Krithika Shankarraman
Know Their Actual Job to Be Done
Inspired by Krithika Shankarraman episode
Krithika Shankarraman says marketers fail when they guess what customers need. Parents fail when they assume developmental stages.
Jobs-to-be-done asks what job is the customer actually hiring your product to do. Not what you think they should want. What they're actually trying to accomplish.
Your two-year-old isn't being difficult when they demand to put their shoes on themselves. They're hiring this moment to do a very specific job: build autonomy. You're standing there late for daycare thinking "I could do this in four seconds" while they're conducting a 12-minute masterclass in independence featuring both shoes on the wrong feet.
Your four-year-old asking "why" 47 consecutive times isn't trying to destroy you. They've hired you to do a job: explain how literally everything in the universe works. Why is the sky blue? Why do we have bones? Why can't we eat rocks? You thought you were hired as "parent." Turns out you were hired as a philosophical encyclopedia who's running on three hours of sleep.
