Implementing JTBD in a Large Organization: Interview with Bloomberg’s Michael Morgan
Michael Morgan is Head of UX Research at Bloomberg. With more than 15 years of experience in the field, Michael likes to try different methods and frameworks, including Jobs to be Done (JTBD). He’s even written a column about UX research on UXmatters.
In his free time, Michael likes reading, running, and music. He plays jazz piano in an online ensemble at Bloomingdale School of Music. “All of the stuff outside of work allows me to stay focused AT work,” he says.
Michael joined us for an episode of “JTBD Untangled” to share some of the challenges he’s faced in introducing JTBD to the company and how he overcame them. We caught up with him afterward to continue the conversation. Here’s Jim’s interview with Michael:
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JIM: How did you first get into JTBD? What sparked the interest and how did you get started?
MICHAEL: Your book Mapping Experiences first introduced me to Tony Ulwick and his book, What Customers Want. After reading his seminal HBR article and then his book, I started exploring other JTBD gurus. Burleson’s The Statue in the Stone and your JTBD Playbook are currently my go-to books for the JTBD framework. At a previous employer, I was working on a discovery project related to understanding authorization workflows for HR professionals. That first foray into JTBD was moderately successful. I got the job map, desired outcomes, along with a heavy dose of stakeholder engagement from my product owner, who then became hooked on the framework as well.
I am a tinkerer. JTBD affords tinkering. The language of JTBD — its simplicity and operational-izability sort of stunned me. It was kind of a “where have you been all of my life?” moment. It’s something that I think product and engineering stakeholders can rally around, once it has been explained to them. The concreteness of it makes it approachable, regardless of whether you’re in UX or product or engineering or the C-suite.
JIM: Say more, please! What are some of the ways you’ve tinkered with JTBD?
MICHAEL: I’ll take the tinkering from a learning and then a communications POV. For learning, I started conducting internal workshops for practicing JTBD with colleagues. Take something as basic as “listen to music to stay in shape.” Everyone in a workshop can then define their own job map, craft outcomes, share their work and discuss. The path to putting the framework into practice is internalizing the concepts. The way to do that is to choose an everyday relatable thing and then tinker with it. After that, we can then think bigger and maybe take some internal projects and apply our internalized learnings to them.
For communications, I’ve been figuring out creative ways to communicate the outputs of JTBD research. I’ve been using Python packages like Plotly’s treemap to visualize themes and outcomes from research — clickable, interactive ways to explore the JTBD data. I’m excited to see how my colleagues at Bloomberg start using the framework in their communications as they embark on their maiden voyages with JTBD.
JIM: So why do you also think JTBD is something others can rally around? Any examples come to mind?
MICHAEL: JTBD affords a certain level of abstract and creative thinking. Creative thinking allows people to think more broadly about product usage without the product itself. There’s something intrinsically rewarding about having that freedom. Making that freedom explicit and socializing it amongst a group of similar JTBD-minded colleagues makes that even more powerful. Suddenly that freedom to think about usage sans a solution becomes a MINDSET.
The job map is a classic example of where you can shift a stakeholder’s mindset. Showing colleagues the enormity of a job in its simple digestible building blocks is a freeing experience. While stakeholders will be thinking about “solutions” in the back of their minds as they explore the job map, seeing that in the context of all of the other job steps allows them to consider the entire context of the job and not just a small sliver.
Stakeholders suddenly see how many steps go into a particular part of the job map and can start identifying the trouble spots without wasting time on less important areas of the map. As a result, my stakeholder would suddenly say “hey, we do too much of that [job step], and the outcomes here are really important to address! This is where we need to focus!”
JIM: What have been some of the key challenges you face in trying to bring JTBD into your team and org? How did you overcome them?
MICHAEL: The two biggest are stakeholder buy-in and scoping the target job. When working with stakeholders new to JTBD, I often find myself being a human “Rosetta Stone” — translating UX concepts into JTBD ones. Providing specific meaningful examples always helps convey the main concepts of outcomes and jobs.
I have a “back-pocket” slide deck to do all of this prior to the inception of a new project that uses the JTBD framework. I also drive home the point that JTBD is not a research method, but rather is a way to see an overall process through a framework that uses common research methods — in-depth interviews, surveys, etc.
For scoping the target job, that’s much harder. That requires sitting down with stakeholders, interviewing SMEs and making sure the focus is on whatever is the key to the project’s success. Understanding the job syntax with its verb and job differentiators really helps in tinkering around with what the job actually is.
Making sure that stakeholders are aligned on that target job before investigating it is another thing I try to stress to those of my colleagues who are using the framework. Otherwise, you end up with too many surprises. I also encourage my colleagues to take the time to really figure this out up-front. Like most UX research, the hardest part is not actually executing it, but rather planning it!
JIM: How do you show the impact or effectiveness of JTBD to stakeholders?
MICHAEL: Aside from showing them the job map, I find that using the opportunity score and the importance-satisfaction matrix to discover the underserved jobs and outcomes is an effective way to convey to stakeholders where opportunities for innovation may live. This can be an extremely validating and motivating experience for product managers and other stakeholders who are looking to improve the product experience.
JIM: Do you have any specific stories you could share where that happened with stakeholders (without revealing names or details, of course)?
MICHAEL: Sure. I’ll elaborate on a go-to-market study I ran last year. This was a strategic study to help the organization wrap its head around how we were communicating release changes to our internal stakeholders and external clients.
In one of the last slides in my research report, I showed an importance-satisfaction chart. From the JTBD study I had conducted, in which the goal was to understand the job of a product manager to communicate release information to stakeholders and clients, I pointed out that the resulting opportunity score for the job clearly fell in the realm of underserved jobs and outcomes. Underserved = Golden opportunity!
As an organization, Bloomberg is built upon and thrives on data. Data doesn’t lie. Data is something my stakeholders can all align on as the source of truth. Being able to show how RIPE this job was for improvement was eye-opening and validating at the same time. As a result of these findings, my colleagues in Product and UX are now working on various concepts to help satisfy the job and address many of the desired outcomes.
JIM: What advice would you give to someone looking to bring JTBD into the organization?
MICHAEL: Do your homework. Don’t just jump right into it. Read articles and books. Educate yourself before embarking on the journey. Talk to others in the JTBD community. See if the framework is a good fit for your organization and project(s).
Also, don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. If you’re new to using it, start with something small and low-risk. Internal projects are always a great place to start tinkering.
Make sure you get buy-in from stakeholders. Weave the language into your conversation with them. You’ll soon notice that they’ll start using it too.
JIM: Great advice. Thanks for the interview, Michael!
Hear more from Michael on “JTBD Untangled”:
