Consideration Activators

The consolidated set of theses about Consideration Activators — what it is, how it differs from neighbouring concepts, and why it sits at the heart of category creation and switching.

1. Consideration Set and Consideration Activators — what they are, why they matter, and the five components

The Consideration Set (CS) is the customer-side container. It is four slots in State A of every Job. Those slots hold what the customer's brain compares at the moment of choice. The Consideration Set lives inside the Job, not as a separate unit of analysis (see AJTBD key theses §1, §2, §3).

Consideration Activators (CA) are the five pieces of information that activate the customer's choice in our favor once they are loaded into the Consideration Set.

Loading Consideration Activators is the operation. It is our deliberate injection of those five pieces, through communication, content, peer story, demo, or first-hand trial. The injection writes our case into the customer's Consideration Set.

Why this matters

The customer doesn't choose products in the abstract. They choose between Job Graphs already in their head. The Consideration Set is the working memory of Solutions, criteria, and fears the brain compares at choice time. No matter how much real value our product delivers, the customer won't move toward us if our Job Graph isn't in their Consideration Set, or is there with the wrong predictions.

Every Solution generates its own slightly different Job in the customer's head. Keeping cash in a Chase savings account creates the Job "keep my cash safe and accessible inside a bank account." Buying Treasury bills through a brokerage creates the Job "earn low-risk yield on idle cash without locking it up." These are different Jobs. Switching Solutions means switching Jobs. To get a customer to switch to our Solution, we have to get our Job written into their Consideration Set, with our criteria. That is what Loading CA does.

This is most acute in three situations. The first is unfamiliar new products, where the customer doesn't yet know our Job Graph exists. The second is category creators, where the entire Job Graph is new. The third is switching customers from an entrenched competitor, where we have to fire the competitor's Graph and load ours. Without Loading CA, an innovative product fails. It fails not because the value isn't there but because the new Big-Job-and-Graph pairing never gets written into the customer's Consideration Set.

The five components — what we inject, where it lands

CA has five components and CS has four slots. Each CA component writes into a CS slot. The two fear components (4 and 5) both write into the single fears slot, CS slot 4. The fear work is one slot in the customer's head but two acts for us. We calm the fear about our way, and we fire the fear about the competing way.

1. Knowledge of a new Job Graph for performing the Big Jobs → CS slot 1 (awareness of available Job Graphs for the higher-level Job). The customer learns the new way. With these Core Jobs (ours), with these adjacent Small Jobs handled or left outside, with these Micro Jobs underneath, the Big Jobs can be performed through a different graph. This is the "build a working website without hiring a developer" (Squarespace) or "ship a working change by describing it in English" (Claude Code) knowledge. The customer sees which Job they would now perform.

2. The new Job Graph performs the Big Job more efficiently than the customer's current way → CS slot 2 (comparative knowledge of how each Graph performs the Big Job). The Core Jobs in our Graph sit one level below the Big Job and deliver it at better success criteria. They are cheaper enough, faster enough, safer enough, higher-status enough, or more reliable enough to justify switching from the current Solution. Abstract "better" doesn't activate. A concrete, criteria-anchored delta does.

3. A concrete named product performs that Job Graph, with an entry path → CS slot 3 (named products with entry paths). The customer needs a name (the product, service, or brand that runs the Core Jobs at the criteria) and a first concrete step (download the app, book a 15-min call, sign up at this URL, ask the bank teller). Without name plus door, components 1 and 2 stay abstract. The customer knows a better way exists and why it matters, but has no handle to act on. They are solution-aware but not product-aware in Hunt's Pyramid.

4. Specific fears about our new Job Graph are reduced → CS slot 4 (fears about the alternatives plus what reduces them — here, the fear about our way). A fear is the customer's prediction that the Big Job won't be performed well through our new Graph. It can be a Critical Chain of Jobs break, Problem, Tax Job, personal risk, or irreversible loss the customer predicts for our Solution. The message names the specific feared break, then shows why it is prevented, absorbed, reversible, insured, or irrelevant. If the break is real, communication cannot reduce it. The team must change reality first (Barrier Removal).

5. The competing Job Graph is fired, shown to be concretely less energy-efficient by the Big Jobs' success criteria → CS slot 4 (the same fears slot — here, the fear about the competing way). The fire names the specific Problems and Risks that follow from sticking with the current Solution. Problems are failures that produce Problems (see Behaviour Change §7). Risks are forced Tax Jobs, criteria the alternative cannot hit, and chain-breaks it leaves open. Abstract "they're worse" doesn't fire anything. The customer's brain won't down-weight an option without a concrete reason.

Components 1, 2, and 3 are the minimum required for activation. Without the new Job Graph awareness, the value delta, and a named product with an entry path, the customer can't move. Components 4 and 5 raise conversion rate substantially. At scale, they are not optional.

2. What is NOT Consideration Activators

• A discount is not Consideration Activators. A discount is a closing tool for people who have already decided or are on the edge. It changes cost, not Job awareness. It can't activate a dormant Job.
• A feature description is not Consideration Activators. "Linear shows issue status and assignee inline" is a description. The test is whether this fact caused the person to switch Solutions. If it didn't, it's a feature, not Consideration Activators.
• Removing a real chain blocker is not Consideration Activators. A missing migration path, unsupported state, absent permit path, unavailable payment method, broken form, or missing SOC 2 report is product, operations, legal, or logistics work (Barrier Removal). Consideration Activators can truthfully say the feared break is handled only after reality makes it true.

3. Consideration Activators vs. Trigger vs. Aha Moment

These three are often confused, but they are distinct.

• Consideration Activators are the information that caused the choice of a specific Solution. They are loaded before the Job is performed.
• A Trigger is the event in time that initiates the action toward the Job. ("The check arrived; I opened the app.")
• An Aha Moment is the experience of the product delivering above expectations. It is always positive, and always with YOUR product. A negative experience with a competitor is part of Consideration Activators, not an Aha Moment.

Example: A person drives without live traffic and is constantly late (negative experience → part of Consideration Activators). Someone tells them "use Waze or Google Maps — it reroutes around traffic and shows your ETA." They open the app and see the route, ETA, and alternate paths (Aha Moment).

4. The motivational core and fear reduction go through the Big Job; only the named-product handle sits off it

Consideration Activators hit the Big Job — that headline holds. The one refinement is that the five components don't all act at the same level.

• Components 1, 2, and 5 ride on the Big Job, and this is the motivational core. Component 1 says a new Job Graph for the Big Jobs exists. Component 2 says it performs the Big Job more efficiently against the Big Job's criteria. Component 5 fires alternative Graphs against the same Big Job's criteria. All three land at the Big-Job level. That is where motivation lives, and that is what the brain compares at the moment of choice.
• Component 4 rides on the Big Job too, but as blocker-removal, not as a driver. A fear is the customer's prediction that the Big Job won't be performed well through our new Graph. It can be a Critical Chain of Jobs break, Problem, Tax Job, personal risk, or irreversible loss the customer predicts for our Solution. Reducing it deletes a predicted reason the Big Job would fail under us. So it lands on the same Big-Job evaluation surface as 1, 2, and 5. It just removes a negative rather than adding a positive.
• Component 3 is the only piece off the Big Job. Named product plus entry path makes the abstract Graph actionable. It is a handle the customer grips, regardless of the Big Job above. It is needed once components 1, 2, 4, and 5 have done the Big-Job comparison work.

Operational consequence. Communication that says "we have the best A/B testing dashboard" or "we have the best onboarding flow" is at the Core Job level, and rarely activates the motivational core. Communication that says "stop running theater roadmaps — ship value your segment actually pays for" is at the Big Job level, and activates it. Once the Big Job is woken, the entire Job Graph at lower levels appears for the person on its own: map the segment, validate before building, kill the wrong bets cheap. All of that downstream graph is the consequence of components 1, 2, 4, and 5 landing at the Big Job level. Components 1, 2, and 5 act as motivation, and component 4 as fear-removal. Component 3 then makes the switch executable.

5. Consideration Activators must hit the segment's success criteria

Abstract value statements don't activate. Consideration Activators have to be expressed in the concrete success criteria of the segment's Big Jobs and Core Jobs.

• ❌ "Ship better products."
• ✅ "Kill the wrong bets cheap — validate before three engineers spend a quarter building the wrong thing."

The criteria are where the value lives. Consideration Activators that don't land on the criteria are just noise.

6. Specific stories outperform abstractions

• ❌ Abstract: "You can build a profitable indie product."
• ✅ Specific: "A solo developer who'd shipped three products in a year — none of them past initial revenue — paused, ran two weeks of customer-research interviews with users of his earlier products, found the one Big Job they had actually paid for, rebuilt around it. First paying customer of the new product within a month."

The specific story does the work of several components at once. It carries the value delta (component 2). It reduces the fear "can someone like me actually do this?" (component 4). And it implicitly fires the competitor, since "the build-fast-ship-fast approach didn't pay" (component 5). When the story names the product and shows how the founder started, it carries component 3 as well. That means the specific framework used, the first interview conducted, and the channel where customers came from. Specific stories that name the product are the most efficient delivery format for Consideration Activators.

7. Loading Consideration Activators wakes up Orientation Jobs and updates the Consideration Set

• Before Consideration Activators load, the person is living their life and doesn't know your category exists. ("Wait, an AI agent can write the whole feature, not just autocomplete?")
• Consideration Activators load: "Claude Code lets you describe the change in English and ships the working diff."
• An Orientation Job wakes up: "What AI coding tools are out there? Which one fits my codebase?"
• The Consideration Set updates. The candidate set of Solutions the brain compares at the moment of choice now includes Cursor and Claude Code, and the Job Graph each Solution would install, with predicted costs, benefits, and fears.
• The person can now hire your Solution. The trigger fires, and the chosen Solution installs the Critical Chain of Jobs underneath.

The Consideration Set is the operational consequence of Consideration Activators in the customer's State A. It is not a separate unit of analysis. It lives inside State A of the Job (see Job Structure §5, §17). Each Orientation Job the customer ever runs adds, refines, or removes Solutions in the set. Competitor failure stories fire options out. Demos, reviews, and trials update predicted costs and benefits. Consideration Activators are what create and update the Consideration Set — propositionally via communication, peer story, and content, or experientially via first-hand trial. Once chosen, the Solution installs the Critical Chain of Jobs the customer walks (Critical Chain of Jobs).

This is the mechanism by which new, unfamiliar Solutions spread across a market.

8. Sources of Consideration Activators

A person can acquire Consideration Activators through several channels.

• Advertising — paid distribution that shows the more valuable pairing.
• Word-of-mouth from a peer — proactively shared or asked-for advice.
• Content marketing — articles, SEO content, YouTube and Instagram videos, podcasts.
• Salesperson outreach — proactive contact from a vendor's sales team.
• Social observation — seeing another person use the Solution and asking about it.
• Environmental context, or proximity-loaded CA — showrooms, demo zones, furnished interiors, in-product onboarding tours, "people you may know" suggestions, marketplace home-screen feeds. The canonical case is IKEA. The showroom route and furnished rooms work as visual Consideration Activators, mass-activating latent Jobs ("oh, I need a shelf like that") the customer didn't know they had. The low-cost food court primes the latent Big Job "furnish my home" by anchoring the visit to a positive experience first. (Detailed treatment in Behaviour Change §5.)
• First-hand trial — the customer encounters the new Job Graph directly, through a free trial, demo, or friend's product, and absorbs the value side experientially rather than propositionally.

For unfamiliar Solutions, content marketing, word-of-mouth, and environmental context typically outperform display advertising. This is because Consideration Activators require understanding the new Job-and-Solution pairing, and short ad formats rarely carry that bandwidth.

9. Cycling through solutions = updating Consideration Activators

A person tries one Solution and hits a Problem, tries another and hits another Problem, then finds a third. Each switch is an update to their Consideration Activators about the ways the Big Job can be performed.

This is why trying solutions is itself a research activity for the customer. They're building their own internal map of which solution-Job pairings deliver. Your move is one of two things.

• Get into that map at the right moment. Intercept the Orientation Job triggered by a competitor's failure.
• Or shorten it. Load Consideration Activators directly so the customer skips the cycling and arrives at your Solution informed.

10. Two classes of switching, and when Consideration Activators is non-negotiable

• Class 1 — the Big Job already exists for this person. They already perform it with some Solution. Your job is to show that yours performs it more efficiently. CA is helpful, but the Big Job is already awake.
• Class 2 — the Big Job is dormant or doesn't exist for this person. CA is the only way in. You must first wake the Big Job, and only then can you sell your Solution for that Job.

Most failed launches of category-defining products fail not on value but on Consideration Activators: the Big Job was never woken up. Full treatment of the two classes, the diagnostic question, and the operational differences is in Behaviour Change §10.

11. Consideration Activators as the engine of market education and scale

To grow the market for your Solution, you have to grow the share of people in the market who carry the Consideration Activators. There are three levers.

• Load Consideration Activators at scale — content, partnerships, PR, market education.
• Load Consideration Activators at moments of heightened receptivity — Critical Chain of Jobs breaks, life events, competitor failures (full taxonomy of triggers in Behaviour Change §8).
• Load Consideration Activators from high-credibility sources — banks, doctors, peers, the influencers your segment trusts.

The DocuSign real-estate closing pattern is the canonical example: buyers and sellers did not wake up wanting e-signature software; the trusted counterparty in the closing chain sent a signing link, loaded the Consideration Activators that electronic signatures were accepted and secure, removed the fear of doing the closing wrong, and fired the old print-scan-fax / overnight-envelope Job Graph.

12. The interview question that surfaces Consideration Activators

In an AJTBD interview, surface Consideration Activators with this question:

"What did you learn that made you want to get the expected outcome with these success criteria? Did this happen after some specific experience?"

For the interview guide — the principles and the question bank — see AJTBD interview guide.