Professor Kanes K Rajah, Director, Business School, Tshwane University of Technology, and CBS Professor, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, UK

They are now demanding ‘Western’ things like freedom and rights. The educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the Muslim and the Christian and men and women standing together and saying they want their ‘leaders’ out. They want a say in how their lives are run and are beginning to engage in peaceful protests. Could it be that our vocabulary about protest is changing too?

Isn’t this fundamentally what innovation is all about? Dissatisfaction with the status quo, irrespective of whether it is about services or products? In order to bring about the change we need, leadership should be about the language our political, corporate and institutional leaders are brave enough to embrace and use. It is no longer only about qualifications and capabilities!

relevance to this new found need for a language for innovation. In my book, Complex Creativity: the Pathway to Innovation (2007), I highlight the need to take into account a systems approach and recognition of the core person made up of our education, experiences

This brings us back to creativity and its

and who we are with respect to personality, style and both IQ and Emotional Intelligence. However, in striving for success, we need to adopt servant leadership as a way forward. ‘If we are the best in what we do, others will follow us’ rather than attempting most other traditional forms of leadership. To be able to construct and use a new language for innovation we need to adopt some basic rules:

evaluation, Suspend judgement and avoid premature

Language is about what is spoken and not spoken, Communication is not only about language. The Middle East is beginning to show us the

way forward.

It is now time for Corporate South Africa to ‘make the difference that makes the difference’.

And remember; only dead fish go with the flow!

62 Management Today | September 2011