It's no longer lonely at the top

Our private peer challenge board meetings are a safe space where you can debate with other real leaders like you practical business challenges, share experience and develop your leadership thinking.

Try us out

You are ambitious, enthusiastic and determined to be successful.  You have faced formidable challenges and learnt quickly.  But they keep coming:

  • The pace and scale of change and competitive pressure
  • Spending too much time working ‘in’ the business, not ‘on’ the business
  • Lack of stimulation, trust and challenge around the boardroom table
  • The nagging doubt of “Have I got this right – I’ve never been here before?”
  • Isolation and stress.  Maybe feeling like an imposter nervous you’ll be found out.
  • Sheer volume of work, resulting in a poor work/life balance

You are not the only one! Why not get together with other business leaders, independent and objective, who are willing to support and challenge you in return.

A private board, a business coach and an MBA case study in one

Our peer challenge board meetings, held in strict confidence, are akin to a board meeting, with independent non-executives there to advise, challenge and support you as necessary. A board with a breadth of experience and background that isn’t normally available to most business leaders.

The difference with MD2MD is that no-one is there to hold you to account – not formally anyway. Yes your fellow business leaders might challenge you, but fundamentally they are there to help you in return for you helping them. If we both share our successes and failures we can both shortcut the process of becoming even better leaders and thereby achieving even more success for our business.

A closer parallel with the Peer challenge board is business coaching or mentoring.  The goal is the same.  You leave with greater insight and greater clarity. The difference is that MD2MD meetings offer a diverse range of views based on the diverse backgrounds, experience and values in a typical meeting.

A final parallel is the business school case study.  Learning by examining a business situation and debating with peers the alternative strategies and tactics and their relative merits.  The difference with MD2MD is that instead of reading 20  pages of closely typed text about something that happened 10 or 20 years ago, you get to interrogate a real person involved with the case today. It’s not theory it’s practice.  And as the topic of conversation is nearly always leadership it is rare that there isn’t learning for all.

Typical challenges raised and addressed

Customers and Supply chain

Supply chain problems and let-downs
Important upcoming pitch or presentation
Losing customers and losing pitches
Difficult negotiations
Major project(s) gone or going wrong

Funding

Realising that external funding is needed
Unsure how to approach investors or financers
Having cash flow difficulties
Growing too quickly and need to manage cash
Won a big contract but can’t fund working capital

Products and Markets

Sales have started to decline
Product range becoming irrelevant or outdated
Facing an aggressive new competitor
New competitor is disrupting the industry
Marketing is not getting results

Ownership

Questions about acquisition
Has been approached to sell the business
Thinking about retirement or exit
Involved in a shareholder dispute
Parting company with a co-shareholder

Staff

Staff are not committed or empowered
Dealing with a difficult or sensitive staff issue
Needing to build a management team
Lost a key member of staff
Having difficulty with recruiting

Personal

Has taken on a new role or responsibility
Feels stressed and this is causing problems
Life difficulties due to long working hours
Having trouble with micromanagement
Has had a personal hit or medical problems

Plans

Considering goals or strategy
Looking to exit
Concerned about succession
Looking to grow quickly
Plateauing or not growing fast enough

Strategy and risks

New sectors, geographies and products
Culture and innovation
Closing divisions and sites
Acquiring sites and businesses
Mergers, integration and restructuring

Try a meeting - as our guest

If you are an operational business leader ambitious to be an even better leader and deliver even more sustainable and profitable business growth then why not join MD2MD?

See some really great speakers (read about them here) and to meet fellow operational leaders like you in one of our many meeting formats. (See full details here)

Core to MD2MD, and our most unique service, are the confidential business leader peer groups.  Groups that meet regularly to compare experiences, consider challenges, share insights and develop their leadership through practical and pragmatic discussion in private.

It’s difficult to understand how powerful these meetings can be if you’ve not experienced one, so why not try a demonstration meeting as our guest and experience the MD2MD process and ethos for yourself?

Apply to join a demonstration meeting

MD2MD is for operational business leaders that:

regularly make decisions worth £10k – £100k and sometimes make decisions worth £1M+.

if MD2MD can help them make just one better decision occasionally there will be a return on investment in membership

manage an annual salary bill of £500k to £50M

if MD2MD can help them engage their team just 1% more effectively then then there will be a return on investment in membership

are responsible for developing and delivering strategy.  For ensuring the business is offering the right products and services to the right market through the right channels at the right time!

if MD2MD can help them get their strategy more right more often then there will be a return on investment in membership

More about the value of MD2MD membership