Strategy Execution Framework – A Guide to Successful Strategy Execution

 

This ground-breaking framework helps you understand where to innovate and where to cut costs. It further helps you connect your strategy to your business objectives and your IT, thus aligning all critical business areas.

Among your strategic initiatives, pairing innovation with execution is most likely to yield the biggest results. But as we discuss in this article, many organizations are unable to match their organization’s ability to develop a strategic planning process with their organization ability to functionally execute strategy.

Successful strategy execution is the separator between companies that last and companies that talk a big game but quickly disappear. In the worst cases, they become case studies in developing unattainable strategic goals. Business textbooks are filled with such failures.

Strong execution companies use a strategic execution framework that matches their core values and enacts process improvements that build on their core activities to produce innovative products and services. They grow by remaining true to themselves and their abilities, understanding the resources required for meaningful innovation, and executing on their plans.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Michael Porter

Laying the Foundation for Innovation & Strategy Execution

An organization’s ability to successfully develop innovative products is based largely on the preparation that goes into its business strategy and how effectively it executes that strategy.

Plenty of people like the word “strategy” in business; it implies consideration, expertise, forethought. At Digital Leadership, we like to switch the focus over to “execution.” Your company strategy equals exactly nothing if the business can’t properly put that strategy into motion. Having strategic objectives in place is useless without a map for reaching them.

For us, that map is your strategy execution framework, an outline for a process that identifies your strengths and how to leverage them into exciting and profitable new products and services. Additionally, it cements into your organization a mindset of innovation that echoes throughout your hierarchy, across business units and functional silos. In fact, through strong execution, these divisions within your company’s operations will cease hindering your strategic planning.

How to Play to Your Strengths

Innovation is first of all about having the right mindset. Are you playing to win? Or are you merely playing to avoid losing? Organizations playing to win take chances and seize opportunities. Organizations playing to avoid losing concentrate on staying safe, not making any errors, and avoiding risks. These organizations tend to focus on cost-efficiency and cost-cutting and work on getting more performance out of what they have. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you focus on that for long enough, you will eventually be swept away by the next wave of disruption.

And what happens to the playing-to-win organization that took chances and invested in opportunities in the meantime? They are most likely miles ahead. As the fabled management guru, Peter Drucker put it more than half a century ago,

The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

Peter Drucker

The Unfair Advantage

The start-up world likes to talk about finding an “Unfair Advantage“: an advantage that allows you to leave the competition behind you and play in a space that is not packed with competitors. A sustainable advantage is one that cannot be easily copied or bought.

But which Unfair Advantages do you have as an established organization compared to a start-up? After all, you are not nimble; you are more risk-averse; you have somewhat hefty overhead; and you are less flexible.

Leveraging Your Strengths

The key is to focus not on what you don’t have, but rather on what you do. As a large organization, you have major assets you can use to your advantage. For example, you have a brand; you have existing customer relationships and thus customer access; you have deep technical expertise in specific areas; you have buying power; you have distribution relationships; you possess financial resources; and you probably have a ton of other assets and capabilities. A start-up has none of these things, nor likely do many of your competitors. These are the things that can form the basis of your own Unfair Advantage if you use them well!

As a principle, every innovation you create should leverage the existing strengths that your organization already has; this is the one sure way to gain an advantage on the competition since no one else in the market can leverage your unique strengths. This is the recipe to create a substantial, and hopefully even unfair advantage since it caters to your existing strengths.

Understanding Relevant Strengths

Some strengths are internal to your organization, and some are external.

Both internal and external strengths are relevant and can be a source of differentiation. From a portfolio-management perspective, you could also cluster different initiatives together that leverage similar strengths (for example have all marketeers across different initiatives leverage the same online marketing means and B2C customer database).

Not all strengths are created equal, however. Some contribute to your differentiation while others are unlikely to do so. How can you tell the difference?

Strategies to Identify Your Strengths

There are a few different ways to identify and assess your strengths; here are three that have worked for those of us at Digital Leadership.

1- Brainstorming, Creative Idea Generation & Interview

The simplest way is to brainstorm and build on the ideas you generate through a series of interviews with the senior business executives in your core organization. This approach will uncover some of your greatest strengths quickly. However, based on our experience, it will often not go far enough, since many firms are simply not used to reflecting on their assets and capabilities, and so asking people what they think their differentiating strengths are may not yield a full and accurate picture.

2- Work with a Capability Map

If you want to take a more systematic approach, our best advice is to work with a Capability Map.

Capabilities are the processes, systems of knowledge, and specific skills that a firm possesses based on which it operates, earns revenue, and competes with other firms. Capability Maps summarize the capabilities of a firm visually. They can exist at different levels of an organization—from an abstract list of capabilities at the enterprise level (such as in the chart we see here), or a much more detailed visualization when focusing on the particular capabilities of organizational units or even something like the IT system.

Such an analysis should allow you to determine the majority of your firm’s relevant strengths. To further deepen your understanding, you can conduct a more detailed mapping of specific parts of the organization. Your Enterprise Architecture team may already have a more detailed Capability Map covering certain aspects of your firm.

3- Work with an Operating Model

A third alternative is to mine your Operating Model for strengths that distinguish you from your competitors. Operational excellence most-often occurs after a close examination of where a business is devoting energy and resources in relation to the desired outcomes.

Your operational system may be limiting you in ways you don’t realize. It’s also likely there are opportunities for improvement that you’re missing. It might not take an entirely new operational system to make significant changes. Small advances can have big, positive organizational implications, but only if you’ve taken the time to reflect on your operating model.

How to Create Innovation has extensive templates and canvases that you can use to reflect on how you do business and move your business forward. You can find it on Digital Leadership’s website.

Keys to Successful Strategy Execution

Most organizations do not lack strategy; they lack the ability to execute. This Strategy-Execution Gap is the primary concern of most CEOs, with 2/3rds of large organizations struggling to implement their strategies. Closing this gap is paramount—after all the best strategy or idea is not worth a dime if you can’t execute it!

Insource the Most Important Elements of Your Business Strategy

In the past, many organizations outsourced IT in order to cut costs. Now these same organizations are realizing that digitalization has become the key to Value Creation and that they are lacking the capabilities (and partially the assets) to execute digitalization effectively. This conveys a key lesson: digital capabilities that impact your core or differentiating areas should never be (fully) outsourced. And what goes for digitalization in general, also goes for an innovation team: you depend on technology and innovation, so don’t outsource it.

Give Innovation a Space to Breathe

Once an idea is approved, corporations often set up dedicated teams to manage it. To “control” and “support” an innovation, all kinds of structures and rules are put in place: governance boards, Stage-Gate, review cycles, etc. Eventually, the innovation team is told they must “use internal services,” or even, “IT will develop this for you. Just specify everything, and then it will move into the backlog.” This usually finishes with “these are your team members” and “now wait for headquarter approval.” All of this comes on top of procurement, legal, and HR madness.

What happens, in effect, is that the corporation applies the rules which guarantee its own successful core operation to the innovation idea. Failure to set up the innovation space as its own entity (a quasi- start-up) leads to dire consequences: typically, 2+ year timescales, very high costs, a total dependency of the innovation team on the core business and much lower quality products due to the lack of pivoting and customer validation. No innovation has a serious chance of success without freedom from the parent company. The CEO of a leading global insurance company was spot on when he told us, “When your (already quite successful) innovation project has 10,000 customers, you can bring it into our core organization. But not before. We will crush it with our weight and heavy processes.”

The takeaway is, do not chain the innovation speedboat to your core business container ship. Oversight and support cannot happen through the standard means a corporation uses for its own processes and projects. Instead, create a protected bubble where the innovation can flourish.

Of course, this doesn’t mean avoiding support or quality checks. With Digital Leadership as a partner, we will show you how you can achieve both within your strategic execution framework.

Start with a Committed and Complete Innovation Team

To successfully execute an innovation, you will require a committed team. It is critical to understand that this team must possess a few key characteristics.

• Independence: You want the team to function autonomously and be independent of any existing structure or management. Otherwise, they won’t have the freedom to experiment, learn, and make the required decisions. If you don’t trust the team to do so, you have the wrong team. Independence also means that the team is better off if they have their own distinct and designated physical space away from the core corporate structure.That doesn’t mean the team is insulated from your strategic goals. They should be as connected as everyone else, even if they are exploring how to succeed within your strategy execution framework in a different way.
• Full-time: You want the team to be full-time and 100% committed. A great way to kill innovation is to put a couple of people on the team at 20% or 50% capacity. In this situation, they spend so much of their time catching up on what’s happening, that they never get around to doing anything.
• But temporarily assigned: Innovations do fail. So, it makes sense to form the team with the assumption that it will be a temporary, project-based group. This helps to prevent the mindset that innovation is a linear process that “must” conclude positively. If the idea turns out to be a success, you can consider reforming the team on a more permanent basis, retaining some of its current members.
• Strong digital competency: Some or possibly all of the team members should be digital and innovation specialists. Deep industry knowledge or deep understanding of the parent company is typically not required or desired at this stage; this is more often than not an obstacle to innovation rather than an aid.
• Entrepreneur-leader: You want a true entrepreneur to lead the team, someone who has been there, created (digitally enabled) innovation, and growth-hacked something. You certainly do not want a project manager to project manage the endeavor into a well-organized failure.

Start on a Strong Foundation

A true innovation mentality is necessary to successfully innovate. Do not settle for less. Successful innovation is difficult enough, if you start out with a suboptimal setup, it will make it much harder. If you create a strong foundation, you will have more confidence in letting the project unfold as it needs to. Also avoid sticking rigidly to a plan: innovation initiatives have to adjust course as they make progress and as the team learns. Agility is key. You can’t foresee where your innovation will take you. Last but not least, avoid strong dependencies of your innovation initiative on the core organization—at least initially. You do not want to be crushed by the weight of primary business strategy and core activities.

The UNITE Strategy Execution Framework

The UNITE Strategy Execution Framework creates a common foundation that project leaders and field and line employees can use to guide strategic decisions. Because poor execution is so frequently the root cause of failures in innovation, the execution framework provides a common language that drives innovation.

As you’ll see, most organizations lack a clear path for innovative project success. We scaffold all possible concerns by dividing business operations into three areas: non-core activities, core activities, and areas of differentiation.

You can use these areas as you start strategy creation to investigate where you need to invest, as well as where you need to cut back.

How Does the UNITE Strategy Execution Framework Work?

Because all of the canvases and models we’ve created under the UNITE umbrella take a holistic view of business strategy, we believe anyone tasked with developing a company’s strategic plan would benefit from consulting our book, How to Create Innovation. It includes a complete model of the Strategy Execution Framework, including the spectrums connected to building blocks of your overall approach: the importance level of certain strategic initiatives, overall business strategy (from a cost-driven approach to a value-driven approach), and your overall business focus (from improving your current competitiveness to driving differentiation).

These three components are directly responsible for the success of your company plans and will determine your ultimate destination. We invite you to consult the book, available from the Digital Leadership website.

In the meantime, we can look at the activities through which your organization delivers value, and consider how they fit into the Strategy Execution Framework.

Non-core Activities

Most of your organization is made up of non-core activities: entire areas such as accounting, forecasting, marketing, and HR, are not even sector-specific and thus generally do not add to the differentiation of your organization. In these areas, you can increase efficiency or decrease costs, but further investment in these areas is unlikely to add to your competitive advantage.

Core Activities

Your core activities are industry-specific and are areas where you possess relative strength. However, here you are competing head-to-head with other firms and are not superior to them.

Areas of Differentiating

Now contrast these with your differentiating areas. These are the activities where you are really different from other companies, and thus they are the areas that provide a competitive advantage. These differentiating activities (and thus assets and capabilities) generally represent a small percentage of your total activities (approximately 2%–5% of the total).

To summarize, when we are looking for strengths that support innovation, we need to be looking for assets and capabilities that are core or, ideally, differentiating, since these will support your competitive advantage.

Questions For Your Consideration

As you begin to think about setting up a space for your innovation, it’s time to reflect. Use these questions to ensure that you are setting yourself up for success.

Creating an unfair advantage

• Is the concept of “unfair advantage” understood in the organization?
• Has the organization identified based on which strengths an unfair advantage can be built?
• Do you have an understanding of which aspects of your business are Non-Core, Core or Differentiating as to be able to add differentiation to the points that matter?

Strategy Execution

• Have you created a true independent innovation setup for your innovation initiative separated from the core activities of your organization?
• Do you have an innovation team with the right kind of roles and skills? If not, where are the gaps and what do you need to change?
• Does the innovation team have the space to act?
• Do you outsource the right things (in the non-core areas)?

Understanding Your Customers’ Jobs

• Do you understand the Jobs-to-be-Done of your customers? What are you really helping to solve?
• Based on that understanding, who are you competing with?
• What can be done to strengthen your offering and positioning?
• Have you systematically tested your hypothesis with customers and done enough pivoting to optimally configure your product and business model?

Execution

• Does your organization have a properly defined portfolio?
• Does this portfolio differentiate between customer-facing strengths and internal strengths and thus structure the initiatives in an effective way?
• Do you run a sufficient badge size of ideas?
• Do you have costs under control?
• Do you truly build real MVPs and thus work towards building the required investment security?

The UNITE Business Model Framework: A Framework for Innovation Success

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Jobs To Be Done – How To Get It Right

 

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework offers a customer-centric approach that delves into the underlying tasks, problems, or outcomes driving a customer’s decision to “hire” a product. 

Understanding why customers choose certain products or services is essential for many roles within a company.

Why? At the heart of all successful companies is a relentless focus on the customer, whether it is a B2B or B2C customer; how firms create value is critical for long-term success.

What Is Jobs To Be Done

At its core, the Jobs To Be Done theory focuses on how and why customers “hire” products to fulfill functional, emotional, and social needs. A “job” represents a task or goal a customer wants to accomplish, encompassing different dimensions:

• Functional Needs: Practical aspects like solving a problem or completing a task.
• Emotional Needs: How the customer feels when performing the job, such as wanting to feel efficient or satisfied.
• Social Needs: How customers wish to be perceived by others, like appearing knowledgeable or stylish.

For example, purchasing a sports car isn’t just about transportation. It also satisfies emotional desires like excitement and social desires like gaining admiration.

A key principle of Jobs To Be Done is that the core job remains stable even as solutions and technologies change.

Consider the job of “listening to music“: this need has stayed the same for decades, while the solutions have evolved from vinyl records to streaming services.

Jobs To Done – Listening to music and the related jobs. This dark grey is how the iPod addressed some of the job

The jobs stayed the same but what could be achieved as a result of music streaming services changed

This stability allows you to focus on long-term customer needs without getting sidetracked by changing trends.

Jobs To Be Done also adopts a solution-agnostic approach. It focuses on the outcome the customer wants, regardless of the means.

This mindset frees you to consider various solutions. For example, the job “find a convenient way to exercise regularly” could be addressed by gym memberships, home equipment, or fitness apps.

Who Should Adopt Jobs To Be Done Framework?

Product managers, marketers, designers, and executives all should understand adopt and understand the Jobs To Be Done approach – it should be a common way of understanding, discussing and focusing on the customer.

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework provides a way to examine customer motivations by focusing on the specific tasks or problems that customers aim to solve.

By identifying these “jobs,” you can develop solutions that more effectively meet real customer needs.

Product managers want to develop successful products that sell well and outperform the competition. By applying the JTBD framework, they can create offerings that align closely with customers’ goals, increasing the product’s appeal and competitive advantage.

Marketers need to position the product in a way that differentiates it in the market and so it resonates with the goals (needs) of the customer. JTBD frames how to think and craft messages that connect with the jobs customers need to accomplish. This connection leads to more effective and engaging marketing campaigns.

Designers need to create frictionless user experiences and match the flow of tasks and the overall goal of the customer. By understanding the jobs, they can design interfaces and interactions that make these tasks easier and more intuitive. This approach results in products that are more user-friendly and satisfying.

Executives focus on improving innovation outcomes of new products or services while reducing the risks associated with new product development. The Jobs To Be Done framework provides insights that help them to make strategic decisions grounded in customer needs. This strategy leads to more successful product launches and better allocation of resources.

Adopting the Jobs To Be Done framework fosters a common mindset and helps internal teams collaborate on product development projects.

The JBTD Framework

The Jobs To Be Done framework includes the follwoing components to understand customer motivations:

• Functional, Emotional, and Social Aspects: Identifying these helps create a complete view of why customers choose a product.
• Job Mapping: Breaking down a job into steps to understand the sequence and context of how a customer approaches it.
• Creating Job Statements: Using a structured format to define the job, such as: “When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [desired outcome].”

What Is Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)?

Tony Ulwick emphasises that the key to successful job mapping is to adopt an outcome-driven approach.

Each step of the job should be seen as an opportunity to deliver measurable outcomes that the customer values.

Ulwick suggests that you should aim to identify desired outcomes that are stable over time and use these insights to guide product development.

By using outcome statements, Ulwick’s approach helps to specify how customers measure success in each stage of the job.

An outcome statement typically includes a direction (increase, decrease, minimise), a metric (time, cost, effort), and an object of control (the specific aspect being addressed).

For example, a statement like “minimise the time to gather information for financial planning” pinpoints exactly how a customer would like to see their job improved.

Crafting a Job Statement: Key Elements and Method

A job statement is a concise expression of what a customer aims to achieve and provides a clear direction for product development and innovation.

To craft a detailed job statement incorporate these five components to gain a full understanding from the customer’s perspective. The formula is as follows:

Identifier + Action + Focus + Object + Context

To develop a job statement, begin with the Identifier, which defines the person or group for whom the job applies.

Then, identify the Action, describing the improvement or change the customer seeks.

The next step is to determine the Focus, which is the aspect of life or experience needing improvement.

After that, specify the Object that the action will directly affect.

Finally, outline the Context in which this job occurs, providing insight into the circumstances or situations relevant to achieving the desired outcome.

• Identifier: The person or group for whom the statement applies (customer segment)
• Action: The change or improvement the customer wants.
• Focus: The aspect of life or experience that needs improvement.
• Object: The item, product, or concept that the job aims to impact.
• Context: The situation or circumstances in which the job occurs.

10 Jobs To Be Done Statement Examples

Ten Examples of Job Statements

1. Identifier: Environmentally-conscious homeowner | Action: Reduce | Focus: Environmental impact | Object: Household waste | Context: By composting food scraps at homeIdentifier: Office worker | Action: Increase | Focus: Productivity | Object: Daily task management | Context: By organising tasks digitally during work hours
2. Identifier: Parent | Action: Enhance | Focus: Quality time | Object: Family bonding | Context: By planning weekend activities that involve all family members
3. Identifier: Budget traveller | Action: Minimise | Focus: Cost | Object: Travel expenses | Context: By booking flights well in advance for upcoming trips
4. Identifier: News reader | Action: Improve | Focus: Awareness | Object: Global events | Context: By reading concise news summaries during the morning commute
5. Identifier: Busy professional | Action: Simplify | Focus: Daily meals | Object: Meal preparation | Context: By subscribing to a meal delivery service for weekday dinners
6. Identifier: Fitness enthusiast | Action: Boost | Focus: Physical health | Object: Fitness routine | Context: By attending yoga classes weekly in the evenings
7. Identifier: Young adult | Action: Monitor | Focus: Financial health | Object: Personal spending | Context: By using a budgeting app to track daily expenses
8. Identifier: Project manager | Action: Optimise | Focus: Team communication | Object: Project collaboration | Context: By using an integrated platform for remote work
9. Identifier: Student | Action: Maximise | Focus: Personal downtime | Object: Relaxation time | Context: By setting a screen time limit to balance study and relaxation

• Where does the customer experience frustration?
• What slows down or complicates the job?
• Are there any steps that require excessive effort?

How Do You Map Jobs To Be Done?

Job mapping is a systematic approach within the JTBD framework to break down a job into discrete steps, helping to understand the full process a customer undertakes to achieve a specific outcome.

It provides a view of each action, decision, and thought the customer experiences. This method shifts the focus from the product to the job itself, revealing unmet needs and pain points throughout the customer journey.

Unlike typical process mapping, job mapping outlines a customer’s journey in a solution-agnostic way.

It focuses on what the customer wants to achieve, regardless of any particular solution or product in use.

Tony Ulwick, a key proponent of the JTBD framework, emphasises this approach as critical to outcome-driven innovation. By identifying and addressing the steps customers take, you can design offerings that help customers achieve their desired outcomes more efficiently and effectively.

The Job Map: Eight Steps of Customer Action

1. Define and Plan: Customer creates an initial approach to achieve their goal.
2. Locate Input: Customer identifies and gathers necessary information for decision-making.
3. Prepare: Customer organizes information, establishes theories, and decides on next steps.
4. Confirm and Validate: Customer makes and validates their decision to act.
5. Execute: Customer performs the chosen action or procedure.
6. Monitor: Customer observes the effects and outcomes of their action.
7. Modify: Based on new information, customer reassesses their decision and decides whether to continue, adjust, or start over.
8. Conclude: Customer determines if their goal is achieved, evaluates their satisfaction, and learns from the experience.

How To Produce A Jobs To Be Done Job Map

A comprehensive job map consists of ten steps, offering a detailed look at each phase of the customer journey.

Each step represents an opportunity for businesses to understand, support, and enhance the customer experience as they progress towards completing their job.

1. Define and Identify the Job: Customers start by defining what they want to achieve. This stage involves recognising the need or problem to be solved, which sets the context for the job. Ulwick highlights that clarity here helps uncover the customer’s true intent, which guides all subsequent steps.
2. Trigger or Identify the Job to Be Done: This step involves the specific moment or situation that initiates the job. A trigger could be a problem, desire, or external event prompting the customer to act. Understanding the triggers helps businesses align their solutions to customer pain points and motivations.
3. Locate and Gather Information: Once the need is defined, customers gather the necessary resources, information, or tools to accomplish their goal. This can involve research, product comparisons, or identifying required materials. Businesses can support this stage by providing accessible, clear information to help customers make informed decisions.
4. Prepare and Organise: Before taking action, customers prepare by organising their resources or setting up the environment. This might involve filtering options, setting up devices, or assembling tools. Streamlining the preparation phase can improve the customer experience by reducing time and complexity.
5. Verify and Confirm Resources and Plan: At this stage, customers validate that they have everything they need to execute the job and confirm their approach. They assess their readiness and confidence in moving forward. Ensuring easy access to verification tools or checklists can make this stage smoother.
6. Execute and Take Action: This is the core stage where customers actively perform the main task. Execution involves carrying out the plan or using the product to achieve the goal. This step is where value is created for the customer, so solutions should focus on facilitating the job in a straightforward and efficient manner.
7. Monitor Progress and Adjust as Needed: While executing the job, customers track their progress to ensure they are on the right path. They assess if their actions are effective and make adjustments as needed. Ulwick notes that solutions should provide feedback mechanisms to help customers stay on course and address any issues promptly.
8. Modify and Make Decisions Based on Feedback: Based on the monitoring, customers may make adjustments to improve the outcome. This iterative stage requires customers to adapt their approach based on what they learn as they proceed. Tools that help refine and improve performance, such as step-by-step guidance or predictive support, can enhance this stage.
9. Complete and Review the Outcome: After execution, customers assess whether the job was done successfully. This review involves reflecting on the outcome, learning from the experience, and identifying areas for future improvement. Businesses can support customers in this stage by offering follow-up resources, opportunities for feedback, or ways to maximise the job’s benefits.
10. Conclude and Store Information for Future Jobs: Finally, customers wrap up their journey by concluding the job and storing any relevant information or knowledge for future use. This might include saving preferences, storing results, or archiving materials. Solutions that make it easy to recall past actions, replicate successful outcomes, or provide long-term benefits can improve customer retention and satisfaction.

The Jobs To Be Done Journey Navigator

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Navigator is a strategic tool designed to guide organisations in understanding the complete journey a customer goes through to accomplish a particular job.

It provides a structured way to explore customer needs, motivations, pain points, and opportunities for innovation. 

Purpose of the JTBD Navigator

The JTBD Navigator aims to give a comprehensive view of how a customer experiences a specific job, going beyond just the functional aspects to include emotional and social dimensions.

It helps to delve into not only what customers want to achieve but also how they feel throughout the process, what obstacles they face, and what criteria they use to judge success.

Key Components of the JTBD Navigator

The Navigator breaks down a customer’s journey into key components, typically aligning with a job map. These components may include:

• Triggers: What events, challenges, or needs prompt a customer to start the job? Understanding the trigger helps identify why a customer begins their journey and the urgency behind it.
• Desired Outcomes: What is the customer trying to achieve at each stage of the job? Defining these outcomes helps clarify what customers value most, both functionally and emotionally.
• Steps to Accomplish the Job: What actions does the customer take throughout their journey? Mapping out each step provides insight into where customers might struggle or require more support.
• Pain Points and Challenges: Where does the customer face obstacles or difficulties? Identifying pain points helps pinpoint opportunities for improvement or innovation.
• Success Metrics: How does the customer define success for each step of the job? Understanding success metrics helps shape the features and benefits a product should offer to meet customer expectations.

Applying the JTBD Navigator

To use the Navigator effectively, businesses typically start by conducting customer interviews or research to gather qualitative data about how the job is currently being done. The aim is to uncover not only the functional requirements of the job but also the emotional and social needs of the customer.

The insights from this research are then organised into the different stages of the job, aligning them with the components of the Navigator. This allows businesses to:

• Visualise the Complete Customer Journey: The Navigator helps teams see the journey from the customer’s perspective, making it easier to understand each stage’s goals, activities, and challenges.
• Identify Unmet Needs and Opportunities: By breaking down the journey, the Navigator highlights where current solutions fall short, providing opportunities for product improvements or new offerings.
• Align Teams Around Customer-Centric Solutions: Using the Navigator as a reference, cross-functional teams can align their efforts to design, develop, and market products that effectively meet customer needs.

Benefits of Using the JTBD Navigator

The JTBD Navigator is beneficial for businesses in several ways:

• Customer-Centric Focus: It ensures that all product development decisions are grounded in a deep understanding of the customer’s job and desired outcomes.
• Holistic View of the Job: The Navigator encourages businesses to consider all aspects of the customer journey, including functional steps and emotional or social needs.
• Structured Approach to Innovation: By providing a clear structure for mapping the customer journey, the Navigator allows teams to systematically identify areas for improvement, innovation, or differentiation.

An Example of the JTBD Navigator in Action

Consider a customer job like “preparing healthy meals quickly.” Using the JTBD Navigator, you would map out:

• the trigger (e.g., a need for quick, healthy food due to a busy schedule)
• the desired outcomes (e.g., meals that are nutritious, affordable, and quick to prepare)
• the steps to accomplish the job (e.g., finding recipes, buying ingredients, cooking, and serving)
• the pain points (e.g., lack of time, limited cooking skills, or recipe complexity).

The Navigator helps teams design solutions, like a meal kit service or an app with quick, healthy recipes, that aligns with the customer’s needs and experiences throughout the job.

Customer Criteria

Job mapping identifies the steps a customer takes to achieve a specific goal, highlighting their pain points and needs at each stage.

Once these steps are clear, it is important to understand the criteria customers use to evaluate potential solutions for their job.

This insight helps refine product development by ensuring that the solution not only fits the job but also meets the customers’ standards for value, quality, and convenience. 

Challenges and Best Practices for Implementing JTBD

Innovation is fraught with risks so any methods that can reduce that risk are worth investing in. Often I find companies dismissive of the time and effort needed to align teams, train them and develop the right mix of people.

But here’s the dilemna – do you want to face the risk of failure and the cost of that is far greater than the cost of investing in Jobs To Be Done.

A staggering 95% of newly launched products face failure. Source MIT

Implementing JTBD can present challenges, especially when it comes to moving away from a feature-led mindset.

A common pitfall is focusing too narrowly on product features without considering the full context of the customer’s job, which includes emotional and social dimensions.

It’s easy to assume that adding more features will satisfy customers, but without understanding the job, these features may not address the underlying need.

Ensuring that research and development teams have a deep understanding of the job is vital to avoid this.

A best practice for implementing JTBD is to involve diverse stakeholders from across the business in the research process.

Cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, marketers, and customer support, provide varied perspectives that help form a comprehensive understanding of the customer job.

Regularly iterating on job statements and re-evaluating the customer journey are also important, as this means you stay in touch with changing customer needs and adjust strategies accordingly.

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