Spot the Job to Be Done - Deep Water

Advanced frameworks for understanding and quantifying user needs.

Jobs-to-be-Done Framework (Functional, Emotional, Social Dimensions)

Concept: Every job has three dimensions users are trying to satisfy simultaneously:

• Functional: The practical task (“schedule without conflicts”)
• Emotional: How they want to feel (“confident I won’t embarrass myself”)
• Social: How they want to be perceived (“professional who respects clients’ time”)

Action: For your primary job, fill out all three dimensions:

Functional job: Consolidate availability across 5+ projects
Emotional job: Feel in control, reduce anxiety about mistakes
Social job: Appear organized and reliable to clients

Why it matters: Solutions that only solve functional jobs (e.g., “syncs calendars”) lose to solutions that address emotional jobs (e.g., “sends confidence-building confirmations to clients”).

Real example: Calendly wins not just by booking meetings (functional) but by making users look professional (social) and removing scheduling anxiety (emotional).

Outcome-Driven Innovation Metrics

Concept: Users don’t want features, they want outcomes measured as “minimize/maximize [metric]”.

Action: Convert your job into measurable outcomes users want to improve:

Minimize: Time spent checking multiple calendars (currently 15 min/day)
Minimize: Risk of double-booking (currently 2-3 times/month)
Maximize: Confidence in availability accuracy (currently 60% confident)

Measurable: Survey users on satisfaction with each outcome (1-10 scale) and importance (1-10 scale).

Prioritization formula: Opportunity Score = Importance + (Importance - Satisfaction)

• Score >15 = underserved, high opportunity
• Score <10 = overserved, don’t invest here

Tool: Create an opportunity landscape showing which outcomes to target.

Jobs Mapping Across Customer Journey

Concept: The job changes as users move through stages: awareness → evaluation → purchase → onboarding → usage → renewal.

Action: Map what job exists at each stage:

Evaluation stage job: "Determine if this will actually prevent double-bookings
                       without disrupting my workflow"
Onboarding stage job: "Get my existing appointments imported without data
                       loss or duplicates"
Daily usage job: "Quickly check availability when client calls"

Why it matters: Marketing solves evaluation jobs, onboarding solves setup jobs, features solve usage jobs. Miss any stage and users churn.

Measurable: Track drop-off rates at each stage to find which jobs you’re failing to address.

Quantifying Underserved Outcomes vs Overserved

Action: For each outcome metric, plot where users are vs where they need to be:

Outcome: Minimize time to confirm availability
Current performance: 5 minutes (checking 3 calendars manually)
User satisfaction: 3/10 (very dissatisfied)
Adequate performance: 30 seconds
Overserved threshold: 5 seconds (diminishing returns)

Strategy: Focus on underserved outcomes (big satisfaction gap). Avoid overserving (adding features past “good enough”).

Real trap: Adding calendar themes and animations when users just need faster conflict detection.

Data source: User interviews asking “At what point would this be good enough?” and “What would be overkill?”

When B2B: Distinguish Between Economic Buyer’s Job vs End User’s Job

Concept: The person who pays is solving a different job than the person who uses.

Economic buyer (agency owner): "Reduce revenue loss from scheduling errors
                                 across my team"
End user (individual consultant): "Avoid embarrassing double-bookings with
                                   clients"

Action: Interview both personas separately. Map their jobs and success metrics:

Owner cares about: Team utilization rate, client retention, scalability
User cares about: Personal reputation, ease of daily use, not looking incompetent

Critical insight: You must solve BOTH jobs or you get situations where:

• Users love it but bosses won’t pay (solves user job only)
• Bosses mandate it but users revolt (solves buyer job only)

Measurable: Can you articulate ROI for buyer AND demonstrate value for end user in first week?

Example conflict: Owner wants detailed time tracking (to bill clients accurately). Users see it as micromanagement overhead. Solution must thread this needle.