FOCUS FEATURE


THE ART OF INFLUENCE


It's important that people understand what businesses do, and why they do it Any organisation is the sum of its parts and while the


Chamber has a strong voice we need to see more businesses making the case for the economy we’re all part of both locally, regionally and nationally. So if you’re still wondering whether decision-makers understand your business, ask yourself a question: what have you done to tell them? Do you hook-up with local schools to develop relationships


with the workforce of the future? If you want to tap expertise in productivity and innovation, have you spoken to the D2N2 Growth Hub or your university? If you feel strongly about a particular aspect of employment law, planning process or access to finance, have you spoken to your MP? Let’s be realistic. While corporates are generally very


good at investing in channels to get their messages across, most SMEs have neither the time nor the resources. This is why we have membership organisations like the Chamber to speak up on their behalf. One of the single most important mechanisms for making sure the Chamber paints an accurate picture to decision-makers is its Quarterly Economic Survey, which can be filled in online. Fifteen minutes of your time every three months equals frontline business reality being fed through to Whitehall and Westminster by an authoritative, recognised source. And it is critically important that Whitehall and


Westminster hears that message. In my view, Government generally doesn’t invest nearly enough effort in cultivating regional eyes and ears - and that carries risks. If regional differences are not reflected in policies then we end up with one-size-fits-all solutions which do not accommodate the different shapes and flavours of a richly differentiated UK economy. This matters: the danger with centrally- determined policy frameworks is that while they’re often good at identifying the headline challenges – innovation, skills, connectivity and productivity, for example - they don’t address the nuances of local need or talk a local language. When that happens we get poor value policy which delivers sub-optimal outcomes for Government, businesses, people and places. We have a distinctive story to tell in the East Midlands.


The make-up of our regional economy means our future is particularly important to that of an exporting nation – advanced, knowledge-based products, specialist expertise, experienced supply chains, one of the biggest international trade gateways in the UK, research strengths and a self- contained workforce. We perform strongly, we have significant future potential, and to unlock that we need to tell an


56 business network May 2019 Geldards' Derby office ar Number One, Pride Place


unashamedly ambitious story to the people who hold the purse strings. They need to know that it just doesn’t make sense for the East Midlands to get a proportionally smaller slice of the pie. But we have to tell our story on home turf, too. To the


people we work with and the places we’re part of. As businesses, we cannot assume that people know or understand why we do what we do. We want them to know that we’re on their side, and to do that we need to speak up, engage, connect. Whatever happens with Brexit, it seems to me that we


are at a turning point. If we go ahead and leave then we have to carve out a new trading future internationally while addressing some major challenges at home related to regional inequalities and the relationship it has with poor productivity. If we somehow end up staying in the EU our relationship with our biggest trading partner needs to be reset, and the domestic challenges remain. At the same time, we’ll be trying to make the most of the opportunities presented by a technological and environmental transformation. For the future, we want people to be able to say that


they understand business because it helped the place they are part of tackle those challenges and turn them into opportunities. We want Whitehall decision-makers to know that when they parcel up budgets the East Midlands is a place that delivers results on a global scale. That is perhaps the best way for us to respond to the


apparent indifference to the commercial world that has surrounded the Brexit debate: it’s an opportunity to tell our story, play our part and demonstrate that we care about the places we depend on just as much as people and politicians do.


‘For the future, we want people to be able to say that they understand business because it helped the place they are part of tackle those challenges and turn them into opportunities’


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