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The Egg Theory: What Clients Really Want

From Their Lawyers
By John R. Kirk | May 1, 2015

Via Snopes:
(S)ales of [instant] cake mixes flattened
between 1956 and 1960. It was then
that the major food companies sought
to find out why more families werent
using cake mixes and brought about the
circumstances that gave rise to the egg
theory.
Looking for reasons why so many women
who could benefit from cake mixes
seemed to be ignoring them ... Ernest
Dichter [came up with an] analysis in
the course of a study he was carrying
out for General Mills. After interviewing

women and exploring the emotions that

surrounded cakes and baking, Dichter
reported that the very simplicity of mixes
just add water and stir made
women feel self-indulgent for using them.
There wasnt enough work involved. In
order to enjoy the emotional rewards of
presenting a homemade cake, they had to
be persuaded that they had really baked
it, and such an illusion was impossible to
maintain if they did virtually nothing.
[Dichters] advice was to leave the
homemaker something to do for
instance, add the eggs whenever she
made a cake from a mix.

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The above story might seem apocryphal,

but the lesson it teaches is oh-so-very
real. Lets call it the Egg Theory for now.
The Egg Theory teaches us that no matter
how good our intentions, were destined
to get to the wrong answers if we start
with the wrong questions.

The Job You Think You Should

Perform Versus the Job You
Are Hired to Perform
The way we see the problem is the
problem.
Stephen Covey
How could the original instant cake mix
have struggled? It did everything necessary
to quickly and efficiently make a cake. It
was the perfect cake making solution.
And therein lay its flaw. Our solutions
become our clients problems.
The instant cake engineers thought their
job was to make a better cake mix. The
more they improved the cake mix, the
more they failed. Unbeknownst to them,
customers didnt hire the cake mix to
simply make a cake. Instead, customers
wanted the emotional rewards associated
with baking, and then presenting a
homemade cake to their family. The cake
engineers wanted to make a cake mix that
baked a cake as efficiently as possible.
Customers wanted to feel that they had
made the cake that it was their creation.
By requiring the homemaker to add milk
and eggs, etc., the instant cake engineers
enabled customers to feel the satisfaction of
being cooks and homemakers. Customers

hired the cake mix to perform this job so

thats why subtracting the eggs and the
milk from the cake mix (i.e., making the
instant cake mix not quite so instant)
actually added to the value of the cake mix.
The cake engineers asked: How do I
make my product better. How do I make
it easy to make a cake?. Instead, they
should have asked, What is the job this
product is being hired to do?
Lawyers Must Also Ask This Question
Your clients dont use your law firms
services. They hire you to do a job. The
irony is that you will never discover the job
that you are hired to do simply by focusing
on improving yourself or your services.
The harder you try, the more you will fail.
Only by pondering Jobs to Be Done
the real name of the theory at work
here can you shape yourself and your
services into something your clients truly
find desirable.

What Apple Can Teach

Lawyers About Jobs
to Be Done
It is not the answer that enlightens,
but the question.
Eugene Ionesco
Apple has become the worlds most
valuable company in part because it has
mastered the Jobs to Be Done theory.
The questions Apple asks inform the
answers it receives. In an advertisement
released in 2013, Apple explicitly told us

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some of the questions that it asks itself.

We can learn a lot from this example.
The first thing we ask is:
How it makes someone feel?
What is the experience a product
provides?
Who will this help?
Will it make life better?
Does this deserve to exist?
None of the above questions have
anything to do with any of the products
that Apple currently makes. In fact, none
of the questions have anything to do with
technology or, amazingly, anything to do
with Apple itself.
The visionary starts with a clean
sheet of paper, and re-imagines
the world.
Malcolm Gladwell
The questions focus on how the proposed
product or service will interact with
the customer and how it will make the
customer feel.
You can tell whether a man is
clever by his answers. You can
tell whether a man is wise by his
questions.
Naguib
Apple makes superb technology. Few of
its customers can tell and few of them
care. Apples customers only care about
how Apples products make them feel.
Your law firm performs superior legal
work. Few of your clients can tell and few
of them care. Your clients care primarily

about their relationship with you and

your firm and how your services make
them feel.
A wise mans question contains
half the answer.
Solomon Ibn Gabirol
Focus on the questions, not the answers.
If youre asking the right questions, the
answers will come. If youre asking the
wrong questions, no matter how hard
you try, youll never, ever get to the right
answers.

Three Common Traps

Lets make this manner of thinking through
your business more concrete by exploring
three common traps.
1. Focusing on Ourselves
We lawyers often define better from
our perspective and for our own selfish
purposes. We look at the tasks that we
perform and we ask ourselves: How can
I do this better? How can I perform these
tasks more efficiently? These seem like
perfectly reasonable, and even noble,
questions.
Efficiency is doing things right.
Effectiveness is doing the right
things. There is nothing so
useless as doing efficiently that
which should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
If we are not doing the right things, then
no amount of efficiency will make us
effective.

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We should continually increase our level of

skill and expertise. But while this usually
involves removing complexity from our
own lives, our primary goal should not be
to make our lives easier, but to make our
clients lives easier.
We should not look for simple solutions to
our problems, but rather for methods and
techniques no matter how difficult or
complex that provide simple solutions
for our clients problems.
Steve Jobs was fond of saying,
Simple solutions require sophisticated
technology. Similarly, simple solutions
to your clients problems require
sophisticated systems and extraordinary
expertise from you.
Stop thinking about the things you can
do best, and start thinking about the best
things you can do.
2. Focusing on Clients
Focusing on client desires seems
nobler than focusing on ourselves or
on our services, but its still the wrong
approach, the wrong place to start. The
client always starts from where they are
and from where the market exists today.
As Henry Ford reputedly said of his
industry, If I asked customers what they
wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.
Clients do not cannot know what
they want. Clients dont know whats
possible because they dont know
your business. They cant conceive
of the service they desire from you
because they dont have the facts, the

knowledge, and the expertise that you

have.
We are knowledgeable in the law and we
know each clients particulars. Its our
job to make the creative leap necessary
to bridge the gap between what we can
do and what our clients want us to do to
create a solution that is what our clients
hire us to do.
Its our job to create what our clients
cannot possibly imagine, but what they will
immediately desire from the very moment
you present it to them.
3. Mocking Clients
In Paris they simply stared when
I spoke to them in French; I never
did succeed in making those idiots
understand their own language.
Mark Twain
The error that Mark Twain warns us of in
self-deprecating jest, I warn you of in all
seriousness.
Its not our job to make our idiot clients
understand their own language. It is our
job to both understand our clients, and
to seamlessly translate the language of
the law into our clients native dialect.
Never mock your clients. Whether we
fail to comprehend them or they fail to
comprehend us, its our responsibility to
correct the miscommunication.
Pardon, but if that is your answer,
could you please rephrase the
question?
Law Firm Clients

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Conclusion
We have learned the answers, all
the answers: It is the question that
we do not know.
Archibald MacLeish
We started with this question: What is the
unmet job our clients hire us to do?

We may think our clients want to make

a cake. But thats not what they really
want at all. Discover what they truly
want, and then the rest is easy a
piece of cake.
She stoops to conquer.
Oliver Goldsmith

A retired lawyer, John R. Kirk is currently a columnist at Tech.pinions. He

has also worked as a financial advisor and a business coach. His love affair
with computing started with his purchase of the original Apple Macintosh in
1985. His focus is the field of personal computing (including smart watches,
smartphones, tablets, notebooks, and desktops), and he primarily writes about
long-term business strategies: What makes a company unique; How do those
unique qualities aid or inhibit the success of the company; and why dont (or
cant) other companies adopt the successful attributes of their competitors?
Email him at mr.johnkirk@gmail.com.

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