Bob Moesta: JTBD & Hiring

• Transcript
• About the Speaker
• Join the BoS community

Time after time, when you ask entrepreneurs what their greatest challenges are, they’ll tell you hiring, managing and developing talented people is at the top of the list.

How can you compete for great people in a world where, ‘the war for talent’, rages? Bob Moesta, creator of the JTBD framework, demonstrates a different approach to hiring. In his recent book, ‘Job Moves – 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career’, Bob outlines an approach to thinking about your career that helps you make more informed choices about the opportunities you should pursue. In this talk, Bob demonstrates, with case studies, how companies that understand the real reasons people decide to switch jobs, can hire better, more motivated and engaged talent.

Find out more about BoS

Get details about our next conference, subscribe to our newsletter, and watch more of the great BoS Talks you hear so much about.

Transcript

Bob Moesta

I’m trying something a little different to challenge myself, which is, I have no slides. I have 60 minutes to talk, and that’s a long time with no slides.

How many people here are founders? Awesome. So, every founder here gets the chance to actually call bullshit on me. How many people want to be a founder? This talk is for you. How many people work for a founder? This is to help you figure out how to build a better team. Okay, so here’s how I’m working this – 10 minute blocks. I’m setting a timer. That’s how, because I anybody who’s seen me talk before, I usually have 100 slides, I go 20 minutes over. I’m trying to just keep it blocked. Four questions: Why did I write this book? What the book is about? Everybody got a copy of this? Everybody find this book in their bag? Okay, it’s there. We’re gonna talk about it.

I want to be able to tell you, like as a founder, how this book can help you become a founder. And I want you to think about kind of as as people who are founders get to call bullshit if I’m not speaking something that’s true, because I’ve done a lot of research about it. Second thing is, how do you build your team out as a founder? Very hard, but I’ve learned a lot by the research I’ve done. And then the third is, how do you retain your team? And we’re gonna have Mark Stephens talk a little bit about as well, because he had got an early read of this, and he actually has implemented some of these things in this book. Hold on, get start the timer, 10 minutes. Let’s go.

Why Bob Wrote the Book & Early Research

All right, I did some research. So those who know me know that I’m a very curious person. I’m driven by my curiosity. When I have a problem, I literally go down the rabbit hole, and I go way too deep. In 2009, 15/16 years ago, I got approached by a gentleman named Ethan Bernstein. Ethan was Clay Christensen’s advisor on his PhD at Harvard Business School, and he approached me after watching me do an interview about somebody buying a sous vide right when I was teaching at Harvard, and he basically said, I want to know how to do this for HR. And I said, No way, no way. I don’t want any part of HR. I’m a product guy. I like to build product. I want to help with product. And then I started to realize how hard it is and how HR is not necessarily helping us find these jobs.

And so we started basically back in 2009 and it just started interviewing people to say, What happened that says, today’s the day I’m gonna leave this company and go to that company? What causes you today, so it’s applying jobs to be done theory, to why people leave one place and go to another place? What progress they tried to make? And what I want to do is just share some of the insights I found out about this.

Core Insight: Employees Hire Companies

But the number one thing that I will tell you is that employees hire companies more than companies hire employees.

You choose where you want to be, though we might not want to think it’s that way. The fact is it’s true. And the other part is that when you ask people about how they found their last job, the number one answer, I got so lucky. So lucky, right? Luck is a four letter word in my house. If you believe in luck, which I’m not saying I don’t believe in luck, but if you actually count on luck, then you count on good luck and bad luck. And the reality is that every job switch is caused, luck has very little to do with it. And so after doing over 1000 interviews of people switching jobs, I wrote this book. And what it is, it comes back to there are pushes, things that push you to leave the company you were at. There are pulls. There are things that are pulling you towards this new job. Doesn’t have to be that way, because after interviewing 1000 people, I went off and I coached 1000 people in their job transition. And what’s so interesting is 48% of them didn’t switch jobs, but they increased their satisfaction at their job. And so part of it is to understand what this is about.

Pushes, Pulls & Job Switching Patterns

And as we went through this, this book is really about accumulating a bunch of information around what causes people to switch jobs. How do we build a process so people can actually be more satisfied at work? And how do we actually start to change the process? Because if you look at the innovation that’s happened in HR, what have they been doing? How many people have tried to hire somebody in the last six months? Tell me how easy it is. It’s very easy? Why is it easy? So you have an abundance of candidates. How many are qualified? 1000s, right? And so part of it is, there’s a whole thing of how do you choose? So you go from, you go from I don’t have enough candidates to now I have too many candidates. And how do I choose, right? And so part of it is it’s a two sided problem, right? And what I mean by a two sided problem is that, what is a resume? What’s your resume say about you? But not enough, right? No, what the resume says about you is everything you did in the past, and it’s literally the highlights of what you did in the past. There’s none of the stuff that you screwed up on on your resume, right? So the first thing is, it’s almost like you’re building yourself to be a superhero.

What’s a job description? How do you how do you build the job description for your open, your open position? It’s a sales document that’s actually a good angle on it. But for the most part, how do most people build their job descriptions? That’s right, they find somebody who else had it, or they basically edit it, and what do they do? They add all the shitty work that you don’t want to do that you go like, Oh, I can have them do that. And so it gets bigger, and it becomes this running document. I look at the job descriptions of today is the way we used to build product in the 80s and 90s. We just build a list of features, of like, Oh, I wish he could do this. I wanted to do that. It’s just all these features. But it’s a mismatch, because you end up with a unicorn trying to be with the superhero. And the reality is, like you put this together, and it should make perfect sense, but yet, over a billion people a year switch jobs, and most people who know when it’s a bad job know within the first three weeks, and it takes them two years to get out.

And so part of this is to realize. What I want you to realize is that the knowledge in this book will help you as a founder, become a founder. It will also help you build your team around you to be a better founder, and it will also teach you how to actually, when you have how to manage people, because most founders are either technical or they’re sales, they’re not HR, right? We don’t really want to be HR, but we have to do HR. And so part of this is to figure out, how do we actually become better leaders? By understanding what causes people to join your team and leave your team. I got to figure out where I am at time, three minutes.

So in the book, the other part of the book is a process. It’s written primarily for employees. So the first round of this book is for employees, but I’m what I’m doing right now is I’m trying to build a derivative of the book. I want to call it the founder edition, to help founders. Because if you talk to founders, this is one of those things that they struggle with, to be honest. That’s the other reason why I wrote this book. Is if I ask founders, what do they struggle with most? What the talent was always in the top three for the last 20 years. And so it’s this thing of, how do you, it might be able to get a lot of candidates, but how do I pick the right candidates, and how do I keep the really good people from leaving? And so ultimately, it’s, how do you build that team out, and how do you think about it? And part of it is understanding what causes them to leave, what causes them to come? And being able to figure that out.

Founders: Self‑Awareness, Energy & Strengths

Founders. So the other thing that this book is a little bit about is how I build product. So in this last year, I’ve launched a book. I’ve launched two startups, one of them around this book. And so for me, part of this is finding where’s a big enough market? Where people struggle? Do people struggle to find a new job? It’s a lot of work. But here’s the thing, here’s the catch phrase that I always use. How many people want a new job but don’t know how to find it? How big do you think that market is? It’s huge.

And so most of the thing you’re starting to realize is that, and what innovations have they? What innovations have been in this space? What’s in the last five years? What’s happened that’s either helped this, this part of the market, finding a new job? How’s it gotten better or worse? And then actually AI on the other end, actually screening it to basically go through it. So I got AI talking to AI. And so what happens is, now I got 200 applications, and it lands on the hiring managers thing and says, choose. How do you do that? And so it just it actually, the way I look at it, actually multiplied the insanity. It automated the insanity. And so now it’s easier to apply. But like when you talk to a real job seeker, oh yeah, I put out 200 resumes yesterday, to whom? I don’t know. And then they complain about what it is.

And so part of this is what I will tell you, is that there’s two actually important parts of this book. One is to know who you are, and more importantly, to know who you’re not. As a founder, I will tell you that is how you get your superpower. How many founders here have any had as they started the business, anything closely remote to imposter syndrome? So I’ve done, I’ve done 10 startups, and it’s still to the point where I feel still like an imposter. But the thing that actually has helped me the most is when I can tell people what I suck at and tell them that I need their help because I can’t do these things. The one thing that you start to realize as a founder is you can’t do it all. And so part of the exercise, is what we do is we, in the book, we start to ask people what drives their energy and what sucks their energy?

So my belief is that energy is actually the underlying, best way in which to understand what you should be doing now. And what I mean by that is a situation where, like, think in the last week, where you walked into a situation and you basically got more energy than you did walking in. You walked out with like, oh my god, I’m so excited about this. That is one of the telltale signs of what you should be doing, because anything that gives you energy, you don’t actually think you’re working anymore. Conversely, if you’ve got the other thing where you walk into a meeting, or you walk into going to do a task, and it literally sucks the life out of you. That’s probably work you shouldn’t be doing. And to be honest, when you get in the flow, you start to realize there’s that stuff that drives you and that stuff that drains you. And to be honest, you need to be aware of that all the time. That’s what causes people to leave. And the more you can be on the work that you love to do and the work that you hate to do and offer the work you hate to do, that actually will actually add more satisfaction to your job than anything else. My belief right now is that most people spend 80% of their time doing work they hate, for the for the 20% of the work they love. I think some people have it worse, 95/5.

And what I will tell you, if you can get to 50/50, like we all have to do work we don’t want to do, but it doesn’t have to be such a big ratio. And so part of it is being able to find the work that you actually like to do, if it’s 50% of the work you love to do or like to do gives you energy, and 50% of it is work that you you have to learn around. The fact is, you’re doing really well.

The Importance of Opposites & Complementary Partners

But as a founder, when you become a founder, the fact is it’s a hard thing to do because you think you have to be good at everything. And what happens is, your first hire is what? Usually, for the founders in the room, who was your first hire? Why? The first hire you have is wrong, because nine times out of 10 you try to hire somebody like you. And so you hire to basically do what you do, and then all of a sudden you get stuck doing the shitty work that you didn’t want to do because they’re doing the work you love to do, right? And so what I would tell you is you need to actually know the opposite of you.

So I have a business partner, his name is Greg Engel. He’s been my business partner for over 20 years. We’ve done four or five businesses together. He is my exact opposite, exact so if you know disc, individualizer, steady, conscientious. I’m a DI, he’s an SC. If you take Strength Finders, and you look at my top five things i’m strong at, it’s his bottom five. If you look at his top five, they’re my bottom five.

And you start to realize the fact is, is that opposites actually make us stronger. And it took us about three years, but after three years of working together, and to be honest, six weeks of working apart, we vowed we’d never work apart ever again on anything. I give him a cut of my take home every year, and he gives me a cut of his take home every year and we share. Because we know we’re way better together than we are separate. That’s what a business partner looks like to me. And to be honest, that’s the hire you want to be able to start to think about. And how do you figure out? But that starts with awareness of what do you suck at?

Here’s the other part I realized in this book, you’ve got some strengths, you got some weaknesses, right? And when I worked in corporate America, they would always say, Ooh, we have a development opportunity for you. We all know that’s kind of a pip, right? And so what happens is they want. So one of my weaknesses harmony. If you look at Strength Finders, I’m very bad at harmony, because I fundamentally believe that product development and innovation and building product is a contact sport. We have to argue. When we argue, we actually come up with better ideas. When we don’t argue, it usually turns out to be a shit idea. That’s how I’m wired. So if you try to make me get better at harmony, you actually strip me of my superpower.

But what happens is, when we need harmony in the team, I turned to Greg because Greg has so much harmony in him. He loves to basically make sure everybody’s heard. And I have enough respect to know that I need Greg for that thing, but I don’t need to be good at it and strip myself of my superpower. And so part of this is, one is, as a founder, you need to have self awareness. And the more you have self awareness of not only who you are, but who you’re not, your imposter syndrome starts to shrink, because you start to realize you need help. Nine times out of 10, at least for me and I’ll say my early founding as a founder, I believe that I could do anything and everything. Which was probably true, I just couldn’t do any of them well. And so part of this is, the sooner you confess up to what you don’t do well, and you can find somebody. The craziest part to me is this, there’s always somebody who can do the shitty stuff you hate to do better, and they love to do it.

So I have an accountant. I hate accounting. And she gets, like, I feel like it’s an endorphin hit when she gets the bank statement and she gets it to balance, it’s like, oh my god, that was amazing. I’m like, what are you talking about? I love her to do that, and it’s to the point where I actually pay her more than her rate i because at some point I don’t want her to. I want to be her best customer, because I never want to look at the books, except for what it’s taxes in the end of the year. And so part of this is to realize, as you start to build your team, it’s hard to build your team out if you don’t know what you suck at. Any founders have anything to add to that? Do you agree with that statement?

What’s interesting is my wife and my business partner are almost the same people. It’s not true, but like when my wife and Greg and Julie get together, I know that they’re conspiring against me for my benefit. Like I will end up being better, but I will end up being paying some price when they get together. I try to do that once in a while, because if it’s too long, then they actually have lots of rules for me. But the notion is to realize that it’s okay to have opposites, and to be honest, they care for me as much as I care for them. And all practical purposes, we shouldn’t be friends. We shouldn’t even be close. But the reality is, and when we argue, there’s so much trust there because they have what we don’t have. So it’s really important.

Founders, did I say anything wrong? Anything you disagree with? So here’s the thing is, imposter syndrome is real, and what I will tell you is, the thing that sets you free is being aware of what you suck at. It’s a really important thing. And to be honest, very humbling, keeps you humble.

Building a Team: Skills, Diversity & Work That Gives Energy

So the second part of this, or the third part, I guess, is really about let’s talk about building your team. How do you build your team? And what I will tell you is I believe that your team needs to be as diverse as possible, as diverse as it can be in terms of skills and mindset, because at some point in time, like again, I know I have weaknesses. Every person I work with has weaknesses, and my job is not to make them better. It’s more about getting them to do the work they love to do and that they’ve been almost born to do. So one of my traits and my strengths is called an individualizer, which is I spend so much time trying to get to know that person that I’m that’s going to work with me, because I know I’m going to put them under pressure, but I want them to be doing the work they love to do and to try to minimize the work that they hate to do. I’m not saying they don’t have to do that. They’ll have to do some of the work they hate to do, but to make sure that ratio is well over 50%. And so part of this is, how do you then recruit for that?

The Four Quests for Why People Switch Jobs

In the book, there’s these quests. And so again, the number of people who want to change jobs, and the number of people who actually change jobs is about a seven to one ratio. So what you have to realize is, how many people are in your company wanting to leave, but they don’t know how, and they’re still there? So part of this is to realize, knowing the four quests, let me tell you the four quests.

Quest 1: Get Out

Quest number one is, it’s really just called Get Out. It’s a situation where people find themselves micromanaged. They don’t actually trust the people they work with. They end up being pushed to beyond their abilities, to either from an ability perspective, from an ethics perspective, they’re pushed too hard. And what happens is, the fact is, is they don’t even have time to think. They’re so stressed, they just need to get out right and though these are the people who quit and have nothing in mind yet. It’s that’s how bad it is. It happens. It’s happened three times in my life. Doesn’t happen that often. I got better at it, but that’s one.

Quest 2: The Next Step

Number two is The Next Step. The next step is these people who, basically they love to learn. They’re challenged most of the time. The fact is, is they have a notion of where they want to go, but the fact is they’ve kind of reached a plateau, and they’ve learned enough, and it’s time to actually kind of take the next step to something else, something broader, something higher, something in a different industry. But they’re ready. There’s almost like a gurgling in their stomach about, like, Okay, it’s time to go. They don’t know where. They don’t know where to go. But this is about the next step is something that’s going to be like the next step in their career. Those are two obvious ones, but there’s two other ones that are actually equally important.

Quest 3: Regain Control

One of them is called Regain Control. This is where I like what I do, there’s just too much of it, and I’m working so much that I’m literally not holding up my end of the bargain outside of work, because I’m working so hard, and so I end up quitting, because at some point in time, it’s like I need to regain control so I can have some balance in my life. Happens more when you’re in your 40s and your 50s, sometimes in your 30s. But ultimately, this job is about this quest is about the fact of regaining control of your life so you can actually have more people in your life. Because what happens  typically, you get that stress of when you start to have a family and everything else, there’s never enough time.

Quest 4: Realignment

And the third one, or the fourth one, is a quest called Realignment, which is, as you go through your career, and if you stay with the same company, they start to say, Oh, we can move you over here, okay, and this is what you love to do. And then, oh, we can move you over here. We can get you to operate. You should do QC. And next thing you know, you’re so far away from the work that you really like to do, you’re kind of like, I want to go back to this. How do I get back to this? The most interesting thing to me is people think it’s easier to go find a new job than to talk to their manager or talk to somebody inside their company about what they want to do. And so that’s one of the ways that we want to talk about retention. And how do you actually retain people? But ultimately, the fact is, is that you want to be very sensitive to basically, where people are coming from.

Recruiting With Purpose & Using the Book in Hiring

And so learning how to actually enable and empower people to be good and better at what they do, that’s what this book is about, helping you actually understand those things about people.

So when you’re recruiting, one of the things we that I’ve started to do is I actually give the candidates the book, and I want them to know who they are, what drives their energy. And if you’re really come back as a candidate, you can tell me more about you and what you want to do, not what you’ve done. Now we can talk. Because at some point, no who doesn’t want an employee who’s self aware, and knows what they suck at, and know what they love to do, and know where they want to go. So this book answers the two questions, Who are you, who you’re not? And what do you want? And so I would love a candidate to walk in the door that so, to be honest, I’ve since I’ve gotten the book. I guess, since I wrote the book. But since I’ve gotten the book, but I haven’t had the physical book, I’ve had to give everybody a thing, but I’ve been recruiting for my startup, and I literally will get to a small set of candidates, and then I’ll go, like, Okay, this is going to be some work. You don’t have to do it, but here’s this. They go through it. What’s interesting is, I’ve taken 10-12 candidates through it, I’ve made eight job offers. I’ve only landed two people, but those two people are kind of awesome. They fit in really, really well. And so to be honest, I put some more rigor on the hiring process, not on my end, on their end.

High‑Performing Teams & Why They Don’t Last Forever

Have you ever worked on a team and it just felt magic? Anybody? How long did it last? Yep, 3-4 years, average. Here’s the thing, we don’t actually know it until we’re in it, and then when you’re in it, you’re like, oh my god, this is amazing. And then all of a sudden, one person leaves, and the whole thing kind of falls apart, and then you spend the next four years trying to replicate that team that you can never get back together.

And so what I want to tell you is, so I live in Detroit, Michigan, and one of the things is we have a football team, American football team, called the Detroit Lions, and they’ve never won anything for 60 years. And last year, they did very, very well. And what happened is everybody came in, they did very well during the season. They lost in the playoffs. And what happened is, the rest of the league came in and just hired everybody away. And it was, it was a special team. Should have gone all the way. Well, that’s what I say, because I’m a fan, but the reality is that the head coach had such a great, great attitude about is, like, look, my job is to have people come here and get better, and as they get better, they’re going to become the best, and I have to realize they’re going to move on, but my job is now to find the next round of people to pull together and make them the best, and take the next round of people and build them the best. And so part of this is to realize part of your job is not to hold people, but to develop people.

So as a founder, you want to basically figure out how to help people do the best work they can do, and they will always remember you for it. And as long as you have those teams be striving to get to those points where you have that gel of that high performing team, where there you’re all going like, Oh man, this is amazing, but you have to be managing it. You have to be explicit about it. You have to know what you suck at. That’s the hardest part.

Retention: The Pushes, Pulls & Biannual Conversations

All right, last part is with Mark. So the last part here is really about, how do you retain people? They’re ready to go. And so part of this is to realize, so those who are familiar with jobs to be done, there’s pushes that push people to make a change, and then there’s pulls to make people change. And ultimately, in the book on page 23 there’s basically a very long list of pushes. And so what I did is I had an early version of it. Mark asked to see it. I said, you know what I’d love for you to see it. And so is it 27 or 23? So, Mark, can you tell come on up and just tell us. What’d you do with this book? He’s gonna turn it on right now.

Mark Stephens: Implementing Push/Pull Conversations

So we came to Business of Software USA in 2022 and Bob did a talk where he was figuring out what he was talking about now. And he put two slides up on the screen, and I took screenshots of them, which was the pushes and the pulls, and I went away, and I started using them, and I told make the mistake of telling Bob what I was doing. So Bob’s asked me to be on stage, did give me an early copy of, a better copy. So what we’ve always found is generally, a lot of companies that think they have a hiring problem actually have a retention problem. Their staff, they just can’t keep their stuff. And also, if you keep churning over your staff for every 18 months, you’re not getting the best out of them. Because certainly in our because certainly in our organization, it takes 12 months before you’re really up to speed.

So what we started to do was we took the two slides, so if you turn to page 23 so what we started doing is, every six months, I told the team, I’m going to have a one to one with everyone on the team, and we’re going to go through the pushes and the pulls, and I just want us to have a talk, because in our opinion, there are good reasons that people leave companies and there are bad reasons that leave companies. So what I wanted to do was to fix the bad reasons. So the bad reasons are – I feel I’m being ignored at work. I don’t like my job anymore. It just doesn’t work for me. I don’t like you guys. You’re always ignoring me. Endless stream of moans and complaints. You know what staff are like.

And then there’s also the good reasons why people leave. So if you’re doing your job as a founder, you should expect, particularly if you’re training good people, you should expect them to outgrow you, or the company to outgrow them. So there are good reasons, like, I’m a really good sales guy on a two person team, and I now running 20 people, or I want to manage a large team, or my life has changed, or I need to do something else, just for context. Those are good reasons. So what normally happens in a lot of companies is those guys go off and have a lot of dental appointments, and then they tell you that they’re going to have a job. So what I would rather do is I’d rather be fixing the bad reasons, because no one should leave your company for a bad reason that should be fixable. The good reasons you want to embrace them.

So by going through this and saying and turning out that actually, yeah, I do really want to be a manager, and I’m working at a four person company, and Bob’s always going to be the boss. So if I want to be the boss, I’m going to have to find a new company. We can help those people. We can help them transition. It’s not going to be a surprise. We’re also not going to be surprised because we know that Bob is planning to leave at some point while Bob’s here is going to be really engaged, but he’s going to go somewhere else. He’s also going to go somewhere else, and he’s going to think we’re a really wonderful company, and he’s going to come and say, Actually, this last hopefully he’s not going to steal our staff, but he’s going to buy our product.

The other thing is by telling everyone we’re doing this. Because if I go to Dave Collins and say, Dave, are you thinking of getting a job somewhere else? Dave’s immediate reaction is, like, has somebody told you something? What’s going on? So it removes that really difficult, emotive issue, because I’m just having a frank, How are we doing? Where’s your roadmap? Are we still doing the job for you? And if we’re not, let’s park friends. If we if we can fix it, let’s fix it, because I think too much churn is bad, but no churn is equally bad. And if you know, if you’re a good founder, you should be proud that people you train were so good, they went off and created their own company, for example.

The other thing that I think is really important is the people who have no plans to leave. You know, your staff are always watching how you treat everyone else. So like, if you throw somebody under a bus, they notice that, and they’re thinking, when it’s my turn, I’m going to be thrown under a bus. So I think it also creates a much more friendly and conducive environment, because we can have those frank conversations. People can come to you and say, I’m not sure if I’m in the right job, without fearing that the next time they come back, the codes have changed on the doors, and they’re out of a job. So I think those are the reasons.

So I recommend that you sit them down, you go through these with your one to one hires. You do it every six months, and you make it clear, you know, I’m not saying anyone’s going to leave. I don’t want anyone to leave, but if there’s good reasons for you to leave, we want to be part of that process, and we want to empower you. So that’s how we’ve done that. And I’m very grateful to Bob for writing the book. Thank you, Bob.

Designing Retention Processes That Encourage Growth

Thank you. So I have an arrangement with my employees where we do the same thing. We sit down every we do it every six months as well. We sit down and just say, like, Are there any of these things that are going on that we should talk about? So you just show them the pushes. The other thing I have is, literally, I’m like, I want you to go be the best version of yourself, and if it’s not here and somewhere else, I want to help you find it. Here’s the deal. I’ll help you find the next job. You help me find the replacement for you. So it’s not, it’s not an adversary. Nobody’s sneaking around. It’s like, let’s make this explicit, and you start to realize that it’s actually works this way, and people are okay talking about it, it actually creates a great environment.

And so I’ve had in the book, there’s a really good case study of somebody who, basically, they work for a large corporation, and their whole division was moving somewhere else, and he decided not to move. And we went through the process. And as we went through the process, he said, like, I really like to coach. I really want to be able to help in innovation. I want to do these things. And he started to talk about all the things he was really good at. And then he basically realized, okay, I suck at these things. And then he said, Okay, I’m looking for a job in the city. He prototyped. So one of the things I did is I treat you like you’re the employee as the your product. What job are you meant to do?

And so ultimately, this guy basically went back to his boss, Is that I’m looking for a job in this this area. Who do you know outside the company, because he already knew he was leaving, and his boss basically, are you kidding me, like you want to do this? I didn’t know you wanted to do this. He goes, could you write me a job description of what you could do to help me do this? And they rehired him in a new job that he wrote the job description for that actually fits in. And one of the things that he wrote into his job description is he was feeling horrible about not doing enough community service. Because he’s been working so many hours and doing so many things. He’s like and the company has a not for profit. And as a chief innovation officer, I want to basically be able to spend two days a month at the not for profit helping the community.

And so all of a sudden, it’s designed what employer can say no to that? And so part of this is you start to realize that that you can negotiate these other things in that helps satisfy you. That might not be relevant to them, but part of it is being able to design it in because it’s part of the job.

So like, I sat down with somebody I work with, Catherine, and she talked to she came from being a school administrator and she she was also a counselor, and she loved to to help kids and counsel kids. And so when we sat down at one point, I said, So what do you miss most about your last job? Because I really miss kind of being able to interact with kids. I said, Well, I’m not bringing kids in here. This is, like, I can’t do that. This is not a place for kids. And so, but I said, like, let’s go find a place where you can actually do this counseling. And so she looked around, she goes I’d like to become a big, big sister for somebody. And so all of a sudden she basically signed up, and she became a big sister. And she’s like, Oh, and she came to me one day and she says, Oh, I just, I want to take some time off because I want to go to my little sister’s concert. And I told her, like, you don’t have to take any time off. This is part of work, because if you don’t have time to do, go do that, you won’t stay here.

And so part of the understanding how to design, because at some point we don’t have two lives. We don’t have a work life and a home life. We’ve got one life. We have to be able to manage the trade offs between them, and to realize, like, we can’t push our people so hard that they can’t have what they want. And so part of this is being able to see that. And so this research to be like, again, I didn’t really want to go into the HR area. I mean, those who know me, I know me as an engineer, and I just love to build shit. But now what’s happened is I started the, by the way, this book started with a talk here at BoS back in my I don’t even remember, 22 right? So it took me three years. I’ve been doing the research since 2009, I now have basically gotten to a point of realizing, like, this is actually a pretty good market to build a product.

So what I’ve done is I’ve taken this research and turned it into a product to help people go through the process. So the book is a process, but I have something called jobmovescoach.com please write it down. You can have access to it. You can have access to it for a while. It’s free. It’s in alpha. I literally started the business in January, right. And out of it, again, think about how many people want to change change jobs, but don’t know how? I will one more time jobmovescoach.com and my thing is, for anybody that you know is looking for a job again, this is not a bulletin board. This is about being clear on what you want out of work. Why do you want to go to an employer? Why do you want to leave? I think I’ve said this before, that 53% of the people who wanted a new job didn’t get a new job. They just realized their job was that much better. And so part of this is making people reflect on the work they do, make it feel the way they want it to feel, and understand the trade offs they have to make to do it. With that, I’m going to open it up for questions.

Mark Littlewood 

Oh, dang. Stick your hands up. You know how this works by now. David, is that a question or a bid? 1 million pounds?

Audience Member 

I’m just buzzing off the start of day two. And the download, there fantastic. Two things to build, I think, on what you’ve said and then one question. So the builds are you talked a lot about that self awareness piece, both, what are you really, really good at, and what do you suck at? I think it’s super hard to see that yourself. So enlisting the help of those close to you, who know you, who can see you really for who you are, because the blind spots are blind spots, right? By definition, I can’t see them. If you’re standing over there, you might. And then the second thing is the superpowers we often under appraise, the things where we are truly incredible, whereas somebody else there goes, no, no, you’re not just good, you are incredible. And that’s very helpful to know.

Bob Moesta 

It’s actually important, because that confidence gives you the ability to lean in even farther. So that’s really important.

Audience Member 

The second build on point, Mark talked a bit about the graceful lever. You talked a bit about, you know, helping people to make the progress that they’re trying to make. I’ve experienced three times across my career, people who I’ve facilitated a graceful departure for ultimately returned to the organization 2-3 years later, when their circumstances have changed exactly. And I strongly believe that they wouldn’t have done that had it not been such a graceful departure at the time. So grown up conversations about the reality is what that’s all about. Now, the challenge or question for you, you talked a bit about this bit where we find ourselves sort of over here, compared to where we started, which was what we truly loved. And I do see that a lot with people who are like, Okay, you were the first tester that we hired, so you’re now the head of test. And it’s like, why am I managing people all of a sudden? You know, these, these kinds of things. There is one other challenge, though, and that’s what I call the side quest. And the side quest is I’m doing a thing that I didn’t envisage wanting to do, and the organization has given me this opportunity to do it. And actually, I don’t have the self belief that I can do it, but somebody there does. I think that’s a really different thing, because that is a very powerful development thing. And so just finding those opportunities for people, if you can really understand the motives, and giving them the come all the way over here and see how it feels, can be great.

Bob Moesta

I think the notion is the more you can be aware of your superpowers and the what you’re about, you’ll actually be able to connect to those I believe those places where you can do special work manifest, because you know that. And so a lot of times we don’t think we know it. Somebody else actually sees us in it, but don’t. They don’t tell us that we’re really good at these things. And they put us in a position where, like, I don’t know if I can do this. And so part of it is, again, that open dialog to do it.

Audience Member 

So maybe that’s about letting go of the job title for embracing the superpower that’s understanding where to deploy the superpower. Thank you, Bob.

Bob Moesta 

Thank you. The other part, though, that you brought up that’s important to me is the fact this is we keep thinking that the job or the position is supposed to do everything for us, and it’s a very common thing for, I’ll say Gen Z for sure, where that’s like supposed to be everything. And so one of the things I’m teaching people, is how to actually go find a side gig, how to actually have a hobby. Like, the notion is there’s people like, I really want to do this and this and this. I’m like, Okay, well, let’s find a hobby. I don’t want a hobby. It’s like, okay, you’re not going to get this at work and you want this. Let’s figure out a way you can get this interaction that you need. And so you start to realize that using their outside time to be able to do that. And a lot of founders, for example, I teach them basically, keep the day job, do what you have to do, create as a side gig, and then build a side gig to be big enough to then that you can become the main gig. But to quit your job to go do a startup from scratch is sometimes. Yeah, that’s a mistake, because it puts you in the wrong cash position.

Audience Member 

Did you look into employers desired outcomes? And if so, what are they?

Bob Moesta 

I did not. So that’s really kind of what I’m saying is the companion book is because, but I felt like the first thing was to help the individual figure out how to hire the better company. And how do we actually figure out that process? So it started from what I think is the demand side, the supply side being the employer. And so basically, how do I do that? And then ultimately, I’m now having engagements where I’m helping employers write better job descriptions, figuring out how to do the yearly, semi annual kind of reviews, helping with some of that stuff. It doesn’t give me a lot of energy. So, like, I’m, I’m looking for somebody to help me with that kind of thing. It’s very insightful work, and I got a lot of joy of creating it. But the fact is, I think part of it is the implementation is, I’m trying to figure out who the implementation on the on the employer side. I love to coach individuals to see them blossom into something new. And this is really a way that I can scale that. So where I might have been able to do 10 a month, now I can do 50 a month. So I think that’s more where I come from on that.

Audience Member 

Thank you very much. That was fascinating. This is for Mark as well, I think. When you have these conversations every six months with employees and have these frank discussions, how did they experience that? Were they surprised? Defensive? Did they really embrace it? What was the feedback you got from the employees perspective on having these discussions that they’re presumably quite unused to.

Bob Moesta 

For me, I brought them in under that premise. And so the premise is you’re going to we’re going to work together, and it’s a yearly contract. At the end of the year, you’re going to tell me whether you want to stay another year or not, and we’re going to talk about the progress you want to make. At the same time, the fact is, when you say like, because every time we’d work with a new company of like, do you want to go work for them? Do you want to go work for them to try to give them prototypes, to see what they really want? And so every time we sit down and talk about it, it’s more about them doing the homework, about what gave them energy and knowing kind of that those things that kind of drive them and kind of hinder them. And so it’s not uncomfortable at all. But part of is because we set it up that way. Mark?

Mark Stephens 

For me personally, it was a sense of relief from them. Because, if you are thinking of leaving, this is difficult, you know, do I tell the boss or not? And supposing I don’t, then get a job. And I think for those who aren’t leaving, it reinforces your investment in them and their feet. And again, for a lot of companies, you’re saying, while you’re here, we want 100% commitment, but we’re not expecting you to give your life. So I think it makes them. It allows us, because it’s a difficult topic, we get that on the table, and then we can relax and get on with our jobs 90% of the time. And as Gareth said, it opens the door to like, maybe you’ll be back in the day, you know. So I would say a sense of relief, and I would strongly recommend give it a try and see what happens.

Audience Member 

So I really like that idea of the six monthly conversation about the pushes and addressing that part of, but that feels like that’s almost when people have got to a change already. And you referenced when you’re interviewing people, you give them the book and say, Go away, read this. Work out what you want out of life. Have you got any suggestions for how to have that kind of conversation beyond just giving all the team a copy of the book and say, start to think about what you are actually looking for. Because it feels, I feel like I could talk about the pushes well, like, not so good at helping them uncover that.

Bob Moesta 

So the first, thing is the set of pushes. Like, have you been disrespected? Do you feel like you can’t speak the truth? You feel like you’re micromanaged? Like, there’s a list of that, list is very, very tangible, and it resonates. It’s in their language. So when we did the research, it’s in their language. So sitting down and talking about the pushes is something people can go like, yeah, I feel this or I don’t feel that, and nine times out of 10, they’ll go through the list. And if you just watch their finger on the list, the one that they hold the longest is usually probably one that’s pretty true, right? And so, but here’s the real if there’s no push, then there’s actually no reason for them to leave. Like if people are really, if they’re actually content with where they’re at, there are no pushes. And so part of it is to say, is there anything here that you gives you pause to say that, because that’s happening.

Audience Member 

Situation where there are no pushes, but there’s still things could be better.

Bob Moesta 

So the first part of the conversation is about the pushes. The second part is, what progress do you want to make this year? What do you want to be able to do? And ultimately, it’s helping them realize it. But a lot of times, most people, if you catch them off guard, they don’t know how to answer the question.

Audience Member 

Expect my team to answer that question in a what do they think I want them

Bob Moesta 

Exactly. And what I want to say is, like, I don’t care what you think I want. I want to know what, what will actually drive satisfaction for you so it gives you more energy. All I know is, if I actually have my employees getting more energy, everybody works a lot better. And so part of us is to understand what do they need? And so this is a question about not what I think you need. It’s about what do you need in order to basically feel like this has been a year well spent. Time is the most precious of all our resources. So I was 18 years old in Japan, and Dr Taguchi, who was one of my mentors, 65/68 year old man, I’m an 18 year old. He bows to me and hands me a watch. I’m like, Thank you. He’s like, no, no. He goes, you don’t understand. I said, What do you mean? He goes, this is not a watch to tell time. This is a watch to remind you that time is the most precious of all your resources, and somebody who steals your time is worse than a thief, worse than a thief. So you need to be intentional with your time. And so that’s why we talk about what progress you want to make in the next year, because it’s their time, not yours. And so you want to be that intentional about it. Sorry, a little deeper than I thought.

Audience Member 

Thank you, Bob. What if anything through your research, did you discover about the role of salary in attraction or retention? And based on that, would you suggest that people should advertise their salary or salary bands as part of the job advertising process?

Bob Moesta 

So what’s interesting is money becomes a surrogate for something else. So when you look at the pushes, it’s never, there’s no money on the thing, because what’s the outcome that money gets for me? Does money actually give me respect? Does money give me the ability to actually make help my family grow? Does money help the fact that I see respect from you, versus what I can tell my peers? And so you start to realize that somebody said, Well, I want more money, and I would just ask the questions, why? And then they tell you. And so what you start to realize is that, though money is an important metric for them, it’s different for everybody.

And so the whole notion is to actually understand why do they need more money? And they have to actually be explicit about it. And so that’s one of the things we talk about in the book, is that it’s income is an output, or the salary is an output. It’s not an outcome. And so if we can actually understand the outcome they’re trying to achieve, there might be different ways to achieve it without salary.

And so this is where, what I teach people to do as an employer or as employee is to literally go in and negotiate for all the things that nobody can say no to. I want to go to three conferences a year. I want to actually go get back to school and get this thing. What employer is going to say no that you want to go learn? Design it into your contract. Design it into your arrangement, because at some point in time when they might not give you more money, but they’ll give you more access to a whole bunch of other things, or you need new tools, or I want to learn this new programming language, whatever it is. But make sure, like this is where I say, the more you know what you want or what you need, the better you can actually frame it out. And so money plays a, it’s almost like a threshold where it’s like, it’s not enough. But I will say that I think was 48% of the people said they got more money and they didn’t. Because the employer, they didn’t want their employer to come back and try to get them back, because it was just so bad. So they lie that they got more money. So it’s a tricky one, though, I won’t deny that.

Audience Member 

Quick one you mentioned that you’re employing people on a one year contract. Is that intentional, rather than maybe like a full time thing?

Bob Moesta 

I I want them to rehire me every year. I don’t want to have to rehire them, but I want them to be explicit about rehiring me, and is this been long enough, and so we could have the conversation. And so it’s not really formally that they have to sign a new contract. It’s more the fact this is like your year anniversary is here. Do you want to keep going? Or do we need to help find you another job? And I make that deal with everybody that I work, that works with me is, I’ll go find it in a way to do that.

Audience Member 

Hi, Bob, can I ask a question from job seekers? So it’s almost like an analogy. So in the olden days, people are more connected, so they live in sort of a smaller area. Everybody knows area, and they know exactly what are you good at, not good at. So almost like it’s easier to find a better job, more fit for purpose. But nowadays, like we are living in a stranger’s society. Nobody really knows you. So in the past year, I tried to apply to jobs both in Cambridge and we have attendees in this big hall. I never even passed the HR screening stage, because my image carries nothing. My CV tells a little like you said, the CV is like all the features. They think they might need from you and the people like me. I think my biggest advantage is I always have a very different perspective than everybody else. I identify problems and I have different ways to fix it. This is my biggest advantage, and when I try to find companies, I do a lot of research, I think there’s good fate, but it’s not reflected in my CV, because the first 10 years as a immigrant, I spent 10 years learning the culture, but it’s the best, best thing I ever experienced. You learn so much, everything, but it’s not in your CV, and it’s almost like the current will of how we recruit people. I almost wanted to ask Mark, I should give a talk about this. Is, actually, really how you identify the people you need.

Bob Moesta 

Here’s my advice. What happens I believe you need to do more informational interviews. And what I mean by that is like, if you want to work for a company and you want to be able to understand, for example, in product. Go through LinkedIn, find the person who’s in product in that company, and ask them, will you have 15 minutes to talk about your job, so I understand, like I’m looking to be in product management. You look like you’ve been in there a long time. Would you be willing to tell me what it’s like to be a product manager?

Bob Moesta 

And the informational interviews help you actually understand, and then they actually will listen to you. And so most of those interviews which you give for 15 minutes, they go for 30 minutes, and ultimately, you get to learn a lot about the company as well as they get to learn a lot about you. And ultimately, the fact is, it’s going in through the back door. And so the reality is that I think the old way is better. But since HR has put up these gauntlet systems to basically say, oh, submit your resume, and then they have all this automation, it’s really, really hard to get through. But if you can literally go through, like, I’m teaching people to go to LinkedIn and do at least 10 informational interviews around the job, you don’t want that person’s job, but you want to understand so, like, I was coaching somebody who wanted to get into customer success, and so they went and found somebody who was in customer success at Microsoft, and somebody who was at Google, and then somebody in some small company, and then somebody in a hardware company, and they started to realize, I want to be in customer success, but I want this kind of company, I want these kind of things. And then they just started to target companies to say, Hey, can you tell me about this to get known in the company? And it’s more from an informational perspective that then they can pass your name along. That’s how I would suggest it. Because, to your point is, like, I feel like going in through the gauntlet, going straight in through through HR, is it’s, I don’t know what happens to those resumes, right? And neither, when you ask them, neither do they.

Audience Member 

Yeah, absolutely. I just feel like the current recruitment process is competing with the skill. Was like, how good you can write English, how good you can answer questions there and then, within 30 minutes, and actually tick all their boxes.

Bob Moesta 

So I will say this. I worked at one big corporation, which is Ford Motor Company. I worked there because Dr Deming, who I met like outside, basically told them to hire me. I got fired from there, and I never had a corporate job ever again, because I couldn’t actually ever get a job through HR. So part of me is literally pissed, and I want to basically write a book to show them that their system is broken for somebody, because in their book, in their world, I’m just a savant. I can’t read, I can’t write. What could I possibly be good for? And the reality is, like, I’ve done a lot of other things besides that, and so they can’t see those things. So, thank you.

---

---

Upcoming Event

BoS Europe 2026 🇬🇧

13–14 April • Cambridge, UK

First 6 Speakers Announced

Get Tickets