Our Perspective
What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.
The Real Risk
When you claim every buyer job, you don’t look comprehensive—you look unfocused. The cost is subtle at first: an expanding set of segments, mixed messages, and a roadmap that serves too many masters. Soon, sales conversations diverge from product intent, and marketing promises become hard to substantiate. Buyers notice. They judge you on whether you solve the one job that matters at the moment change is funded, not on how many adjacent tasks you touch.
The strategic question isn’t how many jobs you can reference. It’s whether you can credibly own the one that triggers the decision and defines the shortlist.
Choose The Keystone
A keystone job is the catalyst: it unlocks budget, shapes the criteria, and sets expectations for impact. Choosing it is a leadership decision, not a messaging trick. Test for urgency (is this the pain that starts the internal case?) and advantage (do we outperform across the moments that complete this job?). If either is weak, it’s not your keystone.
John Ulwick notes that outcome‑driven innovation built around Jobs‑to‑Be‑Done (JTBD) has shown roughly an 86% success rate versus about 17% for traditional methods—focus on outcomes compounds results when executed with discipline.
Alignment In Practice
Owning one buyer job should feel like an operating system for decisions. Create a single job map that links strategy to execution: the steps a buyer takes, the obstacles they face, and the signals that prove progress. Then wire it into planning, pipeline stages, enablement, and success measures so every team interprets priorities the same way. Most organisations we work with find that a shared job map becomes the practical glue between product choices, campaigns, and sales conversations.
When this clicks, you gain coherence. Trade‑offs get faster. Internal debates shift from opinion to evidence against a shared job lens.
Proof That Converts
Proof should show end‑to‑end completion of the keystone job, not a catalogue of features. Make the buyer’s progress unmistakable.
- Buyer guides that mirror the job steps and define selection criteria you can win.
- Case stories that quantify time‑to‑completion and impact across the job’s stages.
- Onboarding paths that map to those stages, reducing time to first value.
- Reporting that tracks job completion and downstream effects on risk, time, and costs.
Lead With Focus
Treat adjacent jobs as supporting acts. Sequence them behind the keystone and earn the right to expand.
- Say no to attractive adjacencies until end‑to‑end proof for the keystone is repeatable.
- Fund the experience that completes the job before broadening capability.
- Align pipeline definitions and targets to job progress, not feature adoption.
When you own the job that starts change, you create a standard others must match. Over time, that focus compounds into clearer choices, tighter execution, and a market that trusts your claims before you speak.
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