To learn more about Emotional Friction, we should first look at its opposite, Emotional Value. The “jobs-to-be-done” theory is one of the best ways we’ve found to understand the emotional value of something. Bob Moesta, a product innovator, came up with the term “jobs-to-be-done theory.” Later, Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and a leader in the field of innovation, expanded on the idea in his book “Competing Against Luck” and made it more well-known.
People “buy” products and services when they offer three essential values: functional value (like saving time), social value (like making your friends jealous), and emotional value (e.g., it will bring you joy).
“These three aspects of value are present in every choice we make about whether or not to buy or try something new.”
When you buy a new winter jacket, for example, these three values probably play a role in the way you decide:
Functional Value. When you wear the jacket, how warm and dry you feel.
Social Value. What people may think about you based on the style and brand of your jacket (fashion-conscious, wealthy, earthy, hipster, etc.).
Emotional Value. How it makes you feel about yourself (and even when you see it hanging in your closet).
This framework can be used for more than just products and services.
It works for any new idea or invention. Think about what Covid-19 means for education. In the spring of 2020, when the country went on lockdown, schools of all levels rushed to move their lessons online. Teachers had to move their content and lessons almost overnight to an online setting.
Videoconferencing tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams were able to scale up to keep up with the increase in demand. But the fact that this new technology worked was only part of the picture. The second part, which was a lot harder and more complicated, was getting students and teachers used to the idea of interacting online. In this case, questions like these help figure out how much teachers are worth:
Functional Value. Do students learn as well online as they do in the old-fashioned way, in person? Does the technology in the classroom have the right features to help students learn in different ways? How easy is it to use?
Social Value. How well does it help students and teachers interact with each other the way they want to? How do their students and their peers see them when they use it? Could a teacher look tech-savvy if they used this tech to its fullest? Could their reluctance make them look old-fashioned?
Emotional Value. How sure are teachers that they can use this new technology, and how vulnerable do they feel? Does this change make you more optimistic or pessimistic about a world driven by technology? Are teachers set up for success or failure in their own lives?
Jobs-to-be-done
The biggest step forward for theory was realising that value has many different parts. But if the emotion is the reason why someone chooses to accept a new idea, it can also be the reason why they choose not to accept change.
