Having understood the broad range of challenges business leaders will be facing, knowing the pace at which they have to work, and recognising the importance of quick, clear and simple communication, I feel it is valuable to share some of the many, many simple models for navigating real business challenges that I have come across in my 35 years as a business leader and working with business leaders. My purpose is to help operational business leaders to achieve more success for their business with less stress for themselves.  

Accidental business leaders are people who were (and probably still are) good at something other than business leadership and who have for some reason found themselves in the top role leading the whole business.

They may be entrepreneurs with a passion who now find themselves running a business built around that passion; potentially with no background in business or leadership. Or they may be successful specialists who have been promoted from, for example sales person, to sales manager and then via sales director to managing director, at which point they suddenly have to deal with all kinds of things they’ve never had to deal with before.

Either way they now need to manage aspects of business that are outside their own experience. Maybe they are suffering from Imposter syndrome. But they can’t show it! The leader is supposed to know everything! My books are aimed at those people! 

Do you have an audience of operational business leaders?

• with tens or hundreds of staff to lead

• making decisions about staffing, marketing, sales, operations, product and service portfolio development and supply chains

• with bottom line accountability for achieving business results through engaging their team behind an inspiring vision and a plan to achieve ambitious goals

Do you want a speaker that inspires them by drawing out real practical thoughts, tips and tools from others who’ve been there and done what they are wanting to do - successfully?

As a leader with broad and deep experience of business I cannot be other than a speaker sharing practical content useful to operational business leaders. I am a ‘toolkit’ speaker that motivates leaders to take real action rather than a mainstream motivational speaker.

My style is always to share practical thoughts, tips and tools that I have discovered and found useful in my career. Ideas I have found useful myself either as an operational business leader with hundreds of staff myself or more recently useful to MD2MD members or my one to one business coaching clients.

My approach develops their competence first, that gives confidence and they inevitably feel more motivated as a result.

I specialise in interviewing experienced and/or interesting business leaders to draw out insights from their career as a leader to help the audience develop their understanding of how to succeed as a leader

I’m more Parkinson than Paxman in that I use my deep and broad experience of business alongside own genuine interest and my own natural curiosity to ask provocative questions that gently and constructively draw out what they have learnt for the benefit of the audience

Do you have an audience of operational business leaders?

• with tens or hundreds of staff to lead

• making decisions about staffing, marketing, sales, operations, product and service portfolio development and supply chains

• with bottom line accountability for achieving business results through engaging their team behind an inspiring vision and a plan to achieve ambitious goals

Do you want an event that inspires them by drawing out real practical thoughts, tips and tools from others who’ve been there and done what they are wanting to do - successfully?