Recently, I have been very IMpressed by the North Devon business community.
I’m impressed by a number of businesses I’ve seen investing in and improving their operations. I’m impressed by young people who are eager to find jobs and who are doing impressive work in schools. I’m impressed by people I see working very hard to improve the economy.
Yet when I look at the many things that are wrong, I could easily become DEpressed.
Like everywhere else, the problems are big: unemployment, disconnected young people, empty shops, red tape and more.
I see a choice: moan about how bad things are – so they’ll stay bad – or work to improve them.
I choose the latter, even though I know any action taken now is likely to take several years or more to have a visible effect. Is that a reason not to do anything?
And who is going to do it? It’s not going to happen by itself.
I guess it’s up to us.
Many of us are already working hard to develop our businesses, but we need to improve the business environment in which we operate.
If we want to have up-to-date infrastructure such as superfast broadband, it’s up to us to demonstrate the market need. If we find council planning departments are obstructing economic development and deterring investment, we need to let councils know. If we find bureaucracy is stifling enterprise, we need to let our MPs know.
The voice of one business is unlikely to change anything. The voices of a hundred businesses won’t necessarily change anything either. Perhaps hundreds or thousands of vocal businesses can start to create a stir and continued lobbying by these hundreds or thousands of businesses over weeks or months will start to be heard.
Is it worth it?
Today I have been so impressed by the work of school students that it has inspired me to write this blog. These talented young people will soon be making career choices and the North Devon economy needs them to regenerate the local workforce. But it takes a lot of effort to create job opportunities and fund training. I think that these young people deserve the best chance possible and that we need it to achieve prosperity in years ahead.
I am impressed with the potential for the future in North Devon . . . even if it requires a lot of very hard work.
What do you think we can do to make things better?
I totally agree with you Robert. And it is up to us, as responsible citizens to create an environment that exudes a positive attitude, headed up by enthusiastic optomists with energy, vision and creativity that will pass on their wisdom and enthusiasm to our young people.
North Devon needs to shout about its successes, not constantly grumble about what isn’t happening. There’s so much creativity and ground-breaking innovation that goes on here and we need to tell the world about it so that we are taken seriously, so that the area DOES become a focus for investment and so that it DOES get decent broadband which will enhance economic development.
We mustn’t become reknowned for being moaners, but actually take the initiative and decide our own destiny. As Robert says, thousands of voices make a difference, we are all stakeholders in the future of the area.
And the destinies of our young people is in our hands too. Currently, the mood is so DEpressing for young people as they leave the safety of school and have to find their way. The message, up til now, has been “university places are scarse and it’s very expensive and there are no jobs around”. So how does that make young people think? They immediately believe that they are never going to make it and they start to focus on all the negatives.
We need to work with these people and turn their thinking. What are their strengths? What are their USPs? What are the benefits that they bring to society or to the workplace? What makes them a champion? Everyone is a champion, we just need to unlock the champion inside. The more we focus on these, the more they will have the confidence to go out and sell themselves to the world with the wonderful fearlessness, exuberance and energy that us ‘middle-agers’ once had but seem to have mislaid!!
But they have to have good role models and, for that, we all need to stand up and be counted.