Advanced Jobs To Be Done (AJTBD) key theses

Built from scratch by Ivan Zamesin, with one goal: an algorithm for any product or business goal. Existing JTBD interpretations were deliberately not adopted — to keep the thinking unframed, and because I believed JTBD is deeper and more powerful than what had been shown before.

The methodology came from studying one hypothesis in detail — a person wants to transition to a different state — and from looking at how the brain and psyche actually work during that transition. Several established scientific theories (cited in the deep canon files) became the foundation that let AJTBD be born.

After AJTBD was created and put to work, I found that it alone does not deliver a complete algorithm for business problems. It is the necessary foundation. Combined with Unit Economics, the Riskiest Assumption Test, ABCDX segmentation, OKRs, and other methodologies, it forms the integrative Next Move Theory framework that does.

Building from scratch is the deepest form of respect for the original JTBD work — its authors saw the central unit of human motivation, the Job. The full AJTBD canon stands on ~1,000 theses, most of them diverging from other JTBD interpretations. This document overviews the foundational ones. For nuance, see the rest of the repo and subscribe to the newsletter on the canon website.

AJTBD doesn't require you to forget what you already know. Customer research, problem interviews, CJM, ICP, Willingness To Pay, feature backlogs — none of these are rejected. They become more useful inside AJTBD, because they get grounded in the right unit of analysis (the Jobs of target segments) and connected to business decisions by Next Move Theory, instead of floating free.

Expect that rewiring to take practice. Most readers arrive with an intuitive, feature-first or persona-first model of product. The structural, Job-first model takes practice to install. The second or third serious application is when it starts to feel natural, and it takes on the order of ~100 honest mistakes before the methodology becomes second nature. The mistakes are part of the path, not a sign it isn't working.

1. Units of analysis

AJTBD operates on three units of analysis. Every concept, mechanic, and decision in the methodology is built on top of these three.

• A Job is the specification of a desired transition. It names the person's situation (State A), the transition process they are trying to perform, and the expected outcome they want to reach (State B), in order to perform a higher-level Job that ultimately satisfies a need. The atomic unit (see §2). In customer analysis, a Job is paired with the chosen Solution — the Solution the customer hired to perform it. The Job carries the Consideration Set in State A: the customer's existing knowledge of how to perform the higher-level Jobs efficiently, their fear reductions across alternatives, and their fears of specific competitors. The Consideration Set is not a separate unit of analysis — it lives inside the Job. Loading Consideration Activators is the operation of writing the five pieces of information into the Consideration Set so the customer moves our way (see §18).
• The Job Graph of the segment is the hierarchy of all Jobs that exist for the people in the segment around the Core Jobs your product touches. That includes higher-order, lower-order, same-level, unconscious, and the Jobs people don't say out loud. It is the unit you use to create value and design strategic moves — which Jobs of which segments to compete for, where to climb, where to expand (see §9). The Critical Chain of Jobs is the Job Graph projected onto a time axis, where the operational detail of how the customer performs the chain lives: predictions, prediction errors, interruptions, drop-offs, micro-emotions, Solution switches. It is the operational unit for value delivery, communication, activation, retention, and churn diagnosis (see §10 and Critical Chain of Jobs).
• The Map of Segments is the set of distinct Job-based segments in the market around the Core Jobs we want to compete for, with their economic attractiveness attached — size, Jobs budget, frequency, reachability, ability to create value, competition. It is the unit you use to choose where to compete (see §14 and §9).

2. The Job is the root cause of everything in the product

• A Job is the specification of a desired transition. It names the person's situation (State A), the transition process, and the expected outcome (State B), in order to perform a higher-level Job that ultimately satisfies a need. State A is the person's current situation — their context, past experience, the Consideration Set they carry (their knowledge of the most efficient way to perform the higher-level Jobs, fear reductions across alternatives, fears of specific competitors), the negative emotions they feel while the result is not yet reached, and the triggering event that kicks off action. The transition process is the action path the person expects to take from State A to State B — with or without a Solution, through lower-level Jobs (a Critical Chain of Jobs — see §10), with costs, predictions, prediction errors, interruptions, and learning. The expected outcome (State B) is the result with its success criteria and the positive emotions they expect once it is reached. (The eight elements are unpacked in §3; the Critical Chain of Jobs in §10. Loading Consideration Activators writes the five pieces of information into the Consideration Set — see §18.)
• A Solution is what the customer uses to perform a Job. Underneath, it has a dual position: a real thing in the world (Belong, TurboTax, ChatGPT, hire a contractor, do my taxes by hand) AND a label for the specific Job Graph the customer walks under it — the set of Core Jobs and Micro Jobs that Solution installs (see Behaviour Change §2). Switching Solutions means switching the Job Graphs below.
• A Job is the root cause of every human action. Everything a person does — every action, movement, purchase, choice of solution, moment of attention — flows from a Job they are performing.
• A Job is a unit of human motivation. The brain forms goals to satisfy needs, and those goals — formulated as concrete expected outcomes in concrete contexts — are Jobs.
• Goal = task = Job. The terms are interchangeable. Anything described with I want + infinitive verb ("I want to get there," "I want to learn," "I want to feel safe") is a Job. Each verb is a separate Job.
• A Job is not a Need. "We resolve customer needs" is not actionable. Needs (safety, status, autonomy, contact, control, self-realization) live in the unconscious — too root-level and abstract to act on or research. A Job is the concrete, conscious way a person tries to satisfy a set of needs, and that is the level you can ask about in an interview, segment on, design value for, communicate, and price against.
• Every product decision silently encodes a Job and a segment. Every feature, campaign, line of copy, and pricing tier encodes a Job of a specific customer segment. The choice is not whether you embed a Job — it's whether you embed the right Job of the right segment deliberately, or the wrong one by accident.
  • Features are a way to deliver value — a way to perform Jobs more effectively (faster, cheaper, with more guarantee, with less effort). A feature is not value; it is the delivery format for value. Value is a higher energy efficiency felt by the customer.
  • Communication, landing pages, ad creatives, and sales scripts are a way to convey value. They tell the person we perform their Jobs more effectively than the alternatives. They are not value; they convey it.
  • Internal company Jobs exist too. The business, its units, and its employees all perform Jobs (close the month, reduce defect rate, secure a promotion, avoid being blamed). KPIs and OKR-style Key Results are simply Jobs of business entities. AJTBD applies to them the same way it applies to customer-facing products.
  • Business model and unit economics are downstream of Jobs, or tightly interconnected with them. Which Jobs of which people you compete for determines your TAM, your Average Price, your frequency, your CAC, and your Cost of Goods Sold. Pick different Jobs of other segments and you get different unit economics and a different P&L.
• The most expensive single error in product is choosing the wrong Job of the wrong segment. It is also one of the most frequent. When it happens, every step downstream — value, communication, unit economics, acquisition, conversion — is corrupted, and no amount of optimization downstream will fix it.
• So one of the highest-leverage moves available to a founder, PM, or marketer is choosing the right Jobs of the right segments. Nothing else in the product compounds as strongly.

3. The structure of a Job — with a worked example and interview questions

A full Job is described by eight elements, and all eight together are the Job. They group into three semantic clusters: when ___, I want to ___ (with these success criteria), in order to ___.

The Job can be shortened in conversation to its primary element — I want to + expected outcome. That shorthand is the main part of the Job, but it is not the whole Job. The whole Job is all eight elements.

When — what explains why this person wants exactly this outcome with exactly these criteria

• I'm in context: the features of the person and the situation (or, in B2B, the company and the role) that make this person want exactly this outcome with exactly these criteria.
• I feel negative emotions: what the person feels while the result is not yet reached — anxiety, irritation, doubt, shame.
• Consideration Set: the information that loaded the awareness that a more effective way to perform the higher-level Job exists.
• Trigger happened: the event in time that kicks off the action toward the outcome.

I want to — the primary element of the Job (and its quality bar)

• Expected outcome. I want to + infinitive verb — the outcome the person expects in this context, in order to perform a higher-level Job. The main part of the Job; the entire Job can be shortened to it in conversation, but the full Job is all eight elements.
  • With these success criteria. The concrete, measurable criteria by which the person judges that the outcome was reached well enough.

In order to — the higher-level Job this Job is performed in service of

• Higher-level Job(s), named by its expected outcome. What sits after "in order to" is the expected outcome of the Job one level up, not the Job-as-abstract-label. Same form as the current Job's "I want to + expected outcome," just one level higher. ("In order to do what?")
• Feel positive emotions. What the person feels once the expected outcome is reached — calm, satisfaction, pride.

Worked example: an Uber Comfort Job in San Francisco

A concrete fill-in for one target segment — young San Francisco professionals, 28–38, tech-adjacent income (~$150k+), no car, social on weekends, value time and a little comfort over the lowest price.

• when

  • I'm in context:
    • Friday 11:30pm, just finished dinner with three friends at Foreign Cinema in the Mission
    • two glasses of wine over dinner
    • live alone in a one-bedroom in Russian Hill, ~3 miles away
    • don't own a car (lived in SF for 6 years)
    • have a 9am Saturday yoga class I already paid for
  • I feel negative emotions:
    • mild anxiety about getting home safely after drinking
    • slight frustration with Friday-night surge pricing spikes
  • my Consideration Set (4 slots in my head; Loading Consideration Activators is the operation that writes into them — see §18):
    1. Awareness of available Job Graphs for the higher-level Job: Uber tariffs (X, Comfort, Black, Pet, Green), Lyft, Muni late-night, walking, driving myself — I know these all exist as ways to get home tonight.
    2. Comparative knowledge of how each Graph performs: Uber Comfort gets me home in a recent-model car with a top-rated driver who'll honor "no chat"; UberX is cheaper but driver/car is variable; Black is luxury but overkill for 3 miles; Lyft is comparable but fewer cars at this hour.
    3. Named products with entry paths: Uber Comfort = open Uber app → tap "Comfort" → set "no chat" preference; Lyft = open Lyft app → request; Muni late-night = walk to bus stop → tap Clipper card.
    4. Fears about the alternatives, and what reduces them: what calms me on Comfort — Uber's rating filter (Comfort requires 4.85+), in-app GPS showing route/ETA/price upfront, past trips proving Comfort cars are clean enough my dress won't get ruined; what scares me off the rest — UberX is a gamble on car/driver, Black is overkill price for 3 miles, Lyft has fewer cars at this hour, late-night Muni means walking 3 blocks alone in heels, walking all 3 miles is unsafe after wine, and driving myself is a DUI risk (and I don't own a car).
  • trigger happened:
    • the check arrives, the group starts splitting up on the sidewalk, I open the Uber app while saying my goodbyes

• I want to get from Foreign Cinema (Mission) to my apartment door in Russian Hill

  • with these success criteria:
    • safely — no late-night-walking-alone risk (door-to-door drop-off, not "a block away")
    • without having to drive myself — no responsibility for navigation, attention, or sobriety judgment; can decompress in the back seat
    • driver arrives within 5 minutes of request (visible ETA in the app)
    • driver follows the in-app route — no detours, no "I know a shortcut"
    • total cost under $25 even with Friday surge
    • driver doesn't try to chat — I'm tired and want to decompress in silence
    • cabin is clean (no food smell, no sticky seats — I'm wearing a dress I like)
    • recent-model car, climate I can adjust

• in order to

  • reach the expected outcome of the higher-level Job: get to bed by 12:30am rested for yoga at 9am, having made the responsible adult choice (didn't drive after wine, didn't walk home alone at midnight, didn't cheap out on safety)
  • feel positive emotions: relief (made it home safe, in my own bed), satisfaction (smart adult choice), quiet pride (responsible, no DUI risk, no late-night Muni anxiety)

• Job Frequency: ~3 times / month (Friday and Saturday late-night across-town trips after dinner or drinks)

• Job Budget: $20–25 per trip (willing to pay up to $30 with Friday surge); ~$800 / year on this Job (≈ 36 trips × $22). Not the cheapest option (UberX would be $14–18) — she's deliberately paying ~30% more for the Comfort criteria.

• Job Importance (1–10): 8 / 10. Getting home safely after drinking is non-negotiable (baseline ~7). The Comfort-tier criteria add another point because they protect tomorrow's morning (rested for yoga at 9am) and her self-image. Below 10 because UberX is an acceptable emergency downgrade if Comfort surge spikes too hard, and Lyft is a fallback if no Comforts are available.

The success criteria — safely, without driving myself, quiet driver, recent car, climate control, door drop-off — are exactly what separates Uber Comfort from UberX (where the criteria are simply cheapest acceptable safe ride). Same surface verb, same A and B, different criteria, different Job, different segment, different tariff.

The full breakdown above is Level 1 — every element fleshed out. The same Job can be compressed to Level 2 (one prose sentence) or Level 3 (a headline) without losing its shape. §4 shows when and how.

Interview questions, mapped to the Job structure

A short illustrative set of questions for a Job that was performed once in the past, to show how each Job-structure element is surfaced in conversation. The full AJTBD interview guide — principles and question bank — lives in AJTBD interview guide.

For interview questions about the solution (satisfaction, value, Aha Moment, problems), see AJTBD interview guide.

4. Jobs can be archived at three fidelity levels

A Level-1 Job record (§3) is dense by design — every element fleshed out, every criterion concrete. That makes it the right artifact for research notes and value-prop design, and the wrong one for a slide, an ad headline, or a one-line label. The same Job compresses cleanly to Level 2 or Level 3 without losing its Job-shape — but only if the Level-1 record exists underneath. Detailed canon in Job Structure §15.

Level 1 — full. All eight elements fleshed out, plus Job Frequency, Job Budget, Job Importance. Loses nothing. Use for: research notes after an interview, designing a value proposition, mapping the Job Graph, running RAT cards. (§3 is the Uber Comfort Job at Level 1.)

Level 2 — intermediate. One prose sentence in the template:

When {context} + {trigger}, I want to {expected outcome} with {main success criteria}, in order to {expected outcome of the higher-level Job}.

Preserves the five load-bearing elements. Use for: design briefs, side-by-side comparison of Jobs across segments, sales-playbook one-liners, internal alignment.

"When I'm finishing Friday-night Mission dinner at 11:30pm (two glasses of wine, no car, 9am yoga tomorrow) and the check arrives, I want to get to my Russian Hill apartment door safely, under $25, in <5 min, clean Comfort-tier car, quiet driver, in order to be in bed by 12:30am rested for yoga and feel I made the responsible adult choice."

Level 3 — minimal. Template:

I want to {expected outcome} with {main success criteria}.

Use for: landing-page headlines, ad copy, value-prop one-liners, internal labels, naming a segment.

"I want to get home from a Friday-night Mission dinner safely, in a clean Comfort-tier car with a quiet driver, for under $25."

Level 1 is the source of truth; Levels 2 and 3 are derived artifacts. They should reference the Level-1 record and re-derive on demand, not float independently. When Levels 2 or 3 drift from Level 1, the artifact has lost its anchor and is no longer trustworthy.

5. Success Criteria

Success criteria answer one question: by what concrete criteria does the person judge that the expected outcome was reached well enough? Not all criteria are quantifiable; some are qualitative ("the cabin was clean," "the driver didn't take the oncoming lane"). The point is concrete, not necessarily quantitative.

• Concrete, never abstract. "Fast," "reliable," "high-quality" are wishes. "Within 15 minutes," "no accidents," "delivered before my partner got home" are criteria.
• Same expected outcome plus different criteria equals different Core Jobs (§12 unpacks) — and different segments, where different people perform them. Treat same-verb-different-criteria Jobs as one Job and you blur distinct Jobs together, and where the criteria mark off different populations, you collapse distinct segments.
• Criteria are the specification of value. Value is performing the Core Jobs more energy-efficiently — outcome over cost — and the success criteria are where outcome is specified: the concrete bar for well enough. Without criteria, value is a wish; with criteria, it's a buildable specification. For commodity products with identical surface Jobs, criteria are often the only lever a player can pull at all.
• Aha Moment placement needs the criteria. The Aha is the moment the customer experiences the Job performed better than the criteria they came in expecting (§6). Without knowing those criteria you can't deliberately design value that exceeds them.

6. Value: the brain as an investor

This section rests on the brain-as-energy-budget framework (allostasis) articulated by Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues: the brain's primary job is to predict and manage the body's metabolic resources, and perception, emotion, and action are all consequences of that predictive energy management. Full neuroscience grounding in Scientific Foundations — see especially §2 (AJTBD's key hypothesis of value), §1 (allostasis), §3 (neural common currency), §4 (the same machinery firing during purchase decisions). The detailed value canon is in Value Creation.

• Value is energy efficiency for the brain in performing a Job — outcome (per the customer's success criteria) over cost (time, money, effort, cognitive load, negative emotion, Tax Jobs). The brain manages its resources like an investor managing a body budget — it commits attention, mental effort, and time only when the predicted outcome justifies the predicted cost. The success criteria are where outcome lives operationally. The delta between delivered value and the customer's prediction is a separate construct, and that delta is what drives behaviour change: adoption, switching, retention, learning.
• The Aha Moment is the pleasant surprise that signals value. When reality beats the criteria-encoded prediction — Job done cheaper, faster, better, simpler than expected — the brain fires a Positive Prediction Error. The Aha is not value itself; it is the brain's signal that value was delivered above expectation. Value itself is the more energy-efficient experience (the seamless checkout, the hour you got back); the Aha is the noticing.
• The Problem is the unpleasant surprise that signals under-delivery. When a Job is performed below the criteria the customer came in with, the brain fires a Negative Prediction Error: a dopamine drop, negative emotions, re-learning in the opposite direction. A Problem is the structural condition underneath — a Solution hired for a Job and performed below the customer's expected success criteria.
• Behaviour change is always relative to expectations; value itself is not. Yesterday's wow is today's baseline. The brain's predictive model adapts constantly, because the customer compares your product to every other product they touch, and the prediction bar quietly rises with every comparison. Value itself (the absolute energy-efficiency of the Solution × Job pairing) stays where it is; the customer's behaviour-change response shifts as the bar climbs.
• A feature is not value. A feature is the truck that delivers value — the format in which energy-efficiency arrives in the customer's day. Customers need a change of state (the prediction error), not a feature. Founders fall in love with their features and read criticism as an attack on identity. That's the trap.

7. A Problem is a consequence, not a root cause

A problem is always the consequence of a Solution that was hired for a Job and screwed up against that Job's success criteria. Without the Job and the Solution underneath, there is no such thing as a "problem" — it has nowhere to live. While performing which Job, with which Solution, did this Problem appear? Reconstruct that chain before working on any named "problem." Without it, you are treating a symptom, and the cause keeps regenerating the downstream interventions you make.

The "problem" the customer reports is rarely the Job they need performed. A founder says "I've been trying to hire a Product Manager for six months." Take that as the Job and the engagement turns into PM sourcing. The Job underneath is usually "save a failing product," and the unhirable PM is one consequence of that Job being delegated to a recruiting process that's failing. The right move may not be hiring at all. Anchor on the Job, not on the named problem; the problem resolves the moment a Solution performs the Job to its success criteria.

This is the ontological framing; §6 is the neurobiological one. Job → Solution → Problem describes what a Problem is in the structure of the world; the Negative Prediction Error in §6 describes what it feels like inside the customer's brain. The structural framing tells you where to intervene; the neurobiological framing tells you what the customer is experiencing.

8. The Job Graph — where strategic moves and the foundational concepts live

The Job (§2) is the specification — what is wanted, by whom, with what criteria. The Job Graph is the structural map — how Jobs relate motivationally, which higher-order Jobs sit above the Core Job, which sit at the same level, and which sit below. Strategic moves operate on two surfaces: the Job Graph and the Map of Segments. On the Graph: where to climb, which Small Jobs to capture, which Job to kill, where to add a link to a new Big Job. On the Map of Segments: which segments to compete for, which to expand into, which to exit. Detailed canon in §9 and Job Graph, §12 and Segmentation.

Most foundational AJTBD concepts live at the Graph level, not on the static Job:

• Value is the Job Graph performed more energy-efficiently — outcome (against the customer's success criteria) over cost. Value is the absolute energy-efficiency of the Solution × Job pairing, not a quantity measured relative to the customer's expectation (see Value Creation §2). The delta between delivered value and the customer's prediction is the separate construct that drives behaviour change; on the Critical Chain of Jobs (§10) that delta lands as the Aha Moment (Positive Prediction Error) the moment value beats prediction (see Behaviour Change §6).
• A Problem is the customer-side consequence of a Solution hired for a Job and performing below that Job's success criteria. The Negative Prediction Error is the brain-side signal when that under-delivery lands. Unpacked in §7; the mechanism in §6.
• A Solution is a label for a Job Graph (see Behaviour Change §2) — the specific sub-graph the customer walks under a chosen brand, product, or DIY route. The customer doesn't hire a Solution in the abstract; they hire the Graph that Solution proposes.
• Behavior change is the customer swapping one Job Graph for another — performing the same Big Job through a different set of Core Jobs and a different Solution (see Behaviour Change).
• Consideration Activators are the five pieces of information that, when loaded into the customer's Consideration Set in State A, activate their choice in our favor. Loading Consideration Activators is the operation of writing those five into the customer's head (§18 and Consideration Activators).

So AJTBD operates at two complementary levels: the Job + Solution pair, and the Job Graph. Skip the Graph and Jobs become disconnected requirements floating in the air.

9. The Job Graph

The Job Graph is the hierarchy of all the Jobs that exist for the people in some segment — the structural unit that makes strategy, value, and segmentation legible.

A Job Graph contains, around a set of Core Jobs: Critical Chains of Jobs, cycles, higher- and lower-order Jobs, unconscious and hidden Jobs, and Jobs of every type — Regular, Orientation, Tax, Fake, Emotional, Viral (full taxonomy in Job Types and Properties).

Every person performs tens to hundreds of distinct Jobs a day, thousands a month. The full Job Graph of even one person is huge; across a segment, vastly larger. You don't need the whole graph — only the subset that surrounds the Core Jobs your product performs and the Big Jobs above them.

The four levels are defined relative to our product's reach, not as absolute positions on the customer's full life-Graph (see Job Graph §2). Two products competing for adjacent territory will label different Graph levels as their Core, and both are correct.

• Core Jobs are the highest-level Jobs your product performs fully — and that you cannot climb above with the product's current shape. Operational criterion: a Job is Core if most of the Micro Jobs underneath are performed inside your product, by your team, or by automation you own.
• Big Jobs are the Jobs one level above your Core Jobs, which your product contributes to but does not fully perform. Big Jobs carry the customer's motivation; Core Jobs are what your product does. A single set of Core Jobs typically serves several Big Jobs at once.
• Small Jobs are Jobs at the same level as your Core Jobs, in service of the same Big Jobs, but which your product does not perform. They are performer-agnostic — the customer, another product, a partner, or no one yet performs them. Our Small Jobs are another product's Core Jobs, and our Core Jobs are theirs. They are the primary source of growth opportunities — perform more Jobs in one Solution; capture the Previous Job or Next Job in the chain (see Job Graph §19).
• Micro Jobs are Jobs one level below your Core Jobs and Small Jobs. The fine grain where customer experience lives.

Levels above our Core Job carry motivation; levels below carry mechanism — Jobs the customer performs only as a necessary evil, tolerated because no more efficient graph for the Big Jobs above is yet known.

It's a graph, not a tree. One lower-level Job can connect to many higher-level Jobs (many-to-many). The more higher-level Jobs a single lower-level Job contributes to, the higher the customer's motivation to perform it. The graph is built by two choices: the maker chooses which graph the Solution offers, and the customer accepts it or rejects it for another Solution (Job Graph §4).

10. The Critical Chain of Jobs — operational delivery

The Critical Chain of Jobs is the Job Graph projected onto a time axis at a chosen Solution. Only the lowest-level Jobs at the chosen zoom appear as nodes; higher-level organizing Jobs collapse into what the chain delivers by running every lowest-level Job in order. The chain holds the sequence the customer walks, the hand-offs between roles or systems, the cycles, the time-gaps, the slowest links, and the operational dynamics of walking it: predictions and prediction errors at each step, interruptions, drop-offs, Solution switches, per-step emotions, knows-how vs first-time entry.

Where strategy operates on the Graph, operational delivery operates on the chain — value delivery, communication, activation, retention, churn diagnosis, trigger timing. The Aha Moment fires here, on the chain, the moment the customer notices the value the Graph delivered above prediction.

Operational consequence:

• What a team actually ships is the Critical Chain of Jobs, not the Job. The Job names the destination; the chain is the lived path — onboarding flow, pricing tier, in-product moments where the Aha must fire, post-purchase touchpoints that prevent churn. A roadmap of Jobs is a roadmap of intentions; a roadmap of chains is a roadmap of work.

Detailed canon in Critical Chain of Jobs — chain pathologies, predictions during the walk, interruptions and their four outcomes, drop-off as Solution switch, the knows-how vs first-time path through orientation, the triggers that re-launch the chain, per-step emotions.

11. Critical Chain of Jobs scaling discipline — chain-break discovery is the first move when expanding into sub-segments

In a new sub-segment the chain often breaks, because the new context is invisible from inside the launch sub-segment — a different regulator, a different role on the buy-side, a different language of success criteria. The break is a knowledge problem, not a quality problem. So discovering, attributing, and unblocking chain-breaks across sub-segments is the first priority when scaling. Even when the broken Job sits outside your product's scope, owning the fix is often the largest single source of unlocked value. Detailed canon: Critical Chain of Jobs.

12. Segmentation by Jobs (not by demographics)

• A segment is a group of people with similar Job Graphs. Segmentation is by similarity of the set of Jobs (the Job Graph), not by any single Job. The first criterion should almost always be Job-Graph similarity — rarely demographics, geography, industry, or company size in isolation. Demographics are correlates, not causes. Exceptions exist (regulated industries; geographies where regulation or culture fundamentally changes the Jobs), but they should be deliberate departures with an explicit Job-level reason, not the default cut.
• One person is in one segment, not in many. A single person typically has many Jobs in their graph, and that whole graph is what places them in a segment. Alexander, who takes a taxi to the office in the morning and a taxi to the airport in the evening, is one representative of one segment that has both Jobs in its graph — not two representatives of two segments. Over time their Job Graph evolves and they can move into a different segment, but at any moment they are in exactly one.
• Same expected outcome plus different success criteria equals different Jobs. This is the non-obvious move that breaks the most common segmentation mistake — collapsing same-verb-different-criteria Jobs into one. Uber's tariffs wear the same surface verb ("I want to get from A to B"), same A and same B, but split into distinct Jobs by their success criteria, and into distinct segments to the extent different people hire different tiers:
  • UberX — cheapest acceptable safe ride, "good enough" car.
  • Uber Comfort — recent-model car, top-rated driver, climate I can adjust, no chat.
  • Uber Black — luxury vehicle, professional driver, quiet ride, status.
• Segmenting first by demographics, personas, or ICP — not by Jobs — is one of the most common and most expensive segmentation errors. The moment you draw the first cut by age, income, industry, or company size, you've already amputated parts of the market where attractive Jobs may live for you, and embedded a bias you'll spend years fighting downstream. The first cut must be Job-Graph similarity. Demographics can come in as a secondary criterion to refine an already-Job-based segment.
• A segment description must answer three questions about its representatives: (1) how do we create added value for them? (2) how do we earn target per-unit margin? (3) how do we create demand and scale within this segment, including whether it is large enough? If your segment description doesn't include Jobs and causal segmentation criteria from which those three can be answered, it is fake segmentation for strategy.
• One of the riskiest assumptions in any new product is the right segment-and-Job hypothesis. It sits at the very top of the cause-and-effect chain, so it is upstream of every other assumption you'll make.

For the detailed segmentation methodology, see Segmentation.

13. Strategy = choosing Jobs and segments

Every strategic product decision reduces to one type: which Jobs of which people will we compete for, why these and not others, and why will we win? The wrong choice quietly burns the business. The right one is the foundation of differentiation, growth, and profit.

14. The cause-and-effect chain to profit

In the integrative Next Move Theory framework, business value is the output of one causal chain. It has two phases: research and validation, which ends when customers have proven they buy, and scaling, which ends at target profit. The same three conditions are checked in both phases, first in theory, then in fact. Detailed version in Next Move Theory key theses §4.

The chain below is deliberately simplified. A vast number of detailings sit beneath each step — different business models route through different sub-chains, different channels load at different rates, different segments scale on different cost curves. We work at this abstraction level because it is where the key strategic errors become visible and effort can be deliberately allocated.

RESEARCH AND VALIDATION
  1. Market with money — 1 %, 5 %, or 10 % of the market can deliver the target profit
  2. Segment + Job — segments large enough, whose Jobs we can perform with Added Value,
     with competition low enough to reach the target conversion to purchase
  3. In theory, three conditions hold at once:
     ┌─ target margin per unit
     ├─ target volume of leads
     └─ scale without quality decay
  4. Proof of value — customers buy, and we know what value they pay for

SCALING
  5. In fact, on the customer flow, the same three conditions hold at once
  6. Target profit

• Market with money is the sum customer segments currently spend to perform their Core Jobs. A market is defined in Job terms — not "the EdTech market" but "the sum spent by people who want to learn a skill in order to switch careers." No paying Jobs, no market.
• Segment + Job is one analytical entity, not two steps. A segment is defined by its Job Graph — the set of Core Jobs and success criteria its members share. Two groups performing different Core Jobs are two segments, regardless of how identical the demographics look (see §12 and Segmentation). Added Value is performing those Core Jobs above the customer's expectations, against the segment's success criteria (see §6). Competition is part of this node: the field must be open enough to reach the target conversion to purchase.
• Three conditions in theory — each must hold on paper before the build; failure of any one stops the chain: target margin per unit at the chosen business model; channels that can deliver the target volume of leads at target CAC and lead quality; operations and support that can scale without quality decay.
• Proof of value — customers buy, and we know which value they pay for. Sales first, then UX 4 of 4. This is the gate between the phases.
• Three conditions in fact — the same three, proven on a real customer flow. Margin per unit holds only while conversion, churn, and repeat purchase stay at target; retention lives inside the first condition, not in a separate node.
• Target Profit — the residue once every prior step holds.

An error at any step propagates downstream. Low conversion almost never means a funnel problem — it almost always means a problem upstream: the wrong segment+Job, value that doesn't beat the alternatives, or one of the three conditions failing. The diagnostic asks which of the three is failing, treating them as co-equal candidates, not a sequence.

Because the chain runs top-down, the largest single leverage is the upstream choice: the most economically valuable Job × the segment whose budget supports target margin × the segment large enough to scale × the segment reachable through known channels at target CAC.

15. Almost everything you need to build the product is already in the customer's head

Every input the methodology asks you to know is already present in the customer's head — the Jobs, contexts, triggers, success criteria, emotions, higher-level Jobs, the value already perceived, the fears, the Consideration Activators, the decision-making principles. That's the almost.

The part that is not in the customer's head is the invention — the new technologies and mechanics that perform the Job radically more effectively than anything the customer has seen. The customer can't tell you what's not yet possible. They can only tell you what's true now.

• You both extract and invent. Extract the Jobs, criteria, segments, fears, and Consideration Activators. Invent the value and the way to deliver it. Neither is a substitute for the other.
• Invention has to stand on the extracted foundation — the Job Graphs of specific segments. Without a real Job Graph of a real segment underneath it, invention can go anywhere, including directions no one will pay for.
• The single most important recruitment discipline is to study only people who paid in the past. People are unreliable forecasters of their own future behavior. "I want to learn German someday" tells you nothing. Past payment (or significant past investment of time, attention, or energy on the same Big Job) is the cheapest, most reliable filter against fake Jobs.
• The methodology's discipline is in how you extract: the right respondents (past payers), the right interview structure, the right outputs. Skip the extraction and your invention is guessing — and the dominant cause of new-product failure is building for non-existent Jobs of non-existent people.

16. AJTBD becomes much easier to internalize through AJTBD interviews

Reading JTBD books and case anecdotes can install vocabulary; AJTBD interviews make the mental rewire happen. The methodology becomes much easier to internalize when a practitioner interviews customers who actually performed a Job, reconstructs the eight elements, walks the Job Graph, traces the Critical Chain of Jobs the customer actually walked, and compares repeated interviews into a Map of Segments. That is the bridge from elegant theory to applied instrument: the Job stops being an idea and becomes a structure the practitioner can extract, inspect, compare, and use.

17. People can do without products

A product is a means, not an end. The customer doesn't need your product — they need a Job performed. They don't need a bank; they want to sleep peacefully knowing their money won't disappear. They don't need a music platform; they want to charge themselves up in the morning.

You compete with every other way the customer could perform their Big Jobs, not just the products in your category — including doing it themselves, doing nothing, or a non-obvious substitute (Zoom killed business-trip airfare for whole classes of meetings; a good mattress competes against another cup of coffee tomorrow morning). A given set of Core Jobs typically serves several Big Jobs at once, and you compete on every one.

The moment you treat your product as the end rather than as one of many means to the customer's end, you stop seeing the real competitive set — and the largest value-creation opportunities, which usually live outside your current Core Job.

18. Consideration Activators

The customer arrives carrying a Consideration Set in State A — their existing knowledge of the most efficient way to perform their higher-level Jobs, their fear reductions across alternatives, and their fears of specific competitors. The Consideration Set is what the customer's brain compares at the moment of choice. It lives inside the Job (per §2 and §3), not as a separate unit.

Consideration Activators are the five pieces of information that activate the customer's choice in our favor when loaded into their Consideration Set. Loading Consideration Activators is the operation — our deliberate injection of those five pieces so the customer's stored knowledge updates and they move our way. Consideration Activators name the content; Loading Consideration Activators names the act of putting that content into the customer's head.

Behavior change is one of the most important zones of analysis in AJTBD. What looks like "the customer switched from one solution to another" is the customer swapping one Job Graph for another, more energy-efficient one. We don't sell a Solution — we get the customer to perform a different set of Core Jobs (ours) inside their Big Jobs, by loading Consideration Activators that make the case for our Graph against the segment's Big-Jobs success criteria. Full treatment in Behaviour Change.

The five Consideration Activators — what we load into the Consideration Set:

1. A new Job Graph for performing the Big Jobs exists — with this graph, these Small Jobs and Core Jobs (ours), to these success criteria.
2. The new Job Graph performs the Big Job more efficiently than the customer's current way. The Core Jobs in our Graph deliver the Big Job at better success criteria — cheaper enough, faster enough, safer enough, higher-status enough, or more reliable enough to justify switching. Abstract "better" doesn't activate; a concrete, criteria-anchored delta does.
3. A concrete named product performs that Job Graph, and here is the door — a name (brand, service, vendor) and a first concrete step (download, sign up, book a call). Without name plus door, the other Activators stay abstract.
4. Specific fears about the new Job Graph are reduced. A fear is the customer's prediction that the Big Job won't be performed well through the new graph. The message names the specific feared break, then shows why it is prevented, absorbed, reversible, insured, or irrelevant. If the break is real, communication cannot reduce it — the team must change reality first.
5. Alternative Job Graphs are fired — concrete Problems and Risks that follow from sticking with the competing Solution. Abstract "they're worse" doesn't fire anything; the customer's brain won't down-weight an option without a concrete reason.

Value Creation creates the reason to switch Job Graphs; Barrier Removal creates the possibility to switch. Loading Consideration Activators is downstream of both — it writes the five Activators into the Consideration Set. Real Barriers are not Consideration Activators; they are reality work that makes the Activators truthful (see Barrier Removal).

So Loading Consideration Activators always goes through the Big Jobs and their success criteria, not through your Core Jobs in isolation. The Big Jobs are the compass: when you don't know what value to create, look up to the Big Jobs the customer cares about, find the success criteria there, and design Consideration Activators that land on them.

Prerequisites for Loading Consideration Activators to actually work, in this order:

a. Detailed knowledge of the target segment — who the people are, in what context, with what set of Jobs. b. Detailed knowledge of the Core Jobs of that segment, including their concrete success criteria. c. Detailed knowledge of the Job Graph around those Core Jobs — Big Jobs above, Small Jobs at the same level, Micro Jobs below, Critical Chains of Jobs, cycles, hidden Jobs. d. Actually performing those Core Jobs significantly more energy-efficiently than the alternatives, and being able to prove it. The loop: ship, sell, watch real customers use it, validate which value we actually deliver, and only then extract concrete Consideration Activators. Activators built before the value is validated are hypotheses, not facts.

Consideration Activators are extracted from AJTBD interviews (see AJTBD interview guide). The same interview method that surfaces Jobs, criteria, and segments also surfaces what was already in the Consideration Set, and what got loaded into it that turned an unfamiliar new way from invisible into hireable.

Loading Consideration Activators is what makes it possible to sell radically unfamiliar, innovative products. Without them, an innovative product fails not because the value isn't there but because the customer's Consideration Set never gets the new Big-Job-and-Graph pairing written into it. AJTBD provides a structured algorithm for selling innovative products through the market.

For the full set of theses and examples, see Consideration Activators and Barrier Removal.

19. Barrier Removal — making the new Job Graph executable in reality

Where Value Creation gives the customer a reason to switch Job Graphs, Barrier Removal gives them the possibility to switch. A new Job Graph may be more energy-efficient and still non-executable for a specific segment until the blocking facts change.

A Barrier is an objective condition that prevents the customer from performing the new Job Graph — a missing prerequisite, an unsupported context (state, ZIP, plan, compliance regime), a broken chain link, a failing hand-off, a cycle that sends the customer back for rework, or an irreversible-loss exposure. TurboTax without K-1 support blocks LLC owners; DoorDash outside a ZIP code blocks delivery; B2B SaaS without SAML blocks IT security review.

Barriers are segment-specific. Stripe's API worked for engineering-staffed startups; local merchants needed no-code checkout. Zoom worked for corporate meetings; K-12 schools needed FERPA, waiting rooms, locked rooms. The product didn't become bad — the segment's Critical Chain of Jobs changed.

Reality first, communication second. Barrier Removal makes the claim true; Consideration Activators make the truth usable in the customer's head. Reverse the order and you over-promise: the customer enters a chain that still breaks and registers a Problem against the whole Solution. If the chain cannot run, fix the Barrier; if it can run but the customer predicts a break, reduce the fear.

Detailed canon, including the six classes of Barriers and the operator set of Barrier-Removal mechanics, lives in Barrier Removal.

20. Habit and fears

• Habit is a physical change in the brain under a specific way of performing a specific Job. The brain has invested in efficient neural pathways and resists change. People systematically underestimate their own habits.
• Three rules for habit: don't try to instill new habits (painful and expensive); reuse existing habits (embed into them); roll out changes to existing products very gradually.
• Fears eat value. You can deliver enormous value, but if the customer fears the new solution will fail their Job, the value never lands. Two types: fears based on real past negative experience, and fears based on imagination. Both must be addressed.

21. The Four Forces of Progress — archive

The Four Forces (added value pulling forward, current-Solution problems pulling forward, fears holding back, habit holding back) were a useful intermediate tool inherited from earlier JTBD work. AJTBD has moved past them — there are more than four forces, and a Problem with the current Solution is usually the trigger that launches evaluation rather than a force in steady state. AJTBD recommends a different anchor for behavior-change practice: create Value (§6), remove real Barriers (Barrier Removal), load Consideration Activators (§18), reduce specific Fears (§20), and embed in existing Habits (§20). Detailed canon in Behaviour Change.

22. Value-Creation Mechanics (overview)

There are 100+ mechanics in the Next Move Theory methodology, and every one rests on one or more of six foundations:

1. Creating value — performing the Jobs of a target segment more energy-efficiently against their success criteria. The substrate every other foundation stands on (§6, Value Creation).
2. Managing the customer's attention — directing finite customer attention to the moments where value lands, and away from where it doesn't (Customer Attention Management).
3. Choosing which Jobs of which segments to compete for, and which not to. Segment discovery, Job-Graph mapping, success-criteria research, ABCDX analysis, focus and subtraction at the segment level (§12, Segmentation).
4. Loading Consideration Activators — writing the case for our Job Graph into the Consideration Set so they move our way (§18, Consideration Activators).
5. Activating the customer into value once they enter our funnel — landing the first Aha Moment, repairing chain-breaks before they fire, designing the activation path so attention doesn't drop before value lands.
6. Communicating value already delivered — translating proven value into the customer's language of Jobs and criteria so it can scale (§24, Communication).

Everything else — pricing, packaging, retention plays, channel choice, deal mechanics — eventually grounds out into one or more of these six. The catalog grows as new mechanics surface in practice.

Mechanics by business task

Every mechanic in the catalog attaches to one or more business tasks:

• Grow product value
• Grow conversions
• Reduce churn / improve retention
• Go-to-Market
• Exit direct competition
• Foundational value-creation mechanics
• Acquire customers
• Scale the product (expand the market we compete for)
• Grow return rate / repeat purchases
• Foundational product-management mechanics
• Grow average order value
• Foundational strategies
• Create an acquisition channel
• First priority of value creation
• What not to do

The same mechanic often attaches to several tasks — a move that grows product value often also reduces churn and grows return rate.

A few of the most foundational mechanics, for orientation

• Move up to a higher-level Job — turn a Big Job into your new Core Job and kill many lower-level Jobs as a class. Often the most powerful mechanic when applicable (§23).
• Kill a Job — a class of Jobs disappears (Uber killed "search for change").
• Take a Job off the customer — do it for them.
• Fix breaks in the Critical Chain of Jobs — the highest-leverage move when present (§11).
• Lower costs without removing Jobs (price, cognitive cost, time, emotional cost).
• Eliminate a negative emotion — sell peace of mind, not the absence of problems.

The right move always depends on the target segment, the Job Graph, and the bottleneck — not on what's fashionable.

This public canon does not enumerate all 100+ mechanics — it covers only the most foundational ones. For the full catalog as it expands, subscribe to the newsletter on the canon website.

23. The most powerful mechanic — and the invisible product

Of every value-creation mechanic in AJTBD, one dominates the rest whenever it applies: move up one level in the Job Graph. Turn a Big Job that sits above your current Core Jobs into your new Core Jobs, and in the process kill many of the lower-level Jobs as a class.

• Uber climbed above owning a car by becoming the Core Job for "get from A to B around the city, on demand." Buying, financing, insuring, parking, refueling, servicing, registering, reselling — none of it performed by the rider anymore. Same Big Job, a Job Graph a fraction of the size.
• TurboTax climbed above filing taxes by hand by becoming the Core Job for "file my federal and state return correctly." Reading instructions, picking forms, computing deductions, double-checking arithmetic, mailing the envelope — collapsed into a guided Q&A.
• ChatGPT climbed above Word by performing the entire "produce a finished document" Big Job. The Jobs Word required collapsed for the segment that adopted ChatGPT.
• Claude Code climbed above writing code by hand by becoming the Core Job for "ship a working change in this codebase." Reading surrounding code, writing character by character, looking up APIs, debugging, writing tests, running the linter, managing commits — all collapsed into "describe the change in English; the model writes it, runs the tests, iterates on failures."

When this mechanic applies, no other in the 100+ catalog rivals its leverage — it removes whole classes of Jobs from the customer's life, not just speeds up the existing ones.

This is the methodology-level explanation for the AI-product wave. Every fast-growing neural-net product runs the same mechanic at unprecedented scale, climbing above some Big Job in knowledge work (write the code, write the document, do the research, build the deck, summarize the meeting) and removing the entire class of lower-level Jobs underneath. That is the largest possible jump in energy efficiency for the customer, registered as the largest possible Aha Moment (see §6).

The North Star this mechanic points at is one step further — the invisible product: a Job performed without a product the customer has to interact with at all.

The ideal product performs the Job entirely — and does not exist as a product the customer interacts with.

You leave home in the morning, come back in the evening, the house is clean — and there is no "cleaning product" you used. Zoom didn't beat the airlines by being a better airline; it removed the trip. The robot vacuum is closer to the ideal than a better mop. The best interface is no interface; the best product is invisible.

Every other mechanic in the catalog — kill a Job, take a Job off the customer, fix the Critical Chain of Jobs, lower costs, eliminate negative emotions — is a partial step toward this ideal. When you can climb a level, climb. When you can't yet, optimize the level you are on against this North Star: what would it look like for the customer to get the result with no product to perform at all?

24. Communication through Jobs

All communication is communication in the language of Jobs. Landing pages, ad creatives, sales scripts, emails — the underlying sentence is the same: we perform these Jobs of this segment more effectively, by these success criteria, through these features. If the comm doesn't translate cleanly back into that sentence, it's not on-strategy.

• Value-proposition formula: [For which segment] + [Which Job — Big or Core] + [How much more effectively, in concrete success criteria] + [Through which features]. Features come last — they're the argument for why you'll deliver.
• Promise must match delivery. Communicating at the Big-Job level (where motivation lives) while the product only performs the Core Jobs underneath inflates the customer's prediction, manufactures a Negative Prediction Error, and produces disappointment — no matter how well the Core Jobs were performed. Match the promise to what the chain actually delivers (§6; Communication §3).
• Creatives are formulaic Job-language recombinations, not invention. Plug Core Jobs, Big Jobs, triggers, Problems, criteria, and State-B images into formulas and test which the segment responds to.

Full landing-page structure (9 Job-language blocks mapped to the five Consideration Activators), the full creative-formula catalog, and the conversion mechanics live in Communication.

25. B2B specifics

• A B2B sale isn't one Job performed by one person — it's a graph of Jobs performed by several roles, strung along a Critical Chain of Jobs that must not break at any link. The roles include champion, decision-maker, budget holder, IT/security/legal influencers, end users, sometimes saboteurs. Drop one role's Jobs from the analysis and the deal can stall there indefinitely while every other role is satisfied.
• Every role in the chain has at least two kinds of Jobs — business Jobs and personal Jobs — and each kind is itself a graph. The business Jobs are what's written into the role's KPIs (hit the plan, reduce the cost line, deliver on time, pass audit). The personal Jobs are what the person gets out of the deal (job security, bonus, recognition, career growth, not being blamed, a story to tell at the next conference). In a real deal you're standing in front of a graph of business Jobs × a graph of personal Jobs for every role.
• B2B motivation is usually dominated by personal Jobs, not business Jobs. This is the single most counter-intuitive B2B finding for teams trained on B2C. The business Jobs are the frame in which the deal happens; the personal Jobs are why the human in the seat actually moves.
• Knowing — and performing — the business and personal Jobs of every role in the deal's Critical Chain of Jobs dramatically increases close probability. Most teams know one business Job of the decision-maker and stop there. The deals that close are the ones where the team has mapped the full graph of business and personal Jobs for every role and done deliberate work to perform them.
• Five typical personal Jobs of a decision-maker, as a starter checklist:
  1. "I want to make a vendor choice that won't get me blamed or fired."
  2. "I want to use the same tools the best people in my field use."
  3. "I want to build a career-defining story from this implementation."
  4. "I want to offload operational routine."
  5. "I want to pick a vendor who will still support me at year 3."

If your product currently focuses only on business Jobs — adding personal Jobs is a conversion / AOV / retention lever

If the product, sales script, and comm focus only on the business Job, adding a layer that performs the decision-maker's personal Jobs — and communicating that you do — is one of the highest-ROI moves available in B2B. Same buyers, same product baseline, just a deliberate layer on top:

• The product explicitly makes the DM look good (auto-generated executive summaries, dashboards they can present, "look how much we saved" reports).
• Communication speaks to the personal Job ("you'll be the one who brought in the team that materially changed the result," not just "the result will improve").
• Sales brings ammunition for the DM to defend the decision internally (competitor comparisons, objection handlers, stakeholder briefs).

This single layer compounds across the funnel — uplift in deal close rate, average contract value, and retention through renewal — without changing the underlying value prop. And the deal itself is often the constraint: B2B decision-makers experience the buying process as slow and politically risky, so bringing useful information into the deal directly performs the personal Job "I won't be embarrassed defending this internally."

For the full B2B treatment (role-by-role Job analysis, the integrator model, B2B vs B2B2C dynamics, the "ex" rule for end-user weight, common B2B mistakes), see B2B.