While away on holidays recently I had time to think about a few things and one of the things I thought about was how hard it is today to get people to commit to things. People just don’t seem to take letting people know what they’re doing as seriously as they once did. Knowing what people are doing is so important, especially when you’re organising a function, event or the like. I don’t how many times over recent years I’ve heard organisers of various events say words like “people just aren’t getting back to me”, or “can you help us, numbers are very poor and we have commitments to meet” or “dealing with such apathy is impossible”.

I personally have faced this time and time again when I’ve tried to do various things to help or promote local businesses. For example, once upon a time if a publication like ours ran a shopping promotion, you could reasonably expect 50 or 60 businesses to participate. Today, a similar promotion might attract a dozen businesses, if that. This year, our Community Project Put Orange First has attempted to do several things to lift the spirits and prospects of local businesses. Despite businesses feeling the pinch, and the minimal cost to participate in various initiatives, the response and participation rates have been way below expectations. Put Orange First has also been trying to get a set of colourful promotional flags flying up Summer Street on a permanent basis. It’s now been 8 – 9 months trying to get something as simple as this organised through Council and it’s still no closer to coming to fruition.

The point I want to make is this.

Too often, when we assess something, we look at the outcome(s) and then make our judgement on that.  In my view that is not helpful or fair at all. Using the examples above, it’s easy to see why people would say the business promotions we attempted were failures, the initiative with the flags was a failure and a so on. If all people get in return for their hard work and efforts when trying to do something that will benefit others is an acknowledgement that they failed, where do we go from here? If people like me, who are forever trying to do good things to help others are constantly seen as failures, no one will ever do anything.

We need to change our thinking on such things. We need to applaud and celebrate the efforts that people put in to make things happen. When someone puts their heart and soul into a project to benefit others, and the outcome doesn’t reach the expectations hoped for, that shouldn’t take away from the effort that went into it.

Failure is not necessarily a fair and reasonable reflection of the effort put in by the person organising an event, it’s possibly more a reflection on the failure of people to support it.

Put simply, no-one can control the outcome of any event, all they can hope to do is put in the effort, tick all the boxes and hope the people you’re appealing to will respond.

The moral of the story is, when someone does something good for the benefit of others, applaud the effort and acknowledge it, no matter what the outcome was. Keep our Thumbs section in mind for when you want to do that.