History

We have helped businesses to grow, plan and adapt and change for over 15 years.

Working with business leaders and their teams, we are experts in business strategy and change. From solving problems and fostering ideas, through to delivering projects and defining strategy, we are firm believers that mindset is a cruical element of success or failure in business.

The Mountain Boardroom grew out of our own need to escape the office when needing to think strategically and plan for the future.

It’s hard to think big when surrounded by the same four walls where you work on the details. Escaping to a meeting room, the boardroom, or even leaving the home/office for a few hours only goes so far, as it takes time to context-shift from one mindset to another.

Then you get the interruption. An urgent email. Someone is trying to call. Or your mind simply wanders and you check your phone. You’re no longer present.

We started and failed so many times to have our strategy session.

One day we realised that the only way to give ourselves the space and remove the distractions was to travel somewhere out of the city and where there was no guaranteed phone signal. We love mountain walking, so it seemed like a good place to start.

At first it seemed like it wasn’t going to work.

Rather than think about the big picture, issues that had been nagging at the back of our minds for weeks and months suddenly floated to the surface. But this time, they were seen in a different light. As we climbed higher, and the view opened up, so did our minds. With our focus on these issues, there was space to collaborate. To assess. To resolve. Suddenly the issues seemed smaller. Less significant. And ultimately solveable.

It took some time, but we got through the nagging issues. Whether it was resolved, accepted or simply parked, each outcome was a mini-achievement in itself.

Our minds were no longer weighed down. They were free.

And having spent the last couple of hours working together, they were on the same page. They were connected.

Now we talked about what we wanted from the future. What was working, what wasn’t working. And as we gained even more height, we became ever bolder. Does this feel right? Are we doing the right thing? What’s our ‘why’? Are we following the right path? If not, what’s stopping us from doing so? Is it something real, or something in our heads?

We broke off our discussion for a bit as we needed to focus on the final climb to the summit. This was tough - a steep path, a bit of scrambling, and a lot of teamwork to get to the top. But we did it. We wearily made our way to the trig point, and took in the view.

I wish I could say that the view at the top was fantastic and expansive, reflecting the state of our minds, and after the challenge to/affirmation of our values and beliefs - a beautiful canvas to dream about our future. But the cloud had moved in and surrounded us. We couldn’t see very far. And it was cold, really cold.

But it didn’t really matter. And that was our biggest revelation. Setting our objectives and goals was all well and good, but we had been focussing so much on how we would feel having achieved them, that we’d forgotten to revel in the enjoyment of what we were actually doing. We realised how much running our business excited us, and made us passionate about its future again.

Today, we were standing on the summit of the mountain. We’d just reach our goal. We’d done it. The view was meh, but what a journey it had been.

We moved off the summit, out of the clouds, and the view opened up again. We could see the verdant valley spread out far below us. We felt like champions. Our minds were buzzing with everything from the last few hours. We sat down. We got out a notepad and pen. Then just talked and wrote. We wrote down all our feelings, dreams, thoughts, ideas, plans and actions. We kept going.

Everything was possible. No question was too big.

Eventually the ‘flow’ reduced, and we moved on. We started to think less about the ‘why’ and ‘what’ and more about the ‘how’. Without even realising it, we were sketching out our strategy. And what you’re seeing now is the result of this.

Mountain Boardroom is here today because the mountain helped us to unlock our ability to dream big. We were given space to ask the big questions. We were inspired to share our experience with others, and to enable them to begin their own journey.