
For further reading on conducting your own JTBD-style interviews, check out my interview guide.
Thanks for reading
If you enjoyed this, I’m teaching a 2-week cohort-based cohort called Product Discovery Fundamentals, which kicks off frickin tomorrow, Jan. 24th!
Learn more:
https://maven.com/justin-williams/product-discovery-fundamentals