Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Pre-PMF Fieldnote: Karim and Ana write the job statement of a technician after 8 switch interviews with companies that left paper sheets.
What the team took away
The job is not 'log interventions', it is 'leave the site with nothing left to do'. Offline mode moved from nice-to-have to a launch requirement.
How to run it
Preparation
Run 4 to 6 switch interviews beforehand: people who recently adopted or dropped a solution like yours. Bring the timeline of each decision.
Invite product and design, plus one salesperson or support agent who hears customers every day. Max 6 people.
On the board: one job statement template per interview, and the four forces zones (push, pull, anxieties, habits) empty.
Send the interview recordings the day before with the timestamps of the moment the customer decided to switch.
Agenda
10 min
Frame the job, not the product Explain the difference between what people buy and the progress they want. Give one example outside your industry so nobody argues about your product.
30 min
Replay the switch stories For each interview, one person retells the timeline in 4 minutes: first thought, passive looking, active looking, decision. The others note pushes and pulls on stickies.
30 min
Map the four forces Post the stickies in the four zones. Group duplicates. The biggest cluster in push and pull is your real reason to be bought. The biggest in anxieties is what blocks the sale.
40 min
Write job statements In pairs, write 'When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]' for each distinct job you heard. Situation must be a moment, not a demographic.
25 min
Rank the jobs Score each job on frequency and importance from the interviews. Dot vote only to break ties. Keep the top 2 or 3.
15 min
Decide what changes For the top job: what in the current product serves it, what fights it. Write one sentence on what the next discovery cycle focuses on.
Pitfalls
A job statement that names your feature is not a job. 'I want to export a CSV' is a task; 'I want to show my boss the numbers before the meeting' is the job.
Do not write jobs from your own experience of the product. If there are no interviews, cancel the session and go do them.
Resist the urge to list 15 jobs. Three sharp jobs drive a roadmap; fifteen vague ones drive nothing.
Afterwards
The top job statement and its forces go into the Value Proposition Canvas and the Opportunity Solution Tree. Sales gets the pushes and anxieties for its pitch. Redo the exercise when you enter a new segment.