Member Article

What’s in the North East Leadership Group?

Bdaily recently spoke to the North East Leadership Group about their model of group knowledge-sharing and mentoring. In the lead up to the inaugural Group meeting on October 23, we look at how some SMEs have benefited from the Group in its Yorkshire incarnation. Here we asked James Buffoni of Ryedale Group about his experiences of the Group.

Can you briefly outline your business?

We are a specialist design and print manufacturer for niche markets – including plastic print solutions for horticulture, retail and telecoms.

What attracted you to the Leadership Group?

The opportunity to discuss wider business issues with like minded people, and to have some exposure to thought leaders in fields that are interesting, inspirational that I might not consider as part of the standard working day.

What issues had you encountered in the business, and how did you use the Leadership Group to help with these issues?

I don’t use the leadership group to solve my problems – we are very specialist and relatively forward thinking and we proactively solve our problems. We use the group for inspiration and creative space, and often being away from the office, surrounded by likeminded people, and exposed to interesting material inevitably runs of on us!

What sort of support do you get from the Leadership Group?

We also get opportunity to raise issues with the peers via direct contact, social media groups, and via the other members if appropriate. On occasion we have also done business. For me, the most valuable parts of the leadership group are having a high quality peer group and a top quality list of speakers.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .