By: Faizan Haq, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Your Bliss Magazine; CEO, Manage Your Business LLC

All nations have an Independence Day that they celebrate. It is a specific date in history where they declared after a long strong or even a violent period that they are independent in making decisions about their destiny and affairs. For us, it is July 4th. Happy 4th of July!

What comes after independence is the responsibility to preserve national independence, along with guaranteeing the rights of individual freedoms for the common citizens and defending the collective opportunities for their coming generations. It requires a sustainable governing system that is accountable to the stakeholders, which are the citizens. The citizens in return must abide by the responsibilities to maintain and reinforce the governing system while preserving the foundational values for which the struggle of independence was launched and won.

Responsibility is a word that is inclusive of boundaries, restrictions, limits, consequences, systemic cycles of the interruptive delivery of debated rules and principles, with tremendous patience to await favorable outcomes and at the same time entertaining the odds of adversarial conclusions. The real test of citizenry is when one must live with the new realities constructed to the process in place. A group that might be at advantage in one period might not have the same advantages in another time.

In a business, independence is all about responsibilities. The more responsible you are in your behavior as an entrepreneur or business leader the more independent one can enjoy acquiring the true potential of the business. Just as the independence of a nation requires abiding by certain rules to preserve the collective future opportunities, the more inclusive the governing system of the stakeholders the more far reaching and successful it will be.

If the system is only to benefit the elite, it will collapse from underneath. If the system only benefits mid-management, it will die of immobility. If the system only favors the workers on daily wages, it will not be able to compete with the rest of the world. If the system only benefits the investors, it will impoverish itself and will suffocate.

The only way to preserve and maintain a healthy system is to balance the benefits and interests of all stakeholders. Independence without balance doesn’t last long.