About this Event
Date: Thursday 7th May
Time: 09:00 for 09:30 till 11:00
Accelerating Growth: Aligning Strategy, People & Technology
Venue: Bowcliffe Hall, Bramham, Wetherby, LS23 6LP
Speakers: Nick Halliday, Founder & CEO, IDS Group & Patrick Maloney, Founder & MD, Lead Talent Management Consultancy
Format: Q&A hosted by Connect Yorkshire EIR Mark Summerson
What Really Unlocks Growth in an SME?
It’s rarely effort. It’s alignment. Strategy sits in one place. People operate in another.
Technology is layered on top. And nothing quite joins up.
The SMEs that scale fastest fix this. They align strategy, people and technology into one connected growth engine.
The Event
Join Patrick Maloney and Nick Halliday for a candid, practical Q&A on how ambitious SME leaders accelerate growth by aligning direction, people and systems.
This isn’t theory. It’s real-world insight from two leaders who sit at the heart of SME growth from different perspectives:
● Patrick Maloney brings the strategy and people lens, helping leadership teams gain clarity, build accountability, and actually execute.
● Nick Halliday brings the technology and infrastructure lens, showing how the right systems, platforms and integrations unlock efficiency, visibility and scale.
Mark Summerson, COO of Automated Analytics and Connect Yorkshire EIR will chair a Q&A where they’ll explore what happens when these worlds connect properly, and why businesses that get this right outperform, outpace and outgrow their competitors.
About the speakers:
Nick Halliday - Founder & CEO, IDS Group
A serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building digital businesses worldwide,
Nick brings a sharp commercial mindset and technical insight to every challenge. He’s spent his career addressing the real-world obstacles that hold software projects back, from scaling pains in SaaS ventures to the risks of poorly integrated systems. Nick founded IDS to assemble a team of world-class experts who thrive on solving complex software problems and delivering sustainable success for clients.
Patrick Maloney
Patrick Maloney is Founder and Managing Director of Lead Talent Management Consultancy, working with ambitious SMEs to scale and accelerate sustainable, profitable growth. With over 30 years in senior leadership, he brings board-level insight and commercial clarity to every engagement. Since founding Lead Talent, Patrick has delivered over 200 bespoke projects across 25 sectors, contributing to more than £250 million in additional revenue. Known for his hands-on, straight-talking approach, he works closely with leadership teams to build strategy, align people and accelerate performance, with 94% of Lead Talent’s work coming through client referrals.
Why Attend
If you’re leading or scaling an SME, you’ll recognise the symptoms:
● A strategy that isn’t fully landing
● A leadership team that’s busy but not always aligned
● Technology and systems that should help…but often complicate
This session will show you how to fix that, practically.
What You’ll Learn
1. Strategy: Clarity before growth
● Why most SMEs are active… but not aligned
● The cost of unclear direction when scaling
● How to build a plan that actually gets delivered
2. People: Accountability That drives execution
● Loyalty v Competency. Why “good people” isn’t enough without structure
● How to create real accountability (not just meetings)
● Aligning leadership teams to deliver results
3. Technology: Enabling scale, Not adding complexity
● Where tech genuinely adds value, and where it doesn’t
● How to use systems to improve efficiency and visibility
● Building secure infrastructure, fuelled by AI, that supports growth, not complexity
The Reality
● Strategy without the right people doesn’t get executed
● People without systems create bottlenecks
● Technology without direction creates noise
Alignment is where growth happens.
Key Takeaways
You’ll leave with practical tools and thinking you can apply immediately, including:
● Lead Talent’s Team Evaluator
● A clearer approach to people alignment and accountability
● A sharper understanding of how technology can accelerate growth and how AI fits into this strategy
If you want to scale your business, it’s not about doing more. It’s about getting strategy, people and technology working as one connected growth engine.
As part of our business model, we have partners from the professional service sector (lawyers, accountants, recruiters, insurance, wealth management), who pay to have exclusivity in our group.
So unfortunately, as we already have partners in these sectors, if you are in the professional service sector, you will not be able to attend our events going forward.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Bowcliffe Hall, Bowcliffe Hall, Wetherby, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00 to GBP 13.55
