We sat down with Emily Bottis, User Experience Architect, to talk about her role at HBX and to learn what goes into designing and developing platform features.

What do you do at HBX?

I am the user experience architect. I work across the teams at HBX to design and improve the digital learning experience of our students.

What does a normal day look like for you?

Every day I create and review new feature and enhancement requirements and design. I regularly meet with the software development team to discuss how we translate these designs into code. I also typically meet with the course development team to discuss and design new interactive course features.

Where did you go to school and what did you study?

I attended Brown University and studied Organizational Behavior.

Any hidden talents?

When I'm not chasing my kids around, I am into photography, writing, and I play ice hockey!

What is your favorite food?

I love anything Indian or Middle Eastern, and I am a vegetarian.

How did HBX start building the platform?

First, we had discussions with the faculty members about how they wanted to build their courses. Through these discussions, we decided that we wanted the courses to be real-world, interactive, and social. Based on those goals, we envisioned the ideal platform, making sure to incorporate the Harvard Business School teaching methodology which meant using the case study method.

What's a Teaching Element?

Teaching elements are small units of learning content that exist in the course on what we call the concept pages. Examples of teaching elements are spreadsheets, videos, and drag categorization.

Tell me about how you built peer interaction into the platform.

When we began building the peer interaction platform we made an effort to keep the discussions close to the content. The goal was to intentionally couple the peer interaction platform with the course content so that peer interaction would be available in the educational context.

What's your favorite feature?

The concept page side bar. This side bar is a navigational element which helps you navigate through the entire course, and we added it in after a bunch of student input and feedback.

How do you decide what features to add/change on the platform?

Altering the platform is primarily based on participant feedback. We constantly run surveys and focus groups to figure out what aspects of the platform are working for our participants and what aspects are not working. We also have a team of people who work on the “release planning process.” This is the process we go through before we add or change something in the platform. My personal job is to represent our users. I am always pushing to make additions to the platform based on direct participant feedback.

What surprised you most about the learning experience once users went through the course?

The enthusiasm and creativity that people have brought to our courses. Also, I am constantly impressed by the commitment our students have, it is awesome!

Any cool features in development?

We are currently experimenting with mobile, designing a new search function, and we are also building new courses!

Graphs can be an effective way of communicating information about data. However, when poorly used they can be confusing, inaccurate, or misleading. Thanks to the internet, many of the worst displays of data remain long after their creators have identified the problems and corrected or removed them. Here are five of the more egregious instances that have shown up over the past few years.

1. The pieces of a pie should add up to 100%.

There's a couple of things wrong with this graph. First, any chart (such as a pie chart) that divides a single image into subsection should sum to 100%. This chart shows distinct stripes, but clearly if 88% of organizations raise funds via one-on-one solicitations and 87% use direct mail, there must be some overlap. Secondly, the four categories are virtually the same size, but there's about six times as much ink for Direct Mail (which 87% of organizations use) as for Special Events (which 88% use).

2. Shapes have meaning.

This chart does show about 100% in each column of figures, but the choice of shape makes it confusing. The different parts of the map have distinct meaning, beyond the demographics listed. Given this, it looks like Asians only live in Maine and Washington and that Texas existed only in 2010.

3. Start numbering at zero.

One common problem in graphs is misuse of the y-axis (the vertical axis at the left of the graph, which often indicates frequency). The y-axis isn't labelled here, but it looks like it probably ranges from about 73 to 78, which makes the drop from 77.3 to 75.3 seem precipitous. But if the graph covered a more reasonable range of knuckleball speeds (say 40-100 mph), the decrease would seem much smaller.

4. Numbers should read up from zero.

In this case, the y-axis has actually been inverted, so that the highest numbers are on the bottom. Logically, there's no reason you couldn't make a graph like this, and the graph does include the scale of the y-axis. However, we're so used to seeing graphs with the high numbers on the top, that we automatically assume that the change after 2005 is a decrease, when it's actually an increase.

5. Use the same scale for both axes.

The lack of labeling on the y-axis is particularly confusing, because it appears that the two lines on the graph are using entirely different axe. The change in both lines appears to be about the same, even though one change is almost 30 times as great as the other (the red line goes up 37,250 and the pink line goes down 1,071,987). Furthermore, on the left side of the graph, the smaller number is on the bottom, while on the right side, the smaller number is at the top.

Graphs can be a great tool to tell stories about data. However, just like language, images can confuse or deceive. So it's worthwhile to be a conscientious consumer of data and make sure that the pictures you see accurately reflect the numbers.

---

Interested in learning more about how to interpret data? Take HBX CORe and discover the basics of Economics for Managers, Financial Accounting, and Business Analytics.

---

This post was originally published on Fortune.com.

By soliciting ideas from large groups, the U.S. can come up with the right policies to reform the nation’s tax code — similar to the way complex computer systems are managed around the world.

Complaining about the complexity of the tax code has become a treasured ritual during spring tax season. The code has grown ever more complex and this complexity has considerable costs. As one example, the incredible complexity of tax incentives for education limits uptake and redistributes wealth away from those targeted and toward sophisticated taxpayers. How could we transform this ritual of complaining into spring cleaning?

Addressing complexity in the tax code requires analogizing to other complex systems and drawing on the research that demonstrates how to manage that complexity. Indeed, there is a well-developed literature on how to manage complex systems that can provide the foundation for simplifying the tax code. In particular, we know a lot about how to manage the evolution of software codes. This analogy yields two primary lessons.

First, “over the wall” engineering is highly problematic and “concurrent” engineering is preferred. Throwing completed ideas “over the wall” to the next part of the production process limits learning and engenders complexity relative to a concurrent and iterative production process. Currently, policy ideas are often developed without a clear vision of the associated language and with even less attention to the perspective of administrators. As with software, this yields bulky and contradictory language that could be avoided if the practice of policy formulation and drafting were a collaborative activity with the administrative agency in charge of enforcement. While the 1998 IRS Reform Act calls for such an approach, the reality does not live up to the law’s aspiration.

Second, and more radically, we should embark on an effort to crowd source the code. Much as the development of software capitalizes on a distributed talent pool, our legislative and regulatory processes on taxes could be opened up radically during comment and drafting.

Currently, the code is managed much as it was 50 years ago – in a fundamentally closed manner. Laws and regulations are drafted by small groups in a non-transparent way that pays little attention to the overall architecture of the tax system. As a consequence, vested interests can influence the management of complexity toward their advantage and complexity grows by ignoring interrelationships.

Research shows that effective management of complex codes – be it Linux or the tax code – requires three things. First, the code must be mapped so that the interrelationships, technically and conceptually, of different parts of the code and associated regulations and rulings become manifest. Second, this mapping enables modularization whereby the code is reorganized into pieces that reflect these relationships. Finally, this modularization provides the foundation for opening up the code to experts throughout society – so-called crowdsourcing – who contribute suggestions for rationalization and simplification.

By mapping, modularizing and opening the code and associated regulations, we could draw upon widespread expertise, provide transparency on a critical process, address the imbalance in resources between the taxing authority and sophisticated taxpayers and begin the process of simplifying the code and its administrative guidance. In the limit, one could imagine a detailed mapping of the tax code and associated regulations hosted by the IRS much as software code is mapped. This mapping would then serve as a guide to reorganizing laws and regulations over time. While decision making rights would remain with Congress and the IRS, opinions on policies would then be solicited widely and the drafting of laws and regulations could be aided by experts around the country through an open platform.

The commentary and drafting process that is so critical to policy formulation and administration would be completely open in real time. Such transparency is the only guard against capture of the process by vested interests and will allow for broad expertise to inform the highly complex matters that the code addresses. Even more than with software, there is deep expertise distributed broadly and government staff and the IRS could benefit immeasurably from this assistance. It is possible that more sophisticated groups with more resources will govern the process even with this open architecture. Hopefully, their efforts will be countered by other citizen groups and transparency will yield benefits relative to current processes.

Embarking on this process of crowdsourcing the code would bring our tax system in line with the way in which complex systems are managed around the world. Let’s all stop complaining about the complexity of the tax system and start contributing to its simplification.

---

---

Interested in gaining a toolkit for making smart financial decisions and the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to key internal and external stakeholders?

At first glance, I seem like the last person to ever consider taking a course like HBX CORe. I am deeply rooted in arts and social justice, most of my peers critique capitalism at every turn, and financial documents make me yawn. However, I do love learning, and have a philosophy of signing up to anything that seemed interesting - and HBX CORe seemed intriguing enough to try. To my surprise, I found HBX CORe far more engaging than I anticipated, and I was able to find many ways to connect my background and my values with my learning experience.

Understanding analytics can protect you from being exploited by misleading information and fine-tune your knowledge in an area of interest.

Statistics of all kinds are commonly used to persuade or advocate for any position - this group is correlated with high crime rates, or this diet change correlates to massive weight loss, for example. It’s easy to be confused by a random p-value or the use of a different kind of “average” (mean, mode, median) than expected - and unfortunately many take advantage of that confusion to present false information.

Being able to read and understand analytical data helps you be more discerning: you are able to recognize when someone is misusing data to push an agenda, know what the results actually say, and can draw more solid conclusions. On the flip side, understanding basic analytical skills – such as linear regression or surveying – can help you better understand your topic of interest and be able to communicate your findings accurately: from community opinion polls about a recent Governmental measure to what you should sell at your next Artist’s Alley booth.

Accounting is really all about organizing how money comes in and goes out in a business.

At first I found the whole concept of financial accounting daunting and dreadful; I could never make sense of all these profits and losses, and actually shied away from starting various projects because I didn’t think I could handle the financial paperwork. However, through HBX CORe I learned that all those documents are really just different ways of recording and organizing financial transactions that happen in a business: every purchase, sale, loan, investment, even tax and depreciation.

Start with a record of every transaction, organize them into categories (“accounts”), and from there group similar accounts together to see where the money is going. Once all that data is organized, the ratios to figure out things like profit margins or cash conversion cycles become very straightforward. How quickly are you going through your inventory? How much profit are you earning relative to the costs of your business? When do you pay off your debt, when do you get paid by your customers, and how long does this take?

Even if you don’t plan to start a business, knowing what those terms refer to can help make sense of big financial news, such as a company's IPO or prospectus release. You get a sense for where those companies’ priorities lie and which areas are stronger than others.

Understanding economics concepts can really strengthen your political/social justice position (and HBX CORe is a welcoming space for it)!

Through my strong involvement in intersectional activism, I’ve learned a lot about how capitalism and mainstream economics can become oppressive forces for marginalized communities. Certain parts of the Economics module in particular became very challenging and somewhat frustrating because it felt like they did not really dive deeper into the socio-political implications or critiques of those theories.

I decided that, rather than be silenced for fear of jeopardizing my grades, I was going to take this opportunity to bring my passion and experience to the program. I drew connections between what we learned in class and how they applied to the wider world outside our HBX bubble. I spoke up about the real-world impacts of minimum wage and illustrated the connection between Willingness to Pay and sex worker rights. While these conversations were sometimes very heated, I found that my coursemates and even the professors were open to my critique, with many appreciating the varying perspectives I brought to the table. 

Our work and perspectives have value.

As artists, activists, change makers, community builders, creatives, and others with more alternative life paths, we are often surrounded by messaging telling us that our work is not worth as much, that it’s frivolous and not as important as being rich and successful. While we may not seem like the target market for a business course like CORe, there’s actually a lot of material within that we have every right to adopt, make our own, and benefit from understanding – from being willing to price ourselves by our true value (rather than undersell ourselves), to tracking concrete measurements of the value we give and receive. There will be plenty of people in your cohort that are more than willing to listen to your point of view and respect you for sticking to your values.

You may not ever need to make profit and loss statements or set up a multiple variable linear regression in Excel, but at the very least you’ll understand another powerful language to navigate the world - and make it more like the world we envision.

---

Interested in learning Financial Accounting, Business Analytics, and Economics for Managers?

---

This post was originally published on Linkedin Pulse.

If you want to be a great negotiator, you have to be a great improviser. There’s no choice in the matter. You can’t script the process. It’s too unpredictable. The people you deal with will have their own ideas about how things should go.

That’s why we all can learn from master improvisers in other fields, especially jazz. I described a business application of this principle in one of my early posts. In another—on the importance of paying heed—I quoted pianist Herbie Hancock of sometimes being so focused that “I’m listening with my toes.”

Today’s negotiation lesson comes from trumpeter Miles Davis who said, “It’s the notes that you don’t play that matter.” 

I found another great example of how this maxim applies powerfully to negotiation in my colleague Deepak Malhotra’s new book Negotiating the Impossible. Right there on page 145 in bold type he channels Miles by saying: “Ignore ultimatums. The more attention you give to them, the harder it will be for the other side to back down if the situation changes.” 

He’s absolutely right. (I only wish the book was available back in January when I wrote a post on dealing with take-it-or-leave it job offers, as his advice applies there, as well.) 

When someone says, “absolutely not” or “it’s against company policy,” the natural impulse is to ask why or ask for an exception--or to challenge the assertion itself. But often it’s smarter to let the remark pass without comment. Your counterpart may have spoken in haste. Given time, he or she may soften their position—provided you haven’t reinforced it. 

The worst thing to do is to rise to the bait. Don’t ask if they really mean what they just said. If someone paints themself into a corner, why hand them another bucket? Instead, let the moment pass, as Miles said. It’s in the same spirit of the feisty credo of the actress Ruth Gordon (the star of the cult classic, Harold and Maude.) “I never face facts,” she said. “I never listen to good advice. I’m a slow starter but I always get there.” 

But what if your counterpart persists? Deepak recommends re-framing the ultimatum using less rigid language so it’s easier for them to back down. If not now, then maybe later. For example, say something like, “I can understand how, given where things stand today, this would be difficult for you to do . . .” 

Note how much those three italicized words pack so much meaning into that short phrase: 

• Understand is an acknowledgment that you have heard their problem, so they don’t have to state again;
• Today reminds them that things may change, especially if you can jointly tackle their underlying constraints; and
• Difficult sounds more pliable than impossible. It implies that somewhere within a tangled problem, there’s a solution struggling to find its way out. 

This style of response is what another colleague of ours, Deborah Kolb, calls a “turn.” It’s a deft rephrasing that keeps the door open for further discussion. Done well the transformation might take hold without even being noticed. 

Deepak realizes, of course, that some ultimatums are truly non-negotiable, but thinks there’s little harm in ignoring one when you first hear it. If it is real, he says, “they will repeat it over and over again, in all kinds of contexts and in all kinds of ways.” 

That advice reflects Deepak’s refreshing perspective on the overall negotiation process. He is skeptical about street wisdom such as never make the first offer, or always negotiate on your own turf. Depending on the circumstances, what would be right in one situation might be disastrous in another. 

It comes down to making judgment calls, he says, case by case. And that requires operating from more general principles such as controlling the frame, being mindful of optics, and helping others save face (all of which are factors in deciding how to respond to ultimatums). 

Thinking about the wisdom of (sometimes) not facing facts and ignoring ultimatums (at least the first time you hear them) reminded me of a case I was involved in years ago. I was a member of the local land use planning board. Seldom did all five of us agree on the applications that came before us. But in one instance, we turned down a developer’s proposal with an unequivocal five to zero negative vote.

When we announced our decision, the guy cheerfully said, “Okay. What’s the next step?” 

He acted as if he had just won the first round—which was nuts under the circumstances. Anyone with sense would have given up. But this fellow came back again and at least two more times after that. He revised his plans and we tweaked our policy. Ultimately his project got built. 

Hats off to him! And my guess is that Miles and Deepak would give him two thumbs up for ignoring our initial veto. 

PS: If you’re interested in learning more about Deepak’s work, here's a recent interview with him.

---

When I got my acceptance letter for HBX CORe, I did not know what to expect from the program. Aside from significantly enhancing my knowledge about the fundamentals of business, CORe also grew my personal network. Don't underestimate how powerful this is! Here are some ways I was able to meet new people thanks to CORe:

1. Getting social

After you get accepted into CORe, you have the opportunity to join your cohort's Facebook group. Not only do you get to share knowledge with your peers, but you also get to know your classmates from all around the world on a personal level. You will learn how everyone lives and works all over the world, what opinions they have, and they will definitely make you laugh from time to time!

2. On the course platform

Facebook isn't the only way to reach out to your peers; the CORe platform is set up in such a way that everyone fills out a profile with professional and educational details. You can also include social media handles as well as personal information - everyone is free to choose how much they want to share. Apart from that, there is significant interaction on the course platform with fellow students - you're even graded on your participation! You quickly get a sense for what others are good at and how they can help you, and vice versa.

3. Face-to-face meetings

I had the wonderful opportunity to travel all the way from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Harvard Business School for HBX ConneXt - an event with past HBX participants as well as the HBX faculty and staff. Meeting fellow HBX students face-to-face helped me to make better connections with my peers as well as to grow my network even more.

There weren't many students from my cohort in the Netherlands, so I hadn't had the opportunity to have any face-to-face meetings with my peers prior to coming to ConneXt. However, if there are HBX peers in your area, make sure you meet them. People who are part of HBX CORe are intelligent and have incredibly interesting backgrounds that you might only get to know about if you meet up in person.

4. Reaching out after the course

Even though I took CORe a year ago, I am still in touch with the friends I met through the program and am still growing my network. After working intensively together for months online, we are still just a click away if we want ask our cohort for help or just share a nice experience or success.

5. Past and future students

My network has continued to grow in the past year as I have connected with more and more people who took, are taking, or will take part in an HBX course. HBX offers multiple cohorts every year, and I've heard from a number of past participants and prospective students who want to know more about my experiences, share knowledge, or set up partnerships.

There are plenty of informal groups that have formed in order to connect with participants across different cohorts of CORe and I've even heard from some companies who saw my connection with HBX and wanted to share professional opportunities with me.

When you take CORe, you show that you are taking an extra step beyond your busy job, school work, and life to expand your knowledge or help make a decision about your future. People see that and connect with you. I am happy to tell everyone who asks that HBX CORe is not just another online course, but a great one that simulates a real-life class experience online!

---

For over two years, HBX CORe has taught thousands of students from over 100 countries the language of business. Using Harvard Business School's case-based methodology, CORe provides an immersive and powerful learning experience.

But don't take our word for it - as one of our past participants said,

"CORe really broke down all of the business concepts I had vaguely heard of and introduced new material in the clearest way with unique examples."

See what CORe graduates have to say about us and how the program has impacted them educationally and professionally:

• View HBX CORe student profiles
• See how HBX CORe helped our students in the job hunt

---

Interested in learning more?

There’s been a lot written about cognitive biases in the last decade. If you walk into the Psychology section of Barnes of Noble today or browse Amazon for “decision-making,” you’re sure to see a library of books on how irrational humans can be.

These human flaws, or biases, are fun to learn about—it can be amusing and informative for us to discover things about the way we may operate. In my opinion, most cognitive biases really stem from three core human distortions—a trio of errors that can befall even the smartest of fellows. This trio extends to all reaches of the globe and can afflict all individuals and businesses alike. In this series of posts, I’ll address this trio and what managers and employees can do about them.

So—what is the first of these three major biases?

Confirmation Bias

Anyone who has ever been in a decision-making meeting knows this bias well. Confirmation bias is the human tendency to search for, favor, and use information that confirms one’s pre-existing views on a certain topic. It goes by other names as well: cherry-picking, my-side bias, or just insisting on doing whatever it takes to win an argument. We all know someone like this. 

Confirmation bias is dangerous for many reasons, but most notably because it leads to flawed decision-making. Imagine a business considering launching a new product. The head of the company has the best idea for the “next big thing” so he directs his team to conduct market research to explore its feasibility. The team then conducts surveys, focus groups, and competitive analyses with this in mind.

I hope you see how there is confirmation bias all over this scenario. First, the company head is using market research as a sham to confirm his preconceived beliefs about a product idea. He’s not letting data do the talking at all. Next, the team is launching into the product development process knowing what their boss wants. As a result, the questions they craft for their research will likely be biased to give him the answers that he wants. While this is a hypothetical scenario, it’s all too common for companies to do this today.

How can you, as a business leader, combat confirmation bias? Taking a page out of a statistics textbook may actually be helpful. When gathering data, it’s always important to remember that the question you ask and your method of measurement will have a big impact on your results. When conducting a survey, for example, what you get depends upon what questions you ask. And what questions you ask depends upon what answer you want to get. Make sure to try to craft unbiased survey questions and have an objective third party vet your survey before releasing it. For example, instead of asking, “Do you think x is a good idea for a product? Would you be interested?” you might ask consumers to rank features of products in the form of a conjoint analysis to discover their preferences.

Another option would be to appoint someone on your team to play the role of a “devil’s advocate” when a big decision needs to be made. A devil’s advocate is someone who takes a position they don’t necessarily agree with for the sake of debate. Does your company create dissent in its decision-making process?

Confirmation bias is also the culprit behind many regrettable hiring decisions. Think about a traditional hiring process. HR or a hiring manager typically sits down with a candidate and asks them to sell themselves to the company. If they like the candidate, they might even give them a softball question about weaknesses for them to knock out of the park, just to assure themselves they are going with the right person. If all goes well, they then proceed to ask the person trying to get the job to provide their own references. How much negative or even neutral information do you think is revealed about the candidate in this process? Probably little to none. For many companies, the whole process is nothing more than a series of confirmatory checkboxes on the way to hiring the wrong person. And the result? Employee turnover and big headaches.

A better way would be to structure the interview process completely around disconfirming evidence. “Why aren’t you the person for this job?” “What did you hate about your last job?” Ask references for contact information of other employees that the individual worked with. They are much more likely to provide an objective perspective on their work.

Confirmation bias is extremely difficult to overcome, in both our personal and professional lives. Humans don’t like to be wrong and we will search for any evidence to prove the path we are pursuing is right. But, through some of the strategies above, you as a manager can stir up debate and ask some of the tough questions necessary to become a more rational, and successful, organization.

To learn more about confirmation bias, check out THIS article from Scientific American.

Check out the second bias that befalls many organizations here.

---

---

Considering enrolling in an HBX program but still have questions? The HBX team has done a little roundup of existing resources to help you find the answers you've been looking for! 

1. Start With our FAQ Pages

Whether you have questions about course structure, the admissions process, grading, fees, or financial aid, check these pages for answers to dozens of the most common questions we get about our programs:

• CORe FAQs
• Courses FAQs
• Disruptive Strategy FAQs
• Leading with Finance FAQs

2. Read Through Facebook Reviews and Past Q&As

We are lucky to have such a rich and supportive community of learners from around the world. Some of them have been kind enough to write up thoughtful reviews of their HBX experiences or join us for Facebook Q&A sessions, answering questions for prospective students. You can read through the entire conversations here: 

• CORe Q&As (Part One and Part Two)
• Disruptive Strategy Q&A

3. Learn About Other Past Participants Through Their Student Profiles

“Is this program right for me?” This is a question we hear all the time, but it's a difficult one for us to answer objectively. Often times, what people are really asking is if their educational background, professional goals, interests, or existing skill set will position them for success in an HBX course or if they will find the investment of time, energy, and money to be worthwhile. 

Our Student Profiles are a great resource for anyone who wants to hear firsthand from a variety of past participants about why they chose to participate in our programs, what they hoped to gain from the experience, and how they are using what they learned. 

• CORe Student Profiles
• Disruptive Strategy Student Profiles

4. Browse the HBX Blog

The HBX Blog is a place where you can dive a little deeper into the subject areas covered in the HBX programs (i.e. What does Cash Conversion Cycle mean, or why should I study accounting), or for those who want to hear more from students who have participated in an HBX program. Here are a few types of posts you may be interested in:

• Student Blog posts 
• CORe
• Disruptive Strategy
• Finance

5. Still have questions? Ask them using #AskHBX on Twitter!

If you've read through these resources and still can't find the answers to some of your burning questions, feel free to ask them on Twitter using #AskHBX. We will keep an eye out for questions and answer as many as we can!

Taking the Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen course was the first introduction I had to the idea of “jobs to be done.” Professor Christensen's theory essentially explains that people “hire” different products to do “jobs” that they need done. Sounds easy enough, right?

That’s what I thought, too. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t really understand it. Certainly, things in the course helped me better grasp the concept. I could explain the theory to you, give you examples, but I was still missing the deeper understanding of where I could apply it to my everyday life.

I finally had my “ah-ha” moment when I was riding with my mother in the car and watching her simultaneously put on makeup, drive, and talk on the phone. Here is what I learned from this terrifying experience.

1. Observe

You can’t find jobs to be done without observing people. This was my first lesson. Maybe it was the fact that I was scared for my life. Maybe it was because I have seen many women struggle to drive and put on makeup. Whatever the reason, it was in that moment with my mom where my time spent thinking about jobs to be done clicked.

The thought popped into my head, “how could I make this easier and safer?” Then I made the important connection, what was the job to be done here? Help me put on makeup and drive safely? It was the mindset of not taking an idea and then defining a job to be done, but rather observing people and asking the important question, “how could I make this easier/cheaper/better” that led to me seeing a job to be done that my mom could hire a product for.

2. Focus on the Job, Not the Product

Upon further reflection I realized that in that moment of terror and enlightenment, I wasn’t at all worried about the product. Jobs to be done isn’t about the product; that comes later down the line. I had been so focused on the development of the end product that I missed the bigger picture. Finding the product is the end goal in most brainstorming sessions and I think, because of that, we tend to miss the bigger picture: What job are we hiring for? The product will come once the right job is found. That is the truly difficult part.

3. It is a Process

This is a process, a way of thinking. First, I had to understand the theory. I spent time with it and the cases; I thought about it while I was walking around, trying to apply what I'd learned. But, it wasn’t until my understanding of – and mindset towards – the concept had changed that I finally witnessed it firsthand with my mom. I wasn’t contemplating the theory when I was watching her, I was just sitting there with my life flashing before my eyes. But the theory had become a part of my outlook on the world, part of me, and because of that I was able to make the connection.

Maybe jobs to be done is easier than I made it out to be, but for me there was a difference between being able to explain it and find a "job to be done" for already existing products, and identifying a job to be done in real life, from which a product could be developed.

Learn more about Professor Christensen's "jobs to be done" theory HERE.

---

Want to learn more about "jobs to be done" and other theories from Professor Christensen? Disruptive Strategy will equip you with the tools, frameworks, and intuition to make a difference.

---