Martin Luther King. Barack Obama. Advertising Agencies.

In my last few jobs I've been hired in senior positions to teach old dogs new tricks. To help traditional agencies learn to leave the 1980s. Or to help an interactive agency become something more than a technology and infrastructure vendor. Or to help a non-traditional joint learn the intelligent discipline and creative bigness most often associated in traditional marketing.

This is a damn difficult and dispiriting job. Especially when the economy tumbles or someone's stock price goes down 47% or accounts are lost or new business isn't won. Because change, like principles, are easy to stick to until they cost you money.

Today Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times in writing about Mr. Obama recalled a speech made Dr. King. As Kristof says, "it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: 'Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.'"

I guess that's what those of us in the change business have to remember: "we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was."