Conscious LeaderInner Game
Map the job a customer is hiring a product for, the friction they hit, what keeps them where they are, and the value gap that, when closed, moves the job forward.
Product strategy resets, go-to-market alignment, churn investigations, post-launch retros, and any moment where the team is debating features instead of jobs.
From our customers are mid-market CMOs to our customer is trying to make this specific progress when this specific thing happens — and here are their words.
Imagining a customer’s view doesn’t reliably make us more accurate; asking them does. What people say they want tends to diverge from what they do, so the lab works from a recent, real switch. And customers tend to switch for the pull of a better option, while habit and switching costs hold them in place.
Write the job as verb + object + circumstance, from a real customer. The idea that customers “hire” products to make progress comes from Tony Ulwick’s outcome-driven innovation (from 1990) and Clayton Christensen’s jobs-to-be-done theory.
Start with “Tell me about the last time you …”, not “What do you want?” Across 25 experiments, imagining another person’s perspective didn’t make people more accurate; asking them did. And changes in what people intend tend to produce much smaller changes in what they do.
Map friction in the customer’s words, then what keeps them where they are: habit, switching costs, worry about the new. Customers tend to switch for the pull of a better option, while inertia and status quo bias hold them in place.
Also runs as a half day · P1.9 HD
Half day (3 h 30 min) for three or four real customer personas, with an optional 60-minute follow-up review.
Map the jobs three or four real customer personas hire you for, cluster them across personas, and bet on the value gaps that matter most to the most customers.
Product strategy and roadmap planning across segments, portfolio decisions, go-to-market resets, and any team debating features or segments instead of jobs.
Imagining a customer’s view doesn’t reliably make us more accurate; asking them does. What people say they want tends to diverge from what they do, so the session works from recent, real switches. Customers tend to switch for the pull of a better option, while habit and switching costs hold them in place.
Name the job each persona hires you for, from recent real switches. Asking beats imagining, and behavior beats stated intention.
Cluster jobs across personas and score them by importance and how well they’re served today, an approach from Ulwick’s outcome-driven innovation.
Pick the gaps that matter most and are least served, and test one. Customers tend to switch for the pull of a better option, while habit and switching costs hold them in place.
The thinking behind this lab, published in full: