“What job were you hiring this product to do?”
From Clayton Christensen · Author of Competing Against Luck
Why it works
Customers don't buy products; they hire them to make progress in a specific situation. The 'job' framing — Christensen's core insight in Competing Against Luck — unlocks a fundamentally different level of explanation. Asked about features, customers give you a feature list. Asked what job they hired the product to do, they describe the situation they were in, the struggle they faced, and the outcome they needed — exactly the causal chain that predicts future demand. The word 'hiring' is load-bearing: it implies the customer had a choice, made a decision, and had a criterion for success, which prompts them to reconstruct the logic of that decision rather than just describing what they use.
When to ask
Early in a customer interview or immediately after a purchase, before the customer has rationalized their decision into feature preferences. Also powerful in churn interviews to hear what job the product failed to complete.
Good follow-ups
- What was happening in your life or work that made you start looking for something like this?
- How did you know when the product was doing that job well?
- Is there a part of the job it still doesn't quite complete for you?
Watch out for
Customers unfamiliar with the framing may answer with a literal task ('manage my email') rather than the underlying progress ('keep my team from missing deadlines'). Probe with: 'And what were you trying to achieve by doing that?' until you reach a meaningful outcome, not a task description.
Where to ask
- User interviewgreat
A rich opener for any discovery or win-loss interview — the 'job' framing gives customers permission to describe context and motivation, not just feature preferences.
- In-product surveyworkable
Works best in a short post-signup survey with a single open-text field; answers are often specific enough to cluster into job categories.
Stage: Consider · A question popularized by Clayton Christensen
Source: https://www.christenseninstitute.org/book/competing-against-luck/