---
title: "3 Critical Must-Knows About Jobs to Be Done (infographic)"
type: source
tags: [jtbd, christensen-institute, supporting-artefact, infographic]
authors: [Christensen Institute]
year: 2025
venue: "Christensen Institute (christenseninstitute.org)"
kind: pdf
raw_path: "raw/Task Analysis & JTBD/JTBD-3-considerations-graphic_20253006.pdf"
sources: []
key_claims:
  - "JTBD is a lens that reveals the circumstances/forces driving people and organisations toward or away from decisions."
  - "A Job incorporates three elements simultaneously: functional, social, and emotional forces."
  - "The job customers hire for changes with circumstance — the same executor may prioritise different jobs over time."
  - "JTBD is NOT asking why someone made a decision; it uncovers common underlying circumstances across groups."
created: 2026-04-20
updated: 2026-04-20
---

# 3 Critical Must-Knows About Jobs to Be Done (Christensen Institute, 2025)

One-page infographic (filename stamp `20253006`) from the [Christensen Institute](https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/jobs-to-be-done) distilling JTBD into three must-knows. Supporting artefact for [[frameworks/jtbd]] rather than a standalone theoretical source.

## The three must-knows

### 1. A Job incorporates three key elements
Functional, social, and emotional forces all participate in a decision simultaneously.
> Example — hiring a new home: the job "help me have a space large enough for my expanding family" has functional (space, size), social (family dynamics, neighbours), and emotional (caretaking, achievement) elements.

### 2. We hire for different jobs based on changing circumstances
Circumstances are subject to change.
> Example — a school district initially hires a new technology to "remain compliant with state funding"; later, having observed best practice and teacher approval, it re-prioritises: "help me be an innovative leader among districts in my state." Same executor, different job, different success criteria.

### 3. JTBD is not asking why someone made their decision
Direct "why did you buy?" questions yield surface answers (e.g. flavour for a milkshake). JTBD methodology reveals the **underlying circumstance** common to a group ("help me relieve stress with an easy-to-hold snack") via structured narrative reconstruction, not direct questioning.

## Connections

- Summarises for practitioners the core claims developed in [[sources/2016-christensen-jobs-to-be-done]] — especially the functional/social/emotional triad (p. 6 of the HBR article) and the circumstance-over-characteristics principle.
- The third must-know (don't just ask why) is methodologically significant for BPM discovery: it warns against the same sunny-day pitfall that [[methods/process-discovery-methods]] addresses with rainy-day questions, just at the customer-lens level instead of the performer-lens level.

## Related

[[frameworks/jtbd]] · [[sources/2016-christensen-jobs-to-be-done]] · [[sources/2025-christensen-institute-jtbd-theory]]