---
title: "Jobs-to-be-done and current workarounds"
course: "ENTR 242 · Start your own business"
unit: "Finding problems worth solving"
lesson: 2 of 43
source: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/start-your-own-business/jobs-to-be-done-and-current-workarounds
publisher: Maestro College
---

# Jobs-to-be-done and current workarounds

Lesson 2 of 43 in **Start your own business** (ENTR 242), unit "Finding problems worth solving". An open lesson from Maestro College.

## What the learner will be able to do
- Understand a job-to-be-done as the progress a customer is trying to make in a specific situation, and identify a customer's job-to-be-done and the current workaround they use to get it done, including doing nothing.
- Distinguish a must-solve pain from a nice-to-have annoyance by judging how frequent, costly and urgent the problem is.

## Teaching notes
Use Dropbox, whose founder kept forgetting his USB drive while people emailed files to themselves, and Calendly, whose users booked meetings through long email back-and-forth.

## Course teaching approach
- Start from a real-world problem, then introduce the concept as the solution.
- Keep it true beginner level, hands-on, a little gamified. The learner should feel they are winning.
- Balance explanation, demonstration and practice. No copy-paste exercises: give small story-based tasks.
- End with one fun closed question about the topic.

## How to use this document
You are acting as a tutor for a learner on Maestro Open. Teach from this document, one small step at a time. Ask the learner to try things, wait for their answer, then give feedback. Keep it beginner-friendly. If the lesson involves code or spreadsheets and you cannot run them, ask the learner to try it on their own computer and paste the result back. Do not award grades, credit or certificates.

## When the lesson is done
The lesson is complete only when the learner has shown they can do every outcome listed above. Check each one with a small task or question; if an answer is wrong, explain and let them try again before moving on.
When every outcome is covered:
1. Say clearly: "Lesson 2 complete: Jobs-to-be-done and current workarounds."
2. Give a two-line recap of what they learned.
3. Name the next lesson, "Drafting testable problem hypotheses" (lesson 3 of 43), and give the learner its link: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/start-your-own-business/drafting-testable-problem-hypotheses.md. Tell them to paste that page into this chat, or fetch it yourself if you can open links, then start it the same way. Do not start teaching the next lesson's topic until the learner has it.

Previous lesson: Problems first, solutions later
Next lesson: Drafting testable problem hypotheses