There's a job to be done

Nobody actually wants AI. That sounds like a weird thing for us to say, given what we do. But a year and a half of working with businesses has taught us that nobody wakes up wanting a chatbot. They want a job done.

There's a product strategy framework called Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) that's been around for decades. The core idea is that customers don't buy products. They "hire" them to make progress on something specific. You don't buy a drill because you want a drill. You hire it because you need a hole in the wall. And if a product does the job well, it gets kept. If it fails, it gets fired for a competitor.

The famous example is the milkshake study. McDonald's wanted to sell more milkshakes and kept tweaking flavors with no results. Then researchers asked a different question: what job are people hiring the milkshake for? Turns out, morning commuters were hiring it to make a long, boring drive more interesting: it lasts the whole ride, fills you up, and you can drink it with one hand. The competition wasn't other milkshakes. It was bananas, bagels, and boredom.

The other key insight: jobs stay stable over time, even as solutions change. The job "get me across town" has been hired out to horses, taxis, and Ubers. The technology changes. The job doesn't.

AI is going through its milkshake moment. Everyone's obsessing over the flavors: which model, which features, which benchmark. But the actual question we should be asking is: what job is someone hiring this to do?

In all our time consulting, not one client has ever asked for "AI." They wanted customers followed up with. Programming filled. Lapsed clients to be brought back. AI is just the newest tool we can use to get those things done.

Our whole thesis behind the Unprompted Assistant is that the AI is almost irrelevant. What matters is the job. For a sports club, fitness studio, or any venue with programming, the job is the same – fill classes, bring members back, keep staff focused and organized on what matters each day. It’s the same jobs these businesses have always had, it’s just a new (more effective and cost efficient) way to handle it.

So the next time you're wondering where AI fits into your life or business, reframe the question. It's not "how should I be using AI?" It's "what specific job do I need done?" 

Stay curious,
Julia & Russell