Margaret Thatcher once said, “One of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”

Your thoughts, ideas and actions are valuable to the success of this region. I’ve included four of my thoughts around helping people in our community succeed. How do you think we can help people live their best possible lives?

We have to do a better job educating our kids. We have to think about policies, programs, people and place. Specifically, how do all of these things intersect to create the conditions to help or hinder people in living their best possible lives?

We have to align the systems designed to help people live measurably better lives. We can no longer afford a splintered approach to helping. We have to hold these systems and those facilitating the work to a higher standard, and provide the support to help them achieve ambitious outcomes for children, youth and families.

We have to equip our youth with the right skills to compete and secure the jobs of tomorrow. If we focus on job training in the traditional ways, we will limit people to service-level jobs. We need to help people secure service-level work that can become a skilled-labor career. Service level jobs should provide a pipeline into higher wage skilled work.

We have to provide viable and diverse career options that align with a person’s aptitude and interests. We can’t assume that all people from a community have the same aspirations, especially when we presume that they are low aspirations. We have to treat each person as an individual and expose them to career possibilities that exist beyond their rural, urban or suburban setting.

I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments below.