A few weeks back, while the world waited for a new President to appear in the United States, I was on radio saying business people across the country needed to simply claim some personal responsibility for their destiny, put their head down and the tails up, and run their own race in the face of an economic change, and a U.S. presidential change.



Now don't get me wrong, I think it's monumental that society has evolved so much since Martin Luther King Jr,'s speech was delivered on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Even though I was only months old at the time, to think that we can go from one man's dream to another's reality in one lifetime is extraordinary, and a true gauge of how the world is evolving. Or put more simplistically, how the world has just grown up.

As I stood in my lounge room listening and watching President Elect Obama's acceptance speech I felt this was to be one of those moments in my lifetime that I will remember forever. A moment when over a dinner table with friends one will answer the question, 'where were you when'...

However, it did take us 45 years as a society to witness that evolution.

Today, as we face our own personal issues right here, right now in business we simply don't have that luxury of time.

We can't sit back and wait for President Elect Obama to take office, get his feet under the desk, get a grip of all of the issues facing him in his initial days of office and believe he can change the world before the Easter Bunny comes. That's almost believable as the bunny himself. And it would be a business bunny to believe otherwise.

If we're to get through these next 12 months in business we need to do it on our own. Why? Because nobody is going to be able to facilitate change faster than you in your own business, no matter what the politicians tell you, anywhere in the world.

It's time to claim responsibility and just get on with it. If we don't, we are destined to simply stop, fall over, and die. I mean, just take a look back at how far we've come in the last 12 months in the face of economic change while everyone has been pointing the finger. Think about it.

The Democrats have been saying it's the Republicans fault for not seeing the signs.

The Republicans have been saying the fat cat bankers have been irresponsible and taking huge salaries for making poor decisions.

The banks are saying they are doing their best to weather an international storm driven, in part, by the sub prime issues.

But let's look at that. Whose fault is it anyway?

Well, for sure the banks did lend money irresponsibly to customers that could not pay it back. The customers took that money irresponsibly knowing full well they would struggle to pay it back. The politicians, all of them, from both parties, sat back and watched this happen for over 12 months. All the while knowing full well that there is an economic cycle. The business world sat back and let the consumer spend the money irresponsibly rubbing their hands together and taking advantage of the business boom, knowing they too could jump on the gravy train, only then to proceed in many instances to spend the money just as irresponsibly and borrow more from the banks.

And the cycle continued.

Go figure... So who's at fault? We all are.

If we are to survive the next 12 months we all need to stop blaming others and start claiming responsibility and just GET ON WITH IT. We need to stop sitting back and waiting for the next Presidential election, Osama to be found, the stock market to rocket, or finding a solution to global warming.

Unless you are thinking of becoming President, or a terrorist, having dinner with Warren Buffet, or you've stumbled across Thomas Edison's notebook, then there's not a lot you can do to facilitate change with any of those actions. But you can take responsibility for your own actions.

In business, this is not about waiting for the actions of others to fix it. This is about embracing the power of now.