Finding product-market fit
(PMF) with the PURE model involves
optimizing four key pillars—Performance, Utility, Reliability, and Economics—to
ensure a product solves a specific market need, as explained by sliwainsights.com.
This framework helps startups move beyond just having a product to achieving a
sustainable, in-demand solution by focusing on:
P – Performance: Meeting or
exceeding expectations for speed, efficiency, and quality.
U – Utility: Ensuring
high, intuitive, and practical use for customers.
R – Reliability: Building
trust through uptime and low maintenance.
E – Economics: Providing
cost-effective value that fits customer budgets.
This video explains how to
find and measure product-market fit:
The PURE Framework in
Action
Performance (P): The product must deliver
superior results compared to alternatives, focusing on speed and
durability.
Utility (U): The product must solve a
pain point better than competitors, ensuring it is easy and intuitive to
use.
Reliability (R): The product must be
dependable, reducing the need for frequent support and maximizing uptime.
Economics (E): The product must be
affordable and provide clear value, ensuring it fits within the target
audience's budget.
Key Indicators of
Product-Market Fit
Beyond the PURE model,
PMF is validated when:
The 40% Rule: At least 40% of surveyed
customers say they would be "very disappointed" without your
product.
Customer Behavior: High retention rates and
organic, word-of-mouth growth are present.
Financials: The cost of customer
acquisition (CAC) is lower than the lifetime value (LTV).
Applying the PURE
model allows founders to move away from trying to be perfect everywhere, and
instead, focus on delivering value in the areas that matter most to their
customers, leading to a sustainable, growth-focused business, as discussed in
sliwainsights.com.
One of the most critical challenges facing entrepreneurs is finding the elusive product-market fit—the point at which your offering resonates with your target audience and begins to generate consistent demand. To navigate this journey effectively, start-up founders must be able to clearly articulate and deliver their value proposition. The PURE Model offers a structured, pragmatic framework to help them do just that.
What Is the PURE Model?
The PURE Model breaks down product value delivery into four core components:
P – Performance How well does your product meet or exceed customer expectations compared to alternatives? This includes metrics such as speed, efficiency, durability, and throughput.
U – Utility How useful is the product in real-world applications? Is it intuitive and easy to use? Does it improve productivity or solve a pain point better than existing solutions?
R – Reliability Can customers count on your product? This encompasses maintenance frequency, uptime, and the need for customer support.
E – Economics Is your product cost-effective for the target audience? How does it fit within their budget? Can it be delivered affordably and on time?
Why It Matters for Start-Ups
Entrepreneurs are often tempted to strive for perfection in every category. But the truth is, you can’t be 100% in all four areas simultaneously. Enhancing one aspect usually requires trade-offs in another. Improving utility might compromise performance. Prioritizing reliability could drive up costs. Focusing on performance might extend development timelines and negatively impact economics.
The PURE Model helps entrepreneurs embrace these trade-offs strategically rather than haphazardly. It encourages experimentation to determine which combination best matches the needs and values of a specific customer segment.
Positioning Through Trade-Offs
In practical terms, start-ups can use the PURE Model to define their positioning:
A productivity app may focus on Utility and Economics, offering ease of use and affordability, while compromising slightly on high-end features.
A performance-driven drone might emphasize Performance and Reliability, targeting professional users willing to pay a premium.
A mass-market gadget could prioritize Economics and Utility, accepting that it may not have the highest performance or long-term durability.
By making intentional decisions about which elements of PURE to prioritize, entrepreneurs can craft a compelling story around their product’s value proposition—and ensure their development, sales, and marketing efforts are aligned.
From Model to Market
Once a start-up identifies its PURE profile through testing and feedback, it’s essential to communicate this positioning both internally and externally. Internally, it guides teams in aligning their work with customer expectations. Externally, it helps customers understand the trade-offs and advantages of the product, fostering transparency and trust.
Final Thoughts
The PURE Model is more than a diagnostic tool—it’s a compass for navigating the complex decisions that shape a product’s success. By embracing the inevitable trade-offs between Performance, Utility, Reliability, and Economics, entrepreneurs can position their start-ups with clarity and confidence—and dramatically improve their chances of finding product-market fit.
John Adair's simple Action-Centred Leadership model provides a great blueprint for leadership and the management of any team, group or organisation. Action Centred Leadership is also a simple leadership and management model, which makes it easy to remember, apply and adapt to your own situation.
Good managers and leaders should have full command of the three main areas of the Action Centred Leadership model and should be able to use each of the elements according to the situation. Being able to do all of these things, and keep the right balance, gets results, builds morale, improves quality, develops teams and productivity and is the mark of a successful manager and leader.
Adair's Action-Centred Leadership Model
The three parts of Adair's Action-Centred Leadership model are commonly represented by three overlapping circles, which is a trademark belonging to John Adair and used here with his permission.
Adair's famous 'three circles' model is one of the most recognisable and iconic symbols within management theory.
When you refer to this diagram for teaching and training purposes please attribute it to John Adair, and help preserve the integrity and origins of this excellent model.
John Adair's Action-Centred Leadership model is represented by Adair's 'three circles' diagram, which illustrates Adair's three core management responsibilities:
Achieving the task
Managing the team or group
Managing individuals
John Adair's action-centred leadership task-team-individual model adapts extremely well (as below) to the demands of modern business management.
When using it in your own environment think about the aspects of performance necessary for success in your own situation and incorporate local relevant factors into the model to create your own interpretation. This will give you a very useful management framework.
Managerial Responsibilities: The Task
Identify aims and vision for the group, purpose, and direction - define the activity (the task)
Identify resources, people, processes, systems and tools (inc. financials, communications, IT)
Create the plan to achieve the task - deliverables, measures, timescales, strategy and tactics
Establish responsibilities, objectives, accountabilities and measures, by agreement and delegation
Set standards, quality, time and reporting parameters
Control and maintain activities against parameters
Monitor and maintain overall performance against the plan
Report on progress towards the group's aim
Review, re-assess, and adjust plan, methods and targets as necessary
Managerial Responsibilities: The Group
Establish, agree and communicate standards of performance and behaviour
Establish a style, culture and approach of the group - soft skill elements
Monitor and maintain discipline, ethics, integrity and focus on objectives
Anticipate and resolve group conflict, struggles or disagreements
Assess and change as necessary the balance and composition of the group
Develop team-working, cooperation, morale and team spirit
Develop the collective maturity and capability of the group - progressively increase group freedom and authority
Encourage the team towards objectives and aims - motivate the group and provide a collective sense of purpose
Identify, develop and agree on the team- and project-leadership roles within the group
Enable, facilitate and ensure effective internal and external group communications
Identify and meet group training needs
Give feedback to the group on overall progress; consult with, and seek feedback and input from the group
Managerial Responsibilities: The Individuals
Understand the team members as individuals - personality, skills, strengths, needs, aims and fears
Assist and support individuals - plans, problems, challenges, highs and lows
Identify and agree on appropriate individual responsibilities and objectives
Give recognition and praise to individuals - acknowledge effort and good work
Where appropriate reward individuals with extra responsibility, advancement and status
Identify, develop and utilise each individual's capabilities and strengths
Train and develop individual team members
Develop individual freedom and authority
Action-Centred Leadership and John Adair Background Information
John Adair, born in 1934, developed his Action Centred Leadership model while lecturing at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy and as assistant director and head of the leadership department at The Industrial Society. This would have been during the 1960s and 70s, so in terms of management theories, Adair's work is relatively recent.
His work certainly encompasses and endorses much of the previous thinking on human needs and motivation by Maslow, Herzberg and Fayol, and his theory adds an elegant and simple additional organisational dimension to these earlier works.
Very importantly, Adair was probably the first to demonstrate that leadership is a trainable, transferable skill, rather than it being an exclusively inborn ability.
He helped change the perception of management to encompass leadership, to include associated abilities of decision-making, communication and time-management.
As well as developing the Action Centred Leadership model, Adair has written over 40 books on management and leadership, including Effective Leadership, Not Bosses but Leaders and Great Leaders.
The Distinction between Leadership and Management
Leadership is different to management. All leaders are not necessarily great managers, but the best leaders will possess good management skills. One skill-set does not automatically imply the other will be present.
Adair used the original word meanings to emphasise this:
Leadership is an ancient ability about deciding direction, from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning the road or path ahead; knowing the next step and then taking others with you to it.
Managing is a later concept, from Latin 'manus', meaning hand, and more associated with handling a system or machine of some kind. The original concept of managing began in the 19th century when engineers and accountants started to become entrepreneurs.
There are valuable elements of management not necessarily found in leadership, e.g administration and managing resources. Leadership, on the other hand, contains elements not necessarily found in management, e.g inspiring others through the leader's own enthusiasm and commitment.
The Action Centred Leadership model is Adair's best-known work, in which the three elements - Achieving the Task, Developing the Team and Developing Individuals - are mutually dependent, as well as being separately essential to the overall leadership role.
Core Functions of Action-Centered Leadership
Importantly as well, Adair set out these core functions of leadership and says they are vital to the Action Centered Leadership model:
Supporting - individuals' contributions, encouraging, team spirit, reconciling, morale
Informing - clarifying tasks and plans, updating, receiving feedback and interpreting
Evaluating - feasibility of ideas, performance, enabling self-assessment
The Action Centred Leadership model, therefore, does not stand alone, it must be part of an integrated approach to managing and leading, and also should include a strong emphasis on applying these principles through training.
Adair's 50:50 Rule
Adair also promotes a '50:50 rule' which he applies to various situations involving two possible influencers, e.g the view that 50% of motivation lies with the individual and 50% comes from external factors, among them leadership from another. This contradicts most of the motivation gurus who assert that most motivation is from within the individual. He also suggests that 50% of team building success comes from the team and 50% from the leader.
More information is available via John Adair's website (academic enquiries and discussion of principles).
Use of John Adair's Action-Centred Leadership Ideas, Theories and Diagram
When you refer to John Adair's ideas about Action-Centred Leadership in teaching, training, coaching and learning please ensure you always attribute the concept and diagram to John Adair. This will help preserve the integrity and origins of his work.
For general training, teaching and learning purposes you can, of course, refer to Adair's ideas and reproduce the three circles diagram, although when doing so please ensure you include the fact that the three circles are a trademark belonging to John Adair.
This free usage includes normal educational 'fair use' such as:
Education of students in colleges and universities
Students' assignments and essays about management theories, etc
Reference to Adair's theory and the Action Centred Leadership diagram in management training courses (flip-charts, PowerPoint, notes, etc)
Review, critique and comparison with other ideas and theories within management training and education
Printing this webpage to use and/or copy as handouts, or cutting and pasting extracts for your own training materials (for non-commercial teaching only - NB, if you seek to include Adair-related material in commercial training delivery for profit, then you should seek permission from the Adair Leadership Foundation via the link below)
As ever please show the proper attributions, ownership and origins of the ideas in such usage.
As with many of the pages on this website, this section on Adair's Action-Centred Leadership is a summary interpretation and an introduction to the ideas.
If you want to find out more about John Adair's work, to explore his theories in more depth, or to use his ideas for publishing or commercial training programme design and delivery, you must seek permission and/or licence to do so, which can be pursued via John Adair's website, where there are good people able to help you.
See also Adair International for specific support in applying for John Adair's work within organisations.
This page is provided free for learning and development with permission from John Adair, which is gratefully acknowledged.
Authorship/Referencing
The overlapping three-circle Action-Centred Leadership logo is a trademark of John Adair.
John Adair's Action-Centred Leadership (ACL) Model is a simple, effective framework focusing on three interconnected responsibilities: Achieving the Task, Building the Team, and Developing the Individual, visualized as three overlapping circles. Effective leaders constantly balance these areas, recognizing that focusing on just one risks neglecting the others, leading to better performance, morale, and goal attainment by meeting the group's mission, fostering cohesion, and supporting members' needs.
The Three Core Areas
Achieving the Task (The Mission): The leader's role in defining goals, planning, organizing resources, setting standards, and monitoring progress to ensure the objective is met.
Building and Maintaining the Team (The Group): Focusing on communication, collaboration, resolving conflict, building morale, and promoting group spirit to create a cohesive unit.
Developing the Individual (The Person): Meeting members' physical and psychological needs, providing recognition, fostering growth, and giving constructive feedback for personal development.
Key Actions for Leaders
Plan: Define objectives, resources, roles, and timelines.
Inform: Communicate plans and provide feedback.
Control: Monitor progress, delegate, and make decisions.
Support: Encourage, praise, and resolve issues.
Evaluate: Review progress and assess outcomes.
Initiate: Get the work started.
Set an Example: Demonstrate desired behaviors and work ethic.
Why It's Effective
Balanced Approach: Prevents leaders from getting lost in tasks at the expense of people, or vice versa.
Developable Skill: Challenges the idea that leaders are born, showing leadership can be learned and taught.
Situational Adaptability: Allows leaders to shift focus between task, team, and individual needs as the situation demands.
Holistic Success: Ensures both short-term task completion and long-term team and individual growth.
