Transformative Experiences: Increasing the Value of Doing Aspirational Jobs
In our Harvard Business Review article, The New You Business: How to Compete on Personal Transformations Jan/Feb 2022, we identify four categories of jobs to be done. Functional jobs help you accomplish a task or solve a problem; emotional jobs help you increase or decrease the feelings you have toward a certain situation; social jobs help to change the way you are perceived or relate to others; and aspirational jobs help people to become a better version of themselves.
Identifying a solution for aspirational jobs (along with the other three categories) has been a key element of Stone Mantel’s research and consulting for over 10 years. Here are some lessons we’ve learned about how to create value from doing aspirational jobs to be done.
Don’t Change Your Business Model Right Away. Partner.
Many brands promise transformation and believe their customers hire their products to get aspirational jobs done. (They may not use those words, but any company who sells based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or some other form of aspirational behavior model fit into this category.) But there are certain expectations that people have for solutions that do aspirational jobs. Things like:
Knowing their goals, and knowing that their goals will evolve over time.
Providing knowledge throughout the journey of change that the customer goes through.
And helping people to sustain their transformation, once they’ve achieved it.
There are more, but let’s take a look at these for a moment. In order to actually deliver on a transformative experience companies need to invest in technologies and training that identify goals. That’s what we are saying, right? That’s a capital expenditure for most companies. They must provide knowledge that maybe they don’t have to assist along the way. How will they identify those resources? How much are they willing to invest in those resources to make sure that they evolve and get better. It’s easy for a University to identify those resources (they call them faculty), but what if you create software, or manufactured goods, or health-related items. Can you marshall the amount of knowledge required? It’s a business model question.
Of course the same is true for the last bullet: sustaining transformations. These features require resources.
Senior leaders within organizations often balk at capital expenditures for new approaches. And with reason. They need proof that value will be created and that might take time. That is why we recommend partnering with other companies or resources that are needed. To change a business model takes time. To build strong partnerships takes less time--and gets easier all the time. Then, once you have a proven track record of delivering transformations with your partners, begin to add additional value to customers who hire you.
Make Money Across All Four Job Categories
Customers can be fickle. They may say they want you to transform their lives but then change their minds. If you haven’t been delivering on aspirational jobs to be done historically, they may want you to continue to offer solutions that do not require them to make changes in their lives. Companies that do not focus on jobs to be done often struggle to create new, real value. So the first step to creating more value is to identify the jobs your customers want to get done. I can’t tell you how many companies over the years see our JTBD framework and say, “We are good at functional jobs, but not the rest.” They often want to stair step their way to new value creation, by trying to deliver better on emotional jobs. It’s better to have a strategy for all four categories of jobs to be done.
For example, a company that makes cereal like General Mills, can do an exercise where they identify functional, emotional, social and aspirational jobs their customers want to get done:
Help me eat a healthy breakfast fast or on the go (Functional Job)
Help me feel good about the breakfasts I provide for my kids (Emotional Job)
Help me connect with other like-minded parents (Social Job)
Help my family become measurably healthier through diet. (Aspirational Job)
Just by identifying four job categories (instead of two), the company has expanded its white space for innovation. And there’s nothing that says that the first three jobs to be done, couldn’t be connected to the fourth one to make a better transformative experience. The opposite is also true, each of these could stand on their own and create value on their own. Then, if customers decide to put off personal transformations--which they often do--you are still creating value through the other solutions.
Learn to Individualize for Customers
Most companies have bought into the false premise that the way to know a customer is through segmentation research. That is not true, especially when you are focused the aspirational job to be done. Segmentation works best, if at all, when you manufacture goods to a certain type of customer: Expecting Mothers, Billionaire Yacht Owners, etc. When you are dealing with the aspirations of a mass audience, you don’t start with segmentation. You start with tools that help you identify individual goals and diagnose their current state. How else are they going to transform into what they want from your solution.
We like to distinguish between personalization--which is often focused on superficial things like preferences--and individualization -- which focuses on how to support individuals during their journey to become something new. Personalization might get functional and emotional jobs done, but aspirational jobs, you really need to provide the controls to help a customer on their way.
And once you do that, you won’t need segmentation. You will be able to design solutions that fit individuals, families, groups, and organizations. Afterall, these are the actual people and organizations that buy your offerings.
The wrap-up
Value from doing aspirational jobs can be generated when companies learn to partner, to make money across all four job categories (FESA), and when they know how to individualize solutions.