Over 40 million copies of Stephen R. Covey’s classic book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, have been sold since its first publishing in 1989. I think it’s safe to say that most leaders embrace Covey’s seven habits and the principles upon which they are founded…at least when it comes to personal effectiveness.

Interestingly, most leaders responsible for innovation do not abide by these habits when trying to create new value for their customers and, consequently, they are less effective than they could be which results in customer dissatisfaction and high new product failure rates. The jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) innovation approach modifies Covey’s first three habits of highly effective people into the first three habits of highly effective innovators. Let’s take a look at how this works.

1) BE PROACTIVE

• For personal effectiveness, act in advance to handle current and/or expected changes or difficulties.
• For innovator effectiveness, act in advance to handle your target customers’ current and/or expected changes or difficulties. Talk with them.

2) START WITH THE END IN MIND.

• For personal effectiveness, start with end in mind because all things are created twice. There’s a mental first creation and then a physical second creation to all things. The blueprint precedes the physical building. Therefore, start with the end in mind.
• For innovator effectiveness, discover your target customers’ ends in mind which are the functional, emotional, and social jobs they want to get done and the criteria they use to measure success. These are their “needs.” Any organization that knows how to discover its target customers’ jobs to be done and criteria for success will be significantly more effective at innovation than those that do not.

3) PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST.

• For personal effectiveness, organize and manage your time and events according to your top objectives. Eliminate activities that are non-urgent and unimportant and devote more time to those things that are important.
• For innovator effectiveness, determine which of your target customers’ jobs and criteria are important to get done but going unsatisfied by their current product or service solution — those are your opportunities for new value creation — and then help them get those jobs done better.

If you are not proactively finding and addressing your target customers’ important unsatisfied jobs and criteria, then you are inevitably wasting time and resources addressing things that are unimportant and/or already well-satisfied. Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.

The JTBD innovation approach enables organizations to modify Covey’s first three habits of highly effective people into the first three habits of high effective innovators. This is how leading companies are turning innovation and growth into a repeatable business process. You can do it, too.

Reveal needs. Create value. Drive growth.

(A version of this article appeared in The Business Journals, November 16th, 2021,)