Solve a Real Job
What was someone trying to get done on the day they went looking for you?
The idea
Products succeed when they help someone make progress in a situation.
In the real world
A drill is hired to create a hole, not to own a motor.
Going deeper
People do not want products; they want progress in a situation. That reframing changes who you are competing with, usually dramatically.
A drill benchmarked against every other drill can win on every specification and still lose, because nobody wants a drill. They want a hole, in a particular wall, this afternoon — and an adhesive hook, a handyman, or deciding the shelf is not needed all satisfy that. The competitor set is defined by the job, not by the category, and it almost always contains options that do not appear in any market analysis.
Where it stops applying
Job-based thinking can be stretched until it explains everything and predicts nothing. It is most useful where the category boundary is genuinely misleading about who you compete with.
Why it matters
It points you at the situation people are hiring you for, which is rarely the category you compete in.
Try this today
Describe the progress the user is seeking.
Test yourself
A team benchmarks its drill against every competing drill and wins on every specification. Sales are flat. What did the comparison miss?
Show the answer
That nobody wants a drill. They want a hole, in a particular wall, on a particular afternoon, and anything that produces one competes: an adhesive hook, a handyman, or giving up. The real competitor set is defined by the job, not the product category.
Learn this in the feed Answering from memory, then again days later, is what makes it stick.