Why Causality Matters for Product Decisions

We continue our discussion about the relationships between philosophy and Jobs-to-be-done, starting with the causality of action, Aristotle and Jobs-to-be-done and Romeo and Juliet!

The core argument of Jobs-to-be-done

Human beings want to achieve certain things, call these things a “Job”

To achieve them, they use different means and different means can allow them to achieve the same Job, call these means “solutions”.

Some of those solutions are better, some are worse. We decide and judge which are worse, and which are better depending on how well the solutions help us get the job done, call this the “utility of a solution”.

For us to use new solutions to achieve the job, the solutions must significantly improve getting the job done compared to how we get it done now.

There is a way to know, even predict if a new solution does get the job done significantly better or not. This depends on how well the solution performs against the set of criteria that we use to evaluate the utility of a new solution, call these “outcomes” or “job metrics”.

We can express and know all our outcomes.

If a new solution allows us to get the job done significantly better, i.e. performs better measured by the outcomes, we are much more likely to adopt it.

Therefore, with Jobs-to-be-done it is possible to know if a new solution will be adopted to get a job done.

Episode transcript:

We're continuing our discussion on philosophical perspective on jobs to be done or what philosophy is in jobs to be done.
Last time we talked a lot about rationality and how that relates to jobs to be done and if it applies to being rational.
Today, we're going to jump right in to a little bit of a different topic and that's the connection between jobs to be done and the theory, let's say, of causality or how causality, especially causality of action, plays a role in jobs to be done.
Now the last time I kind of laid out what is the core argument of jobs to be done.
I think we'll put it in the description as well for this episode.
But in that core argument, I kind of framed jobs as a theory to predict adoption, adoption of solutions.
And in there, probably there is a claim also about the causality of action.
So in the sense that jobs to be done has some kind of claim about what makes people act in a certain way or what are things that make people act in a certain way.
And that's the causality of action.
Now, I'm stressing causality of action because I think we should, from the start, differentiate between causality kind of in nature.
So that probably Jonathan is more your physical kind of description of the universe.
And we can discuss how that relates to the causality of action, but causality of action is more about behavior, like about human beings.
What are, are there even causes to action and that kind of distinction?
So I think that's important to keep in mind.
Now it's quite a strong claim.
So saying that there is something to say about the causality, even of action or a prediction of action.
And I think jobs we don't have something to say about this.
Now, I don't know how you see this.
I framed this as a prediction of adoption that jobs we don't allow us to do this.
That's a very strong claim.
How do you both see that?
Is that too strong to say?
Or is that probably, yeah, quite right, I don't know.
So go ahead, Jonathan.
No, go ahead.
I was just going to reframe the question to make sure.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's I think it's like the next frontier.
I mean, a causality is interesting.
And actually, Jonathan, I give you a lot of credit for sort of bringing this to my consciousness.
You know, when we win, you know, it's sort of our are at least one of the reasons we come to jobs we've done initially is
to because we want to we want to innovate, create new products, which means we want to understand what causes somebody to buy one or switch to a new product.
But then, but that's how that's the that's the entree into it.
But then you realize, wow, causality in itself is such an amazing thing.
And one of the the first things that, you know, the least curse to me is is like how the statisticians for
centuries have just stayed out of it.
And it's really aggravating, honestly.
And it was the book of why, Jonathan, that you brought me to.
And then we had a wonderful guest, Paul Hoonerman, who's, wow, he spoke, he was able to speak so, somebody with a deep expert like that, and he really was able to frame things so simply.
I was blown away by that.
But, you know, the people that I just love these people today, the modern folks that have taken on causality wins.
Again, I really see it as a failure of the statistical field for decades at a minimum, perhaps centuries to just like, just like, well, it almost, if there's any, I feel like I die a little bit.
Every time somebody says, well, correlation is a causality.
I just want to pick up something and throw it at him and say, well, shut up.
That, you know, because we all we've heard it.
We know you don't sound as smart as you think you do when you're saying that.
Let me just start with that.
You really don't.
Okay, sorry, I had to get that out of my system.
But it's frustrating, but again, the thing I love about, well, the reason statisticians, my view didn't go there is because the math would only take them to here, would only take them to correlation.
And they had, with statistics and with sample sizes and with all their
You know, centuries of tool sets that could definitively say a lot of things or what the numbers say by themselves.
And there is an unwillingness to step beyond to take a step beyond the number.
And these wonderful people in the field of causality, they've stepped they've stepped past it.
And are like, you know what, we can apply some logic.
We can apply some logic of thinking and one example from the book of why it's like if there's a father and a son, they both have blue eyes.
Okay.
Well, there's a correlation there.
And, you know, you might not be able to prove that the father's eyes caused the son's blue eyes.
But you can pretty much say the son's blue eyes did not cause the father's blue.
I'm very certain you can apply.
We can't apply our logic and being reasonable.
In the business world, a farmer or anybody who does anything that has to get results doesn't hide behind just math.
They have to do experiments.
They have to try some things.
They have to use their common sense.
And I feel like that's what the modern causality thinkers have sort of, you know, given us some real tools to think about, some frameworks of how we can talk about causality and step past those numbers.
And it's something I have quite frankly, very much a novice on, but they've at least given me an awareness of some of these things.
And as far as jobs to be done, I mean, for me, just personally,
It's just something I need to know more about.
It's sort of, well, anytime any field gets more powerful, I think is when you combine with other powerful fields and I don't feel like cause out is fully been those models have fully been engaged with it yet.
And I think once that's, so it's almost like two areas of expertise that don't communicate or don't that much.
So I think that very much can be part of the next, next frontier.
Yeah, I so maybe so.
OK, two things.
On the one hand, if you want to go into the philosophical perspective and discussion about causality, human can't.
So you and can't.
These are you guys.
There's a quarrel between the two.
You believe there's no such thing.
Can't argue so to the contrary.
So that's what you.
Yeah, David Hume, an English philosopher.
He has a beautiful line of argumentation that at the end, you're suddenly convinced that causality just you couldn't even recognize it.
So that, yeah, that's where things went off the rails.
But that's David Hume.
Can't remember the book on the top of my head now, but I should anyway.
But it's David Hume and then kind of tries to counter this.
And it's just an indispensable concept of making sense of the world, basically.
But where I got really attentive, and I think that's why iConnect jobs have been done, and causality is
knowingly or not, I don't know.
But Clayton Christensen used to use causality to explain jobs to be done.
I'll just try to tell the story as best as I can.
There's probably a YouTube video of him doing a much better job at explaining that.
But the way he phrased it, I think, was so on point.
And the way he said is this, okay, let's look at a customer, at a person, and their social demographics.
age, gender, where they come from, do they make a lot of money or not?
Do they drive a Prius or a Dodge?
You name it.
So all these kind of different socio-demographical stuff.
Now you look at all of that.
Do you find a causal explanation of why they go to a certain place and buy the New York Times, let's say, or the newspaper?
Is there anything in the socio-demographic
that tells you this is the cause for their behavior, because they behave in a certain way.
And he argues that there's no such thing.
There are women buying the New York Times, there's males, there's all different kinds of people from different kinds of incomes, so there's nothing
that in the social demographics, if you just look at them, gives you something like an answer to what caused you to buy the New York Times.
So basically an answer to why did you buy the New York Times.
Now, the job, however, for example, I don't know if that's the exact way to phrase it, but let's say it's to learn about events of the world, something like that, or to stay informed about news events, something like that.
Now, why did I buy The New York Times?
Because I want to stay informed about world events.
That's a pretty good reason.
So it gives you that explanation again, and we touched upon this last time, about the connection between my behavior and what I wanted to achieve.
The means that I chose and the thing that I want to get to.
So, and Christensen always said, it gives the power of jobs we don't lies in the causal explanation of customer behavior, which a persona or a social damage or description of the person cannot give you.
And I believe there is a lot of truth to that.
Somehow, if you understand what the job is, a customer is hiring a product for, the question of why stops.
You have your answer.
But if you go, for example, well, why did they buy it?
Well, because they're 35 years old.
somehow there's something is lacking.
That doesn't give you a causal explanation.
It doesn't give you a why.
So I feel like there is more work to be done in connecting these two fields.
I don't know how you see this.
What I think is interesting is that the kind of causality we're talking about in jobs to be done is a specific kind of causality.
Because as you've expressed it in your example, it's more to do with another fancy word is teleology about purposeful behavior.
Tell us the goal.
Exactly.
And so the question is how
Why then, how does that relate to causality and why might we be interested in it?
I can only speak for myself, but I think the teleology or purposeful behavior and causality are quite intimately linked and you touched upon it in your example.
The way we see the world and the way we represent what we want and how the world works will cause
So our mental state will cause our behavior, at least that's something I'm sure many people will this might disagree with this, but that's at least the proposition.
What I find quite interesting, and this is maybe just to dive more in the more philosophical aspect of it, is that it seems to me that
When we talk about cause and effects, we have to talk about events.
I have trouble understanding how states can cause something because a state by definition is just something which is not changing.
So how can non-change bring about change?
And so you... Beautiful philosophical question.
Yeah, so somehow you need to have at some point some kind of change to generate another change.
And some of these changes might be related.
So one event is something happens here and something else happens here due to some kind of causal pathway between these two things.
And the question I'm asking myself is, how does that manifest?
So when we talk about the goals,
Yeah, this is a this is, of course, a mental state that's causing us to to go and so there's some kind of a little contradiction here that I often wondered about.
So how do how do we we we connect these things in terms of?
Yeah.
So maybe I'll go on.
I'll say, I think, you know,
So going back to, you know, Christensen, you know, I think a lot of what he was speaking to back then is just how marketing was done, which was you marketed to, you know, you know, 30 to 45 year old soccer moms.
That's a market.
But that but then that's really not that predictive of it could certainly be associated.
They could sort of reasonable to think that group could have some goals in common.
But it wasn't their age and demographic that handed them those goals.
That sort of, now that is a correlation, right?
It's just like there's certain, you know, moms in a certain age are going to have children that are doing activity.
So that literally is a correlation, but it doesn't, it doesn't cause, you know, the, um, and one of the thing I think is really interesting that I think maybe part of, part of this answer anyway,
would be, well, I really think like the work that like Bob Moesta has done over the years, that, you know, moving on with Christensen and the forces of progress, you know, and there it's, you know, with, with, oh, so there's really are sort of two branches of jobs we've done.
Oh, and um, Christensen was kind of in both, but then, but then Bob Moesta, to my knowledge, has done the most to sort of forward that next group, which, which is,
Jobs, so with all the way, you know, a job is something you want a customer wants to accomplish.
Let's figure out what they want to accomplish, what are all the needs, and we're going to address those needs.
with Bob Moestas and his folks line of thinking, you know, it's more about jobs to be done as progress.
So people are trying, we want to make progress.
And some of these are semantic differences, but then what occurs to me then for a causal model is that I think they get a little, it gets a little closer to that.
in that, you know, so if I could, I mean, it's like people, like there's like some goal I want, you know, there's some, there's something I want to accomplish.
And then those four forces, it was
You know, there was a push and pull.
I'm probably going to have this all wrong.
Push and pull and then have it in anxiety.
Have it in anxiety.
So let's see if I can get a tan.
Let's go back to you.
Let's go back with you on smoking example.
So, so you on this.
Let's go.
We're going back in time.
The next smoker.
John's a smoker and we want to we want to figure out what causes what.
Well, he certainly has the habit of smoking, right?
Yes.
You probably have the cigarettes.
You probably have certain rituals around, I don't know, morning, night, after lunch, you know, in a bar, out drinking or whatever.
Like there's certain things that are socializing, whatever, his habit.
And by that model, you know, there would be some anxiety about, I don't know if I want to give all these things, you know, what would life be like without those rituals?
They're sort of the anxiety of giving it, giving it up.
And then the push and pull.
Again, I'm speaking about things I am not an expert in.
So I may talk myself into a corner here, but I believe I believe the push.
So those would be things that keep you smoking habit and anxiety with life's effort.
Yes.
And the push and pull would be that's these are the things that are forces that might get you to stop smoking.
One, so the push, I think, is about circumstances, context.
So maybe you see people not smoking and you're like, wow, there's something appealing about that or the pull of this healthier lifestyle.
So sort of this push and pull, I'm really just thinking through this in live time, by the way, I'm not an expert in this, but the push and pull seem to be more about the job, what you want to accomplish.
I don't have to tell them enough to tell us if Bob off the toast, if I got this right, the habit and anxiety, that seems to be more about the solution side, the habit of using a solution, anxiety of adopting a new solution.
I mean, it's like, well, I even be able to stop, you know, is it going to be too hard to stop?
That's why I'm putting myself.
Yeah.
So I don't know if that if it goes 100% there for causality, but I think at least it's looking at those four forces of what it's like the habit is causing you to keep to keep smoking.
The anxiety is causing you to keep smoking.
The push and pull are sort of dangling in front of you.
This one, you know, these positive benefits so that maybe this higher level goal.
So you have all these things trying to call
forces either trying to cause you to keep smoking or forces trying to cause you to stop smoking or adopt a healthier habit.
And so it seems like when one of those wins, you could say the the pull of this happier lifestyle overcame.
these other opposing causes or these these these were forces, but I don't know.
It just it just sort of as you mentioned that it occurs to me that those that for that this other model of jobs you done is forces of progress, which which I have truly only read about not used that they go a little I think they get a little closer to causality or at least from a different maybe not closer, but at least they're they're looking at causality from a slightly different angle.
I think you're right because they look at the process that brings people to change the product or service they use.
So it's about a timeline.
They have a timeline and you have these forces acting upon you during this timeline and different events that trigger a change.
And it's true that I think if we look at more of the, let's say, all-wick side of jobs to be done, I think the causality enters more about how people understand the mechanisms of how the world works rather than specific events.
I mean, at no point in the all-wick version do we talk about
events that would trigger some kind of change of behavior or something like this.
I think what's really valuable about this book, Book of Why, for instance, one of the very simple ideas I think is very powerful is the notion that causality is something that we have to bring into the picture ourselves.
is not something that we can bring out of the data.
And I think just that idea is quite powerful in the sense that it's experts or people who come and will lay out the causal structure of a
problem or situations.
Yeah.
Um, you know, but here I think they gave me permission to use common sense.
I think I hesitate to use that phrase because what I think is common sense might somebody else might think is not.
But so user gave me permission to use logic beyond the math.
Sorry on your something.
No, no, no, I think I think that's perfectly true because because that's
In secret, also, what we've all been doing, we all know that dropping off the temperature is not going to cause the bad weather.
Right.
So that's, it's just, we bring this to the table, whether we like it or not, and everybody would agree that no, it's kind of the change in weather that causes something in the temperature reader thing.
So, so, so I think that that's very fair.
But on the jobs to be done, interpretations, let's say, or views or however you want to call this, or how they spell out jobs to be done and the relationship to causality, I think there is a lot of
So, okay, a big danger in when we talk about more philosophical stuff is what I would call differences without a distinction.
Very often we tend to make differences and there is no real distinction there.
In my view, and this will take a little bit of an argumentation, I feel like if we relate these two to are they causal or not, I feel both are.
So, I mean, we could take an example.
I think for all the way, something like cutting a piece of wood in a straight line.
would count as a job to be done.
So if you, I think that's even the example he uses in his latest book from theory to practice, if I'm not mistaken, but that's, so that's a fair to say that that is a job to be done.
Now, the more West-oriented people might say, again, I'm not as well as Yuska, I'm not from there, but they might say something like, well, yeah, but that is not really a purpose.
That is not really what you want to achieve.
So we have to discussion all the time also, if people don't want to drill, they want a hole in the wall.
Well, nobody wants a hole in the wall.
So always this question of, well, why do you want this pops up?
And I think that's just the question of when do you stop asking that question.
Now, it could really be that, for example, I think the example that Chris, sorry, that Alwyk puts forward, they relate to a certain kind of situation, and you have to know much more about the situation of when does the explanation of why stop.
I mean, before I said that this is kind of exactly the power of jobs we've done, but that's only half of the truth.
So there is a kind of circumstances that inform when you stop with your explanations.
That's just the way, at one point, explanations come to an end.
That's not me, that's Wittgenstein.
So at one point, they just come to an end, and that depends on the context that you're in.
And I've always found that the difference between those schools is a lot of that is differences without the real distinction.
There might be a difference in techniques.
For example, how do we do interviews and what kind of things are we looking for?
But in terms of the mindset to philosophy, I don't feel there is that much of a difference, to be honest.
And there's some out there that make a lot of noise about that difference.
And I feel that there's a lot of difference without distinction there.
Where we just talk about words, when in fact we're trying to achieve the same thing.
So that's my two cents on that discussion.
I see a lot of that.
Yeah, just especially jobs be done, experts or whatever, something like that.
When I've detected that people are arguing with you about the definitions of how something's defined,
I get so disinterested in the conversation.
I just, I just probably, I usually just stop responding.
The one exception might be this rationality thing we talked about in the last episode, just because I think misunderstanding of that word, legitimate misunderstanding is sort of at the root.
It's like, that's the only way to really get it, get down into how do you define rationality, which in our last episode, I was, I was, that was helpful y'all when you did that.
But, but yeah.
I don't know.
I think, I think back to the causality thing.
Yeah.
You know, I think, I think, oh, I think what always model does, which is what I'm really a practitioner of is by, you know, understanding the, the, all the needs to help somebody accomplish a job, say, stop, stop smoking, you know, what are all the, or whatever, all the criteria
Um, and it helps to understand the magnitude of that unsatisfactor how, or how.
For whatever it is I want to accomplish in life, what's the magnitude of that gravitational pull between me and getting there and this thing I want to accomplish?
Would I just sort of opportunistically, yeah, here you can stop smoking if, you know, just decide to stop, all right, whatever.
Or if there's some miracle solution that, or how much really would my life be better
Wow, if it would be a lot better, then all of a sudden that creates this desire in me to look for a solution, which is which is a causal link, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I think maybe I'm going to expand on it.
So sometimes I think we really have to go deeper into into the definitions rarely, but sometimes we do.
I think
Maybe we need to do that a little bit also in causality.
And I think that's exactly right.
I think one important point that I want to make before we dive deeper into this, there is very often an understanding of causality that is linked to a certain understanding of causality only works in a timeline, so that the cause is always prior to the effect.
Usually we believe that.
The throwing of the stone has to be before the shattering of the glass, and only in that sense is there causality.
Only in a temporal sense, the cause always comes before the effect.
Now, that's unfortunately not true.
You can see a couple of things, a very simple example.
The rise in sales of gifts before Christmas
is caused by the future event of Christmas.
So weirdly, the future can be a cause in the present.
And I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind, because that's a hard thing to wrap your head around.
A future thing can cause something in you today.
And I think that's the space job Sweden lives in.
So it's something you want to achieve that causes you to display a certain behavior to get to that final state.
And that can be having cut the straight line through wood.
So that it causes a certain kind of behavior in you.
And that, I think, is the first thing that we need to get rid of, the idea that causality is only caused first, some time goes by, and then effect.
It can be the other way around.
So I think I would have to disagree.
No, because I think that comes down to a question of definition of, you know, what is it that we talk, what are we imputing the course to be?
So what is, yes, on some level,
we could talk about it that way.
But for me, it's there is an actual real cause that happened in the past, which is the people's again, it's the people's ideas about how the world works and what's going to happen.
So and this is why also this is that a cause?
Well, I believe it is.
And this connects also to this idea of going back to this question before of how can states which are non-changing cause things?
Well, often it's a problem of definition in the sense that I maybe just give an example.
So for example,
some kind of discrimination case.
Okay, that's a typical question.
So maybe a woman is not hired for a job because she's a woman.
That's a state.
How can the fact that she's a woman cause something, but I think it's
We're not putting the cause at the right level because what's happening is in fact, there is one event happening, which is the photons are bouncing off this person or the person is reading a letter, whatever.
So there's information that's being transferred to the person hiring this woman or not hiring this woman.
And he then will make a decision, but there has been a trigger and an event happening, but it's maybe a kind of microscopic event or something.
And so as a shortcut, we'll say that her condition is probably not the right word, but her being a woman has caused him to make this decision.
But from a physical perspective, there are actually events.
It's not the state actually causing anything.
And I think here it's a bit of the same thing.
It's what happens in people's minds.
And that's why it's so important to understand how people also think because it will inform their decisions and what they do.
Although I will disagree with your example, I think.
Do you really think that there is a causal link between the photons coming off the paper or the screen and his discrimination?
Well, I think this is very easy to check.
You can imagine an experiment where the person hiring, and this is exactly what people do, where the name of the person being hired is hidden.
So the person hiring has no idea
who the person is.
So there's no information that's being communicated to the person, the hiring, the other.
And in which case we see that there's no reason for discrimination.
So we've not changed the fact that the woman is a woman.
We've just changed what is being communicated to the person doing the hiring.
But not everybody who looks at CVs of women will discriminate against them.
No, of course, with I'm talking about there needs to be a little bit more.
That's where I would say it's his belief.
There is belief.
Yes, exactly.
What it means to be a woman, whatever, or kind of the performance of women, that that's the actual cause that leads him.
Exactly.
And that's where it gets a bit.
OK, well, to me, I find quite interesting is and where I think there is a connection with jobs to be done, because people do make decisions based on their understanding of how
the world works and the belief system of this person might be, I don't know, women will not work as much or something like this.
This is a belief system where he's in his mind
thinking if i do this then this will happen if i hire this person then this person will work less and then causal model of the world exactly but i think that's what the for me that's where the real connection is is is that in people and when they're evaluating
What they want to do, they have a causal model in their heads of how things are going to happen.
And it's that causal model itself, this view of the world that's going to inform their decisions.
But do you think Jobs, if you don't kind of brings this out?
I think jobs to be done brings it out in a certain respect, which is where when we classify the outcomes in terms of their importance and satisfaction, it's a kind of incomplete model.
It's not really a causal model at all, but it does kind of...
there's some hints of causality in there in the sense that we're saying, if you do this perform this action, then these are the outcomes you might get.
So, so there's a form of direct simple causality there, I think.
Yeah.
Okay.
I've never thought about it in this way, but I really I can see where it coming from.
I really like this.
I mean, I have a very, so this is my story of how, I mean, sometimes metaphysical events happen, right?
So that's my story of how I got in touch.
And I think immediately connected to jobs to be done is, I was, so I was studying philosophy and I did a course on Aristotle and thinking a lot about causality.
And I will get into that a little bit because I think that also connects.
But, and what we're doing now with discussion review is,
There is different things that can be causes.
And I think that, again, is a second thing.
So one thing is the timeline.
We can disagree on this, but that's a debate.
And the other thing is what things can be causes.
And there is a huge debate separately in philosophy going on if reasons at all can be causes or not.
So is a reason a cause or not?
That's a huge debate as well.
I don't think I would say in some circumstances, yes, but you can go into that if you want.
So what kind of can just a mental state be a cause for something?
And you mentioned that nicely that it's quite strongly debated, let's say.
So how that connection works now.
I want to maybe take another stab at trying to bring my connection between jobs to be done and causality to the front.
But I'm not really thinking, is it an alternative to what you explored or not?
I think you have a more sophisticated version, to be honest, of this.
OK, should I go into the Aristotle stuff?
Yes, please.
That would help make this different distinction.
And then maybe we can see how this connects to your view, Jonathan.
So I was OK.
I was in the university very, very early on, and I had a course on Aristotle.
And he famously is one that realized that the question of why can have different answers.
And that in itself is already an interesting observation.
And famously, there are these kind of four different causes that Aristotle defined.
Now there is heavy debate whether that's still true or if it holds up, it holds up still and all that kind of stuff.
But I find it proves very useful.
It can help you kind of get a sense of what kind, that there are different kinds of causes.
Now, for Aristotle, there are four different kinds of causes, at least.
So there's what he calls the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, so Khazafikians, and the final cause.
And these four, these are four ways in which you might explain or, yeah, in which you might explain, say something like artistic production, bringing about, producing something, things that we make.
So that's the example that he uses.
He talks about statues and how we produce statues, but also just human action in general.
So there's four different things, four different kinds of causes.
for human action.
For example, I want to just run through the example, and then we can see how it links to what you explained, Johnson.
So you can ask the following.
So why did the stone shatter the window?
Just as a general question, why did the stone shatter the window?
Now, there is different ways of giving an answer to that question.
One possible answer or one possible explanation is, well, because the material of these two things,
that will be the material cause.
Stone is harder than glass.
That's why the stone shattered the window.
If the stone would not have been harder than the glass, it wouldn't have shattered the window.
Or if the window would have been harder, which is the same thing, then the stone, then the other event would not have happened.
The shattering would not have happened.
That would be kind of an explanation or giving the material cause.
Or you can ask, for example, something like, why is the window rectangular?
then we're asking about the different why.
Why has the window the shape that it has?
And that could be because, well, I don't know, I cut it in that form, for example.
The example that Aristotle uses is, why does the statue look like that?
It looks like, well, because that was the form of the bronze that was used to do it.
That's a different kind of cause, kind of relationship between what we see and how it came about that it is the way it is.
So that would be kind of looking for the causal formalities or the formal cause.
And then the third one, the efficient cause is always, that's a bit tricky to explain, but you could also, for example, ask, and now we're getting more into the causal stuff that we've been talking about before, is what made it the case that the stone shattered the glass?
So what was it?
What changed such that
the glass shattered.
And there you could say, well, because I threw the stone.
I've said certain things, so that's going about your kind of the events and the change that needs to happen in order for something else to happen.
I set a chain of things in motion when I threw the stone so that the glass then shattered.
I affected a change.
So that will be the efficient cause, which usually is what we think about is causality when we just talk about causality in general.
So my throwing will be the cause of the shadow window.
Or lastly, and I think here is where we get to talk to get on this.
You could ask, well, why did I throw the stone in the first place?
What with what end in mind did I throw the stone?
And that would be that the final cost to cause a phenol is, and I think that is exactly where jobs to be done and causality kind of aligns.
Because I could say something like, because I wanted to break into your house or steal something or whatever, then the end in mind is, or I just, I was angry at you and I kind of wanted to cause you pain.
So I shattered the way.
And I think there is an overlap, and that was kind of my magic moment.
I started working in a company that unfortunately no longer exists, but they applied jobs to be done as well.
I was working on these different four causes in my philosophy, and I started to read about jobs to be done.
And for me, it was from the get-go.
It was very clear what jobs to be done meant.
Because I made that link between the final cause, the thing that I want to get to is a causal explanation of my action.
And I think that for me has always been what jobs to be done is about.
So, yeah.
I don't know if that's helpful.
It makes total sense.
And I have to say, I really like these four causes.
for cause model.
I think it's a really nice way of, um, I mean, just thinking about stuff.
Uh, I, I'm not sure it's, I would agree to the idea that it's true on a fundamental level, but I think it's, it's a very useful, um, way of taking different views on a, on a problem, you know, and just, just maybe looking at things and it forces you to look at things from different angles, which I think is interesting.
Yeah.
Would you say that your idea of having a causal model about the world, would it fit in one of the four, or is that something else entirely?
Well, I personally, I mean, my personal belief is that everything is basically an efficient cause.
I don't believe there's there's anything, although when you really go deep down, sometimes I then hesitate and think maybe everything is formal, you know, because then you get into maybe mathematics and shapes, I don't know, something like this.
But okay.
But basically, I think my immediate answer the most natural for me, and I think it's also what physics as a branch would say is that there's only efficient causes.
So there's no teleology.
It's not a real physical thing.
There's no space for that in physics, in fact.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can see that.
Does it?
Sorry, Scott, do you want to say?
Yeah.
Well, first of all, when you're describing the glass, it occurred to me all those are correct.
All the reasons were correct.
Yeah.
I'll tell you why I'm sorry.
You seem to sort of smiling with it.
I'll explain that in a second.
But it's correct that you're trying to get into the house is correct or it could be correct that you're angry.
It's correct that the glass was brittle.
You know, if it was aluminum, it would have dented instead of shattered, for example.
It's correct.
They're all correct.
Now, I'll tell you why I was sort of smiling, laughing.
And this is there's an American TV show from the sixties called the Andy Griffith Show.
Have you ever heard of the Andy Griffith Show?
No, it's one of only two.
Well, one of only two television shows to go off the air ranked number one.
The other one was Seinfeld.
So Andy Griffith Show.
Anyway, there was a there was a sort of famous as well.
It's one of my favorite shows.
Anyway, there was one episode where these two families were feuding.
And it was supposed to be is very rural North Carolina.
And they've been feuding for generate feuding, meaning they're like sort of like a war, like they were shooting at each other.
And it was a serious kind of.
Yeah, like shooting each other.
Nobody actually got hurt, but they were just still shooting.
And there was an episode where the sheriff sort of had enough.
Well, it was sort of like a Romeo and Juliet type thing.
Their children, the children of the feuding families wanted to get married and that sort of brought all the
everything to a head.
And so the sheriff, Andy Taylor went to the went to one of them.
So the Wakefields and the Carter's way feels in the Carter for feuding.
And he said, well, he asked him, we'll say, well, is your son going to continue?
You know, you guys need to stop this.
Is your son going to continue feuding?
You know, after you guys are gone and he goes, I maybe will.
Maybe you're not.
But but he don't know the reason.
And the sheriff asked, well,
uh why is that and he goes well he don't know the reason and he asked him well why don't you tell him he said well because i don't know the reason he said and he said the sheriff said well why are you shooting at him he's a hat he's a wakefield he said well because
Because they're the cart because they're the Wakefields.
Yeah.
He goes, well, why are you?
Well, why are you?
Why are you shooting at him?
Cause we're feuding.
Well, why are you shooting?
Why are you feuding?
Cause we're shooting at him.
Anyway, they just sort of got that.
I'm not sure.
But I was having a little flashback back to that TV episode where they're, you know, it was because they're the Wakefields, because we're a few, because we're shooting at it.
It was all these answers cause why they're fighting.
But none was any more helpful than the other to resolving it again.
I don't know.
I don't know where that gets us in our dialogue.
But I was having a little flashback with that episode.
Yeah, but I think so this is I think this is a very important point where we sometimes sure that it is I really enjoyed the story though.
Yeah, it's a good one
I'm going to tell you why.
Well, I don't know exactly.
Not because of the story as such, but because that you emphasized, hey, they're all right.
Yeah.
And sometimes in the more business-related context or the way that we talk about is sometimes we need to explain behavior that we see, for example, in market data.
Sales went up, sales went down, whatever.
And then discussions start.
And then somebody mentions, well, that's because we lowered the price.
And in a sense, that's true.
Right.
Well, it's because we changed X, Y. And in a sense, that can also be true.
So I think there is a very real element to this.
And probably why it's also funny is that it can happen that different causes are kind of true at the same time.
And it's very hard to pick them apart or to really kind of narrow down which one was the cause in all that kind of mess.
And I think for me, their job to be done has a role to play because it tells you what a good cause looks like.
So, of course, changing the price will have a certain effect, but it doesn't fundamentally explain why are there sales anyway.
Why is somebody using the thing in the first place or buying the thing in the first place?
That's very often, I think, a difficult discussion at least for me to manage.
So, if somebody says, well, sales often says this, well, we just need to lower the prices.
And they probably will be right.
So that probably has an effect and it changes stuff, but it doesn't answer the question.
At least for me in a fundamental way of why there is certain kind of market behavior.
So there is an element of an important element of truth.
It is that there can be different causes that are true at the same time.
And it's and it's and it's a debate.
Which one really was it?
I'll take the image that came to mind as you said that.
And Jonathan, you're often talking about states, you know?
And if you think about it, if anything is still, is not moving.
So there's lots of forces.
First of all, there's all kinds of, that just means all the forces around it are like equal.
Like just to be totally simplistic, if there's a, if you're pushing on, you know, two sides of something, you know, you're pushing on it.
So it's got to be equal forces.
And so right now the state is it's not moving.
So for the state to change, one of the forces has to change.
Maybe one force becomes weaker, maybe one force becomes stronger, or maybe a new force is introduced, but
If we have, we just have a state, we have equilibrium.
I've realized this is getting deep now.
Sorry.
I don't know what I was smoking for episode, but, um, but everything is still like if we have equilibrium, that doesn't mean there are no forces.
It just means they're all equal holding this thing.
And so for something to change,
Yes, that means one force, well, one force is stronger than the other, which could be caused by one of the forces weakening or because one of the forces strengthening or an additional force on top of it.
But when that new force came on, that didn't get rid of the infinite other forces that were there.
So when we say cause,
You know what we really mean is something new, something new that created a dynamic situation so that the state changed.
But I guess we oversimplify the situation by just ignoring all the, you know,
all the other causes around it.
But to be to give a more precise answer, you would acknowledge or at least try to think about all this.
I don't know if that's you touch on you touch on a really interesting point, which for me has been very confusing.
And I don't know if Jan knows about, you know, some Aryan philosophy that touches confusion a lot.
No, no, I'll tell you what it is.
And you were talking about dynamics.
There's this author called Alicia Guerrero, who's a kind of, I think, philosopher.
And she wrote this book called Dynamics in Action.
And her whole thing is about constraints.
And this is something I've always also wondered in terms of jobs to be done.
For instance, I find there's not much talk about constraints.
Also, I'm not quite sure to which extent is context related to constraints.
I mean, that's maybe a separate question.
But I think in terms of causality, this question of constraints is quite an interesting one for me, at least quite puzzling.
And I think it's also quite related to how we can build better services and products understanding constraints.
So I'm kind of just throwing that on your lap, Pian.
But I was wondering, I mean, is this something, is this disgusting?
I mean, I'm sure it's disgusting philosophy, but I mean, what's the kind of
Well, here's the, so honestly, I don't know.
Probably, yes, but that's something I couldn't point you anywhere.
You know more about this than I do.
Funny enough is I know about the project we did where we added constraints to a Jobs Without Project, and it gave great insights.
that I can tell you a little bit about on the philosophical part.
I just don't know.
I don't know.
Now you're making me think really hard.
So the project was about, I think we framed the job.
I probably won't get it right exactly, but it was something about, like,
like getting food on the go or something.
So when you're not at home, so in this, it wasn't on the go.
I don't know.
Well, it's about the situation where you kind of need to feel yourself when you're not at home.
Basically, that's the situation, either at work or you're on the road or whatever.
So that was the job.
We phrased it a bit more beautifully.
But anyway, I think you get what I mean.
And then what we found in the qualitative is, well, there is, yes, there is this job, and then there is just
There are things in the life of people that they cannot influence that keep them from getting the job done the way they want to get it done.
For example, so I'm trying to, so for one example was that I still remember was, maybe we would phrase this differently in a job speed on the environment, but we kind of took that as a separate thing.
Somebody said, well, I try to stay healthy.
I follow Regiment.
So he was kind of more strict in brackets about his diet, not 100%, but he wanted to follow certain goals and certain nutritional principles, if you like.
But the place he worked at and the canteen that was there and provided food didn't allow him to choose something that would kind of fit his thing.
And he wasn't prepared for other reasons to cook for himself.
But that would have been a solution.
So that was a constraint.
So he wanted to get the job done.
The readiness was there.
It caused him to act in a certain way.
But there is just an element in his life that prevented him from achieving it the way he wanted it to.
Now, you could phrase this as probably as an outcome in a certain sense, but there was a couple of those other things, also just the sheer lack of time.
I talked to doctors and nurses, not exclusively, but there was a doctor and a nurse, and they said, well, I have 15 minutes on my lunch break.
There is no way I can eat healthy.
So I just grab a sandwich from the curtains.
I push it down, and that's my lunch.
So she had to go for an imperfect solution.
because of constraints in her life.
And we didn't really figure out how else to kind of bring this into a jobsman perspective, just as a separate thing.
And then we asked kind of people, well, which of the following kind of constraints do you face more often?
And then you get a beautiful view and how that relates of kind of how their job satisfaction relates to correlates, who knows, but relates to or has something to do with the constraints that they face.
And that's just one example.
And we never really went down that road in a more systematic way.
So yeah, I could.
So actually an earlier version of ODI was called JOC.
Jobs, outcomes, constraints.
So it used to be part of the method.
It was, it was dropped.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go.
JOC, which is kind of, which was kind of not in the companies using it.
It was, it was an easy, easy to remember.
JOC, JOC, jobs, outcomes, constraints.
And it was dropped when, um, when consumption needs became more a part of the process.
It's like, well, constraints more have more to do with it.
But I still, I, I, I like jobs outcomes constraints still, um, because.
I mean, one that comes up in, I've done some projects in agriculture and rain.
Well, first of all, what is a constraint?
I would define constraint is something in the environment you can't change.
It's just a, it's a factor of it.
You can't change.
And so it's, so it's worth gathering.
And then, you know, and it comes into play when it comes time to come up with, you know, just develop solutions.
But, you know, but with agriculture,
you know, unpredictability about the weather.
Yeah, I mean, rain.
That's pretty important to agriculture.
I mean, to not to not grab that, you know, is good to be just that being complete, right?
And it's just so you have you get so you can have outcomes around, you know,
how that impacts you and whatnot.
And so I think it's right to set them aside and get needs purely without them, but I think you need to also don't leave it aside.
It's like if you have a solution idea.
Well, I think this is a real good idea.
Okay, set it aside, get the needs separate for it, but don't forget about it.
What needs is it address?
Let's make sure we've got those in our survey.
So constraints,
I think, you know, they have a seat at the table for within jobs to be done as what's something in the environment we can't change and then context.
I think context.
This could be different.
That's part of the environment could be part of the context.
So I think these overlap a little bit, but I think they're separate.
I was just gonna change a lot of a lot of them would probably an instinct will be to say, well, certain senses are just or sorry, constraints are just context, but I think you're right.
It's it's something else.
It's by defining it as something you cannot change in the environment.
That's something else than a context.
That's that's just
And I personally have that in my I've got a little interview guide cheater that I use that I use for everything, everything.
And I've got a I have a small section on constraints, which I've got.
I mean, there's not 10 questions.
There's probably two or three, which essentially what's something you can't change.
That's simple.
So so in your experience, constraints don't
So my question is how do they relate then to the outcomes because I would imagine a kind of easy way out if you want to get rid of the constraints, but keep the theorist is basically just to say, okay, for example, we put a constraint and it's a kind of.
Limitation, let's say that you would put on an outcome.
So for instance, a silly example would be I only have 10 minutes to have lunch.
That's for me as a constraint.
So it's this kind of outcome.
I mean, I don't know if time can be considered an outcome necessary, but that would be the ideas like a constraint on the type of outcomes or to take the canonical drill example.
I have a constraint that the walls in my apartment are very
thin and I'll wake up my neighbors easily and that's a constraint maybe or something like this.
Well, it can constrain it can end up being a constraint on the solution.
So you've got 10 minutes to eat in that case.
Maybe your solution is a shake or whatever.
But it also it also can be funny.
We started talking about causality.
It can be a cause, right?
Unpredictable rain.
can be a cause of, you know, all your seeds don't germinate at the same time.
Why didn't they germinate at the same time?
Because we had a ton of rain early and then we didn't have any, right?
It's a constraint.
We couldn't control it.
So it could now, to be completely honest with you, I think this is an area to explore more fully.
Um, but at the, but just at the very least it can be a constraint on the solution and the constraints can be causes of the cause of why a needs not satisfied.
Yeah.
I think I, I, I, what I really like is that kind of circumstances or constraints, they live in the, they live in the solution world and needs.
Usually they, they, I mean, if you really think about a need,
in the broadest sense, I don't care about my constraints.
It's something I want, whether I can get it or not.
But a constraint is like I have to accept it.
Why is it in the solution world?
I don't quite get that.
Why do you say a constraint is in the solution world?
Well, because I would say there are no limits to my needs.
and my once and my outcomes and my or however you want to call it.
I can want something that isn't yet physically possible.
Yeah, you you want all your seeds to come out of the ground at the same time.
And that's completely independent of what the weather does.
Yeah.
But I think so you can follow the logic of pulling constraints out of the process.
However,
I think this is an area for full exploration, but a couple of quick things.
I think you both see where it can be a constraint on solution, right?
But also it could be a cause of why that's unmet.
The seeds will not germinate at the same time because they don't get rain when they need it and they get too much when they don't.
So it could be a cause of lots of things.
So then it comes back around.
So when so when you're doing a qualitative interview, you know, to know the constraints, first of all, oh, one constraint is the unvariability of the weather.
OK, what challenges does that create for you?
So because the constraint can is a causal factor, it becomes part of an interviewing technique to uncover more.
Oh, yeah.
We don't get enough rain, we get too much rain, we're so unpredictable rain, that makes me have pesticide, or makes all the pesticides wash off, or it makes all the soil wash away, or this plants die because they don't get enough rain.
Why are all those things happening?
Because the rain's unpredictable, because of that constraint.
And the reason I'm stammering a little bit is I don't, well, those two things I'm confident about, but I feel like there's probably more
There's more also more, more to add to the, this constraint bit, but when, honestly, when constraints came out of the official process, I just went, I went right there with it.
It's only years later as a practitioner that I was like, Oh yeah.
And you guys brought it up today.
I didn't bring it up, but I thought you'd find that was interesting.
It was, it was jobs outcome constraints 20 years ago.
Yeah.
Absolutely, because I think unconsciously, really without having any formal way of thinking about this, we use it exactly in the way you just explained.
It's a source for gathering more outcomes.
And we just kind of ignore it.
And probably that's not always a good idea.
And as a practitioner,
You know you have there's a gray area between needs and solutions anyway right now you're opening up the big the big without doing that per se just with the need but if you're if you're sort of Lucy you see about that distinction or.
For some practitioners, quite honestly, you might not really be aware of it that much.
I mean, if you've ever, when you teach people to gather needs, that's the first thing you're trying to show them some discipline about keeping them separate, because they're all over the map with solutions.
So you're sort of really driving that point home.
But if they're not worried about it, they'll have all kinds of needs about
about the weather stuff.
But the reason one reason it's important to pull it out is you don't do any good.
You don't help yourself to have some kind of some kind of need stay.
But that's like increase the likelihood that the rain is perfectly is perfectly when I need it.
No, because that can't happen because that's a constraint.
You cannot change it.
I mean, yeah.
in an outdoor now again, if you have to sort of define in an outdoor world, you can't.
I mean, unless you have some ability to seed clouds or something, you know, or who knows where technology is going, some control over the climate.
So you see, you're having so back to our the whole thing about back to our causality is statistician stayed out of it because it's like they can't make any definitive statement.
So they so it's like zero common sense is allowed, zero logic, only numbers.
And so with the jobs you've done, the study or project or analysis or whatever, you know, so you bring your common sense back into it and you sort of have to say, what can be changed?
What cannot be changed?
There are consequences to that.
And so it's probably a good common sense that we cannot change the weather.
Now we had our trees expert.
I mean, maybe what if we created an environment where you can't see?
What if we have greenhouses?
So that also illustrates an innovation path.
How can you get rid of a constraint?
Yeah, absolutely.
But I find it very interesting how you use the word constraint.
I mean, it makes total sense to me this example of the weather, but that's not at all the kind of, for me, it's not what appears to me like a constraint, but you're totally right.
It is definitely
Yeah, I guess constraint is a good word.
For me, this idea of constraint is where you're basically limited in the space you can navigate somehow.
It kind of limits your movement.
And I had never really considered this idea.
I think this weather example is very interesting.
Well, I definitely embraced paradoxes.
And how can I hold two things in truth?
It shouldn't be true at the same time, but R. And so that's where, so these definitions are a paradox.
I'll define constraints, something that cannot be changed.
And then I'll turn around and say, Hey, one innovation path is to get rid of this constraint.
I hold both of those ideas in my head without going too crazy.
Yeah.
But if you think about when we had our trees conversation, a lot of trees is about how do, that's the whole thing.
How do we innovate by eliminating a constraint?
But really, when we say a constraint, we mean a current constraint.
And again, I'm aware I'm contradicting myself, but it doesn't bother me.
It's a constraint something we cannot change.
We say cannot in some,
timeframe, right?
Maybe longer term.
But this way, if you can get rid of a constraint, you definitely have an innovation opportunity.
So some of the assumptions around the constraint cannot be changed.
Maybe you can challenge some of those.
But then with all of these, you can see we're getting away from the needs.
And usually with jobs we've done, at least initially, we want to purely understand the needs first.
And we often don't get too much into the solution side, which is one reason why probably constraints is not as much of the dialogue as maybe it should be.
But that could be a way out.
I would say, well, if in the needs you completely ignore constraints and a need pops out as being super important and not fulfilled at all, but there is a constraint in the world to achieve it, then you know what you need to change.
So you need to work on it.
But that goes a long way.
I think we never really go that far in our process, to be honest.
Funnily enough, this Alicia Guerrero in this book, which I haven't finished, so I can't comment on it extensively.
But she has this notion of enabling constraint, which is a constraint you actually
set yourself in order to generate more ideas or different solutions.
But that I think is really, that's maybe a little bit of a different point, but that's really important.
Never trying to start creativity or even thinking about philosophy and all that kind of stuff with the idea in mind to completely be open to everything.
That's when you will stare at the blank page.
So
Constraints are super helpful for creativity in general.
Usually the more constraints you add, the easier it is to be creative.
I complete to see that.
You can have a whole hook around constraints.
It's a big topic, really.
I just want to Scott, you mentioned this with kind of holding these paradoxes in kind of these two things that are somehow there is a tension between a true at the same time.
Now, one of the best definitions of philosophy I've ever heard is one of my my past philosophy teacher said, well, philosophy is about going crazy without losing your mind.
And I think that's kind of, that hits the nail on the head.
And sometimes I think we need to have that.
We need to kind of have these, that we need to consciously hold tensions because the world unfortunately doesn't come our way in a purely nicely phrased way where it's just everything is clear and there are no contradictions.
I just, I think it's kind of a more, even a more realistic picture of the world where things are not clean and not kind of don't work super.
To just accept
the paradox is to, um, it's just sort of not go great.
Just to not overly, the other thing is, well, you overly simplify it.
If you, but to get rid of it artificially is to create some, is to create something that's not, it's less than true.
And so you're better to accept the paradox and whatever that complexity is, maybe at some point you'll understand something better.
But for me, I just recognize it as a paradox.
And then, and then I'm,
It's almost like before recognizing it causes tension, but oh, that's a paradox.
I'm okay with it.
Now we can move on.
That's a very Zen approach to innovation here.
Well, it's like, you know, like in my book, I've got the paradox of value propositions.
One is like a completely objective and one is this completely subjective.
Those are both true.
They use the yin and the yang analogy in your book.
I did reluctantly just because everybody uses it.
But
If it fits so well, for at least the way I was trying to organize it, I was like, well, why fight against a model if it works?
I definitely did not push it in.
I think a lot of books on the yin and yang of this or the zen of that, absolutely not.
But again, when these models of understanding reality have been around for thousands of years,
You know, that's probably best not to push against it too hard.
So what do you think?
This is a good way to... I think that's... Yeah, I think we've got more in this maybe for session three.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So session three we'll see about it.
I just encourage you.
So one beautiful entry point into kind of the philosophical connections and jobs we've done is God's book.
So the statue in the stone, go get it.
and just in terms of philosophy start wherever you want but just start and nobody is excluded from the club just try just follow your interest and go wherever you want to go so yeah I think that concludes our second episode on philosophy and jobs we done and we'll see you
I want to send you guys a YouTube video of that episode of the Andy Griffith episode.
See if you find it as entertaining as I do.