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March 22, 2024 - Association Management

Four Ways to Grow Your Association With a Jobs-to-Be-Done Approach to Innovation

Understanding your members’ and customers’ needs is one of the most important aspects of ensuring the success of a new product or service. You can get ahead of the process by anticipating these needs before you even begin brainstorming and planning. By thinking about and zeroing in on your members’ needs, you can create more focused and strategic pathways to success for your organization and your mission.

But how?

This is where a “Jobs to Be Done” (JTBD) approach can really benefit your association. Many associations are beginning to incorporate JTBD into their processes. JTBD can find big opportunities in your association’s target market and can benefit the entire planning and design process.

JTBD can help you and your team clarify the types of information you will need from your target members to achieve your growth objectives, how to get it, and how to use it successfully.

What is JTBD?

In “jobs theory,” customer and member needs can be understood as “jobs” they want to get done and the criteria they will use to measure success. In this theory, people “hire” products and services (like association memberships) to get their jobs done. Understanding this theory allows you and your team to more deeply appreciate why your members “buy” from, or “hire,” your association.

This can help you to understand and plan how to help your target members get an important unsatisfied job done more effectively than other options, so they will value your services more highly.

Here are four ways JTBD can help you grow your association:
 
Allows you to focus on what matters most to your target members.

For most organizations, a lack of focus, rather than a lack of ideas, is a major issue. If you and your team do not understand where your target market is underserved and where the best opportunities lie, you cannot properly serve the market, and your success will be limited. Understanding what matters most to your target members and where their important unsatisfied needs lie puts you in a much better position to serve those needs and ensure your growth as an association. This also saves you time and resources by preventing your association from pursuing things that your members don’t need, thus eliminating any disconnect between what they need and what you think they need.

Provides the ability to consider opportunities that are attractive to your organization. 

JTBD can help you create a ranked list of the biggest opportunities for your association in the market. This allows you to evaluate how attractive each one is based on various criteria, such as your strategy and mission. With this list, you can create great growth strategies for your association. How? By addressing big market opportunities while leveraging your organization’s strengths. In identifying where the big opportunities lie, and which ones are most attractive to pursue, you and your team can ensure that your offering is the right fit for the market - even before you begin the work of planning specific ideas for new programs or services.

Offers perspective that enhances creativity and opens new possibilities. 

JTBD captures needs statements with language that is solution-free - there is no mention of programs, services, etc. This allows you and your team to plan without the constrains of current offerings or assumptions about the best way to address an opportunity. In some cases, the best way to do so may be through a collaboration, partnership, merger or acquisition, operational innovation, or simply better messaging and positioning. With JTBD, innovation and success are left open to all creative avenues.

Aligns the board and executive leadership team around statistically validated market opportunities. 

Being asked to take risks on solutions before the need for the solution has even been identified and validated can make association leaders risk adverse. A JTBD approach to planning can eliminate this stress by providing your team’s leadership with research that identifies the top market opportunities with real statistical validity, and can also explain why an opportunity might be worth pursuing. This can give association leaders confidence in the moves they make regarding focus and actions, whether they may be a new offering, a plan to drive membership growth, or furthering the mission.

People buy an association membership for a reason: they want to get their jobs done. JTBD can help you navigate the market and focus on the jobs that members want to get done, ensuring the long-term success of your association.  

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