Great Leaders Know Core Business Model Vision

Guest post by David A. Duryea:

Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, and even Thomas Edison are a few of the great visionary leaders in their respective industries.  What made them such great leaders was not just one aspect of their management style or their respective innovations.  What made them great leaders was their ability to attain great vision or more accurately a great core business model vision. 

For a great enterprise vision to be realized one must have more than just a vision of an innovation or perceivable future.  Leaders must have a workable product or service and a sustainable operation.  You see many people have great ideas but cannot attain a sustainable product and business operation. It is only when they achieve both a workable product and a sustainable operation that produces profitability is a great vision realized or a core business model vision attained. 

Let’s step back. Every organization is under an unbreakable operational fact called the “Law of Business Reality.”  That is an organization will serve its customer in a profitable way or cease to exist.  All organizations operate under this law and each organization needs to produce their own version of the law called a core business model.  A core business model is how each enterprise will uniquely serve its customer in a profitable and sustainable operation.  Only when company a can produce a product or service with a solid core business model will a vision be realized.

That is the main attribute of all great leaders.  Not only to produce a great product or service but to produce a visionary core business model.  All great leaders have realized a great core business model vision.  Think about it, when Steve Jobs developed Apple it was not about one computer it was about the perspective of how technology would improve our lives.  Apple had a core business model of great technology as easy to use as an appliance.

“All Great leaders have realized a great Core Business Model vision.”

Similarly, Jack Welch with General Electric turned around an aligning company to fix its core business model.  His vision to serve customers in a profitable way meant to be at least first or second in its respective markets or get rid of the product. Jacks’ vision fixed GE’s focus and GE’s core business model.  Even Thomas Edison produced a successful operation and a sustainable core business model based on a product invention development business.

A recent development of great leadership vision is Elon Musk’s Tesla organization and its core business model.  The vision of sustainable clean electric transport for the masses is close with the introduction and production of the automaker’s Model 3.  Even though Tesla has not generated profitability success yet, its company valuation is above some of the leading automakers today.  Musk’s organization is on the verge of producing a sustainable core business model and attaining his great vision of electric transport.

Great leaders know core business model vision.  They instinctively understand what it takes to not only develop a product or service but how to produce a sustainable core business model from an innovation or idea. These great leaders can see the future is a new way and understand a complete path to attain the vision with a sustainable operation. That is the main aspect of all great business leaders, an actualized core business model vision.  It is not often we witness an actualized core business model vision, but when one does, we all benefit with better service and many times improvement of overall life. 

David A. Duryea has more than 30 years’ experience in business leadership and specializes in business model innovation, strategy and business disruption.  David is an author, speaker, forensic expert, implementer, innovator and business innovation consultant.  Core Business Model and the Law of Business Reality concepts are from the second edition of “Do The Right Thing In Business Improvement Including Process and Technology” by David A. Duryea.  https://www.davidaduryea.com/do-the-right-thing-book. More Information about the author and core business model concepts can be found at https://www.davidaduryea.com/ .