S1 E9 | Learning Jobs To Be Done

Well then you're telling me I can't sell the way I sell or you're telling me I can't do this or you're. And that's not what we're talking about. What we're really trying to talk about is can we actually get to what people really want and value? Can I get, can I understand their context enough to develop something to meet their needs?

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast where we challenge the status quo of innovation and new product development. We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired Group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're joined by Greg Engel who is my co founder and the chief Bob interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize and recharge your brain to build better products.

In this episode, Bob and I are going to tackle a real life problem that we have at the Rewired Group all the time you're going to hear an argument. It won't be pretty at times, I'm sure it's going to be quite adversarial at times. But this is, this is what innovation is. This is how you really have to talk about your problems and with no holds barred and not take it personally and really unpack kind of what you're trying to accomplish. So on today's episode, we're going to talk about learning and what does it mean to learn jobs be done and what do people really mean by that? And what is our responsibility when people say they want to do that, what's our responsibility to them? Do we have to tell them what learning is or is not? What are those types of things? So.

Buckle your seatbelt and get ready for the ride of, of, of a lifetime. This, this, this will be interesting. So Bob, today we want to talk about, we want to tackle the problem we have or a struggle that we have all the time at the Rewired Group. And it's this notion of learning and we argue about it all the time of what is learning. And you'll often tell me, well, you have too high of a standard of learning and you think my standard learning is too low. And what I say to that always is my definition and your definition are irrelevant. It's the definition of the, of the person buying is what's actually relevant in this struggle. And we often get in arguments about that.

Well, I Think part of it though is that.

I just got a text today that says, hey, how are things? Wondering if the rewire group is still doing jobs to be done, interview trainings. I have a new team and love to get them up to speed.

And that in itself is what kind of triggered this entire conversation. Because at some point it's like.

Whatever part of this is that most people just want to say, well, how much is the course? How long is it? Can we just take it? Can we learn the process? And it gets back to.

Your point all the time is what do people really want to do? I feel like half the time they're magic wanding. Well, in two hours I want to learn everything and be a master at it. We both know that that's not possible. And so that's where we argue about do we help them down the path and give them smaller steps of progress to getting to master or getting to know it, or do we actually help them understand the expectation of like, if you want to master it, let me show you the PhD way in which to get to know how to dive deep into it. And this is where we always argue back and forth because at some point, you know, what are people really the progress that they want and what I would say more often, the time that they want to commit or the lack thereof, time they want to commit to actually learn, as opposed to be told or learn the process and the steps and that that knowledge is actually learning is where we always end up arguing.

Well, I think, I think the argument is actually even different than that. I think the argument is not learning or not. It's more of what do people really want and how do we do that. So we struggle with the same thing everybody struggles with is we want to say yes to everybody as well. So when people call and say, hey, I want to learn it, we want to say yes. But we don't even know what that means to say yes. Because if we don't unpack what they want or what their expectation is, that's going to lead to dissatisfaction.

That's right. And not creating value for them and creating value for us.

And then once you say yes and you do that, you either under engineer or over engineer the product and that's really where the arguments end up happening. So we struggle with that all the time here, quite frankly, because everybody says they want to learn it. And when you start unpacking what learn it means, it's everybody's different. And when we've done interviews in different spaces and learning can range anywhere from I Just need the language so I don't look stupid to I need to do this needs to be my profession. This is on my pip and I.

Need to do it. Yep. Versus I want to be able to add this to my quiver so I can get a new job.

Well and that's pretty close to the other one to the middle. The middle more is look, I don't want to get left behind. It's interesting. Let me know. Right. So. So you have Hey, I just need language to this is interesting. I want to know more about it to I have to do something with it. And that's the gamut that we have to run. And the problem we often have at the rewired group is everybody says they want to learn it, but to what degree? And in fact a lot of times we force them to say that.

And then when they don't learn it because going through it one time with the nuances because there's several different parts of jobs to be done. Right. And some people might understand the first part of it, which is the, the mechanics. Well, which is I'm going to break it down even simpler to that which is the screening and recruiting. Yep. Right. Or interviewing or they'll break it up into these little parts. But to actually understand jobs be done, the way we think of it is you have to be able to use it.

That's right. That's the other part. So there's the difference between learning how to do it and then learning how to use it in terms of the output of it to actually shape product and, and, or marketing and everything else.

So our arguments often go to well then Bob will say something to the effect of well then you're telling me I can't sell the way I sell or you're telling me I can't do this or you're. And that's not what we're talking about. What we're really trying to talk about is can we actually get to what people really want and value? Can I understand their context enough to develop something to meet their needs? And if they choose the wrong thing, that's on them, not on us.

Yep. Yep. Well, and that's where I again, I use contrast to create meaning. How do we give them two or three different ways in which to think about it as opposed to one. And at the same time what happens is that they're. They have a training hat on and a learning hat of like well, I just need to see the process, I need to see the steps I need to be and I'll know it and the fact is, there's one thing, you know, we always separate the difference between knowing how to get the information to frame the jobs, and then once I have the jobs, how do I actually use it to actually help me write better copy, how do I help frame features, how to actually go do development? And so part of it is that we always get caught up between. When you ask people what they want, there's this very, what I would call the shallow part of, like, I want to know the mechanics, I want to know the steps. I want to know, like, the details of learning it like it's a class, as opposed to, I want to learn how to actually build better product.

But I don't think they, I don't even think they unpack that. A lot of times I think we try. I think we, I think it's more of, hey, we hear people say, hey, I want to learn it. And then they then put their, their parameters on, their time, their effort. And a lot of times, unfortunately, and I do it as well. So I'm not calling anybody out of I want to put the least amount of time and the least amount of effort into something, but I want to learn how to do it. And that's kind of silly.

Well, and there's, and there's, there's. The other part is that we, we, we as, as learners, people who are trying to learn, we, we actually overestimate or underestimate what it really is going to take to learn something. And this is the thing where when we look back at people who have truly learned jobs and incorporated into their lives and basically been able to use it as a foundation for their development process, it takes years.

So I'm going to put you on the spot.

Okay.

And you can choose not to answer the question, just like I tell everybody in the interview. Right. You could plead the fifth, and it's completely okay. But how many people that we know have true mastery of jobs to be done in the way that we would say? Mastery, which we generally define, is understanding how the mechanics work, understanding how to find demand, and then being able to look at your supply, understand the deficiencies between supply and demand, and build a product?

I would put less than 20.

Right. So.

And there are people who are really good, quote, researchers who can get to the jobs, but, but they actually don't then know how to actually go build product with it or write copy with it. But there are very few people who have taken the time to learn and hone and refine the skill like a, like a, like a crafts, craftsperson Right. So to me, this is one of those things where we've been doing it so long that one, we make it look easy. And two is the fact is most people assume they know, well, when I have the jobs, I know what I'm going to. I know what to do. And the reality is what the. What jobs do is they actually bound the problem and the space that you're going to go innovate within. But it doesn't necessarily give you the answer. It gives you the way in which to get to the answer.

So I think the thing we often argue about, though, is how do we help people? And it's sometimes impossible because we're going through third parties and different things, but how do we help people actually make sure they're picking the right thing? Because if someone sees, hey, I'm going to take a masterclass from ABC Place and it's two hours, what's their expectation? We have no idea.

That's right. And as much as we've tried to set expectations, the fact is, part of this is where you and I have worked on, well, how do we actually understand kind of where they sit? How much do they know about jobs? Have they done it before? Is this more about. We know the reasons why people hire us in terms of those training formats. And at the same time, as much as we do that, the fact is it's very hard to get people to differentiate or say, like, no, no, two hours is not. I can figure this out in two hours. And this is where. And again, I think, I don't think it's unique to us. I think the fact is, in general, most people, the training and education business has been modularized down to small increments and that we can teach people smaller portions of it. But the fact is, this is a method that has a lot of thinking and a lot of foundational pieces in it that don't, you know, don't lend it to being able to be like, you know, learning addition or learning multiplication. It's the fact that it's complex problem solving and you got to know people and you got to understand the causality and you got to be able to use contrast and you got to be able to have interviewing tech. I mean, it's a very complicated thing, but once you have it as a skill, it's one of those things that's very, very powerful. And what we would say, though, is that there are people who have learned, I'll say, a little of it or some of it, and they've become very powerful.

Yeah, well, I think so.

It's not to saying that at some point we have a high standard of like, boy, if you want to master it, there's 20 people in the world who know it. But the fact is there's probably a thousand people in the world who are using it every day that are making a difference. But they don't know all of it. Right. They don't know exactly how to use every piece of it.

Yes.

They don't breathe it and live it as much as we do. Right. I mean, we have the advantage of this is what we do. But the problem really comes down to.

If we keep telling people they can learn it in a short period of time, are we actually going to kill the methodology?

That's my fear. That is my fear. Because at some point in time I appreciate the fact. But if I tell them they can't learn it right, then they're not even gonna try. And if I tell them it takes, okay, you gotta get this psychological, this psychology background, you've gotta get this engineering background, you've gotta get all these different pieces in place before I can actually teach it to you is like the prerequisites are so large that it's gonna die anyways. And so part of this is to realize like it's a very powerful method, like Taguchi methods is a very, very powerful. But it requires a lot of moving parts and you have to have some dedication to actually learning the moving parts in order to make it. And I feel like the attention span of developers is actually getting less and less and less.

Well, the thing we also talk about a lot is, and this is my opinion, and Bob can push back on it, is the getting to the demand is something that not every company needs to bring in house. Because once you do the, you, you have two or three core things you do. Once you get those jobs, you don't really have to look. You know, if you're looking at it every, every day, you're probably getting too many samples, you're not doing actual work. But you, you go back to it every five years or three years or whatever cadence you want to do. So the real thing you have to learn is how to use it.

That's right.

Well, and there's actually less things you have to learn on that side of the equation. Right. The hard part for most people of learning jobs we've done is the whole problem of getting out of my own paradigm, getting out of my demand side thinking, knowing all the things that I do, that's actually the hard part. So if we Eliminate that part of it and say, okay, there's 20, 30, 100, 1,000, however many people we need to service the marketplace that really understand the front part of this, the demand side uncovering, and we can get more companies to consume the. How do they change behavior? How do they, how do they change the paradigm to say, okay, we think we're consumer centric because we just put our demand, our supply side language in the consumer language and think we're the sandwich, not the. Not the mustard Last podcast, if you want to hear that one. And we allow them to think that way if we actually change their mindset and say, no, if you take this input and then you can take your supply side input, use the three circles of development and then actually use this the correct way, it's an actually easier lift. But we often think, and I think that Rewired was developed on the premise of getting more people to do more interviews.

I think the premise was, is, and this is where I would disagree is about interviews. What I would say is it's been always about helping people understand how to uncover what people are struggling with and where they want to go and what we can go build. This has always been about helping people develop better product, period. Right. And so one of the things that, you know, I say all the time is like, in the end is like, like the first rule of Jobs is not to talk about jobs is to talk about the customer and the demand side of the world and see what it is. And so, and the first half of the lift is really getting them out of the way of the supply side to see the demand side and to see how people really struggle and make progress. And then how to. The second part of the lift is then how do we translate that view into helping us write better copy and to develop better features into understanding strategic, you know, clarity and where we want to go to, where do we do acquisitions? Like, all those kinds of things come from Jobs. But to your point, not everybody needs to know how to do it, but a lot of people have to know how to use it. And that's really where I think we need to. We need to. Us rewired need to spend more time helping people understand how to use it as opposed to just teaching them how to do it.

And I want to just like say, I want to be the Debbie Downer here and just say all negative stuff, right? Because I don't think it is all negative.

Sometimes you are.

I think there's plenty of people that have used it and there's a pattern that Emerges to me that people that are able to use it on the light side, if you will. And I mean light as in a light lift, not light as in the sun. Right. Which is if you have all the decision making rights, then just being, just being able to do the interviews and understanding demand and hearing your customers in a different way is valuable to you and you can make a lot of progress.

That's why it works very well in the entrepreneurial situation. Because it's very small, teams are very focused on what they have to do and to be honest, it allows them to stay focused. Right. But when it's bigger teams, it's different.

And then I think also the people that are able to use it kind of in that light way again is people that are using it for a specific thing. If you're not trying to look at the market as a whole and you're looking at just copy or marketing ideas or different things or sales that were sales because we do sales a lot. Right. Is I may not need the whole job to be done filled out because all the elements of the job actually help many different people do their jobs.

That's correct.

So if I'm only looking for the one thing or the one function and I'm in my silo doing that, then sometimes the lighter version of jobs works. Right?

Right.

So I don't want to discourage people from learning it because I think it's a valuable tool in a lot of things. I just don't want to us to be the culprit of telling everybody it's super, super easy to learn. And then people going through it and going, well, I can't do what you guys just did. Yep, I've got a full time job over here.

That's the conversation we just had is like at some point there's people thinking they can learn it and it's kind of like it's the size, it's a built in bigger part of their job. And they're like, yeah, I can never learn these skills because I can't actually learn all these things that I have to learn to be able to do that. I think the aspect here is that you and I wrote the book Demand side Sales with the aspect of as. In developing product, we need greater detail because we have to understand causation. Right. But if we have the jobs and even a light version of the jobs, it helps us tremendously on the sales side. It actually helps us tremendously on the marketing side. But the fact is at some point in time to know how to do the process and to have those conversations and to have the paradigm shift from, you know, I'm looking at consumers through my product to looking at consumers in their life and you start to realize how you fit into it. In one case it's humbling, but at the same time, the fact is it's very, very powerful. And so part of this is to realize when people come to us and ask, oh, I want to learn it. This is where we almost go like, okay, now we have to have a serious. What does learn mean? What do you really want to do? What can't you do now? I mean, we do a jobs interview on them to understand the progress they're truly trying to make. And then what happens is they're not prepared to make the trade offs required to actually make the progress they want. Right. So they're thinking a two hour class is going to help them actually, you know, reinvent the entire way they do their copy and do their work. Their work. And you're like, that's just not realistic. Right. Because it's not just the money or the knowledge, it's the time, it's the. As we talk about it, this is more about teaching people through a trade and basically being able to practice in a, what did you call it, you know, when you become a welder or you know, it's a, it's a trade school.

Right.

And it's, it's the aspect of being. This is not, this is not a something that you can just intellectually I think it's fairly simple to learn the concepts, but very hard to do it.

Yeah, the only way I know to create mastery is through apprentice programs.

Apprentice. That's it.

That's right. Is the learning it multiple times, the immersion, immersion into it. But I don't think, you know, for most people that's not where they need to go.

That's right. I agree.

So we have to figure out, and I think the argument we have a lot is we have to figure out the right things. And a lot of times we go to the very low end and think that's going to satisfy everybody or we go to the really high end, but it's this messy middle we have to figure out, right. It's the people that maybe don't have all this decision rights to do things. So the light version doesn't work as well, but don't need the mastery either. How do we help them make progress? And I think a lot of times we default to. Well, we think it's so valuable, we think it's so powerful. Everybody should Be like us. And that's just not true most of the time.

That's right.

That's right.

And I think when we reflect on people like Katherine Thompson who works with us, I mean within 12, I'll say 14 months and I'll say 22 projects, right?

Like she's been here for two years and was exposed for it for three and a half.

Okay? So we can argue about that because part of it is that she, she might have learned about it when she was in her old job, but she had no bandwidth to actually absorb it.

And that's part of the, that's part of our argument all the time, right? Is, is we people say they want to learn it and we say, sure, you'll learn it, you're going to learn it with us. But they have full time jobs.

That's right.

We have full time jobs too. But this is our full time job.

Our full time job is building stuff and this is a tool we use in that. And so part of this is, I don't want to confuse. Our full time job is not jobs. Our full time job is helping people innovate and using a whole bunch of tools besides just jobs to be done. And so part of this is to realize like in some way this is one of our tools. It's the wrench, it's the hammer. But the fact is like the hammer doesn't work in every situation. And part of it is to realize like to your point is, we have some software we've been building that's going to help automate, if you will, a little bit of the, the, the collection of the data and some of the analysis. But the bigger part is now that they have the jobs, we actually have to help people use the jobs more. So to be honest, our, you know, the training that you and I have been arguing about is that we've been focusing on the mechanics of it for probably almost five, six years. Right. And ultimately we have several classes on the mechanics of it. We now have some software that will help basically make that a little bit easier for people to learn the mechanics of it. But ultimately we gotta get people to not only take those jobs and then utilize that as strategic input to how they develop product, how they write copy, how they actually sell, how they actually do strategy, because all of those things play a role.

Yeah. So we're kind of up on our time and I know this was kind of a fast paced argument back and forth and it really wasn't that, that heated. Right. But you, you get the, you get the sense of we struggle with the same things a lot of you struggle with. Right. It's about then talking them through and trying to figure out the right, the right things to do and how do you tackle some things and prototyping ideas. When we prototype a lot. A lot. Every, every. Just about every proposal we send out is trying to improve on what we've learned and figuring those things out and then eventually come up with some training things. But then the trick is, once we do come up with the trainings that we're talking about, how do we help people select the right one? And that's the real trick to what we're trying to do. So the key takeaways we want you to take out of this one is don't be afraid to talk things out. Don't be afraid of, of stepping on each other's toes. You have to have this kind of real life talk with people to really figure out where your differences are. Because if we just left it unpacked, it would be. Bob thinks that I have a really high standard of learning and he thinks his standard is lower. And that would be the argument. But that's not the argument at all because it doesn't matter what our definitions are. What matters is what the people want and who we're trying to service. That's the real thing. And we have to figure out who we want to service. And trying to service everybody is probably not the right thing, that's for sure. Much like it is for your products. So again, thank you for your time and we appreciate you listening and hope to hear you soon.

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