| By Gavin Chait,
on 18 September 2007
|
 All together now The most important thing that every person has by birth is their capacity for work and the expression of their talent. Not every person has the capacity to lead, but every person enjoys the opportunities created by talented leaders. Leadership is a knotty task. It is not merely about seeing further and implementing brave, often contrarian, ideas. It is also about inviting and supporting the best minds to complement that leadership. A good leader knows how to delegate and listen to views that may be entirely at odds with her own. Talent follows the opportunity to express itself. Where talent cannot be expressed then the most able individuals move to places where they feel that their abilities will be rewarded.
Poor leadership is not in short supply. Governments lose their best staff to companies and they, in turn, lose their best minds to sparkling new start-ups. Organisations that don't support brave innovators quickly lose them as they move to where they have most value. The migration of talent happens especially at the supra-national level. Millions of Zimbabweans fleeing the collapse of their nation are doing so in the hopes of investing their talent somewhere they will see it rewarded. Poor leadership can destroy vibrant businesses and growing economies by so alienating the most capable that they leave. The clearest symbol of South Africa's poor leadership has been President Thabo Mbeki's firing of Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge for her lack of "loyalty". The other, just as clear symbol of the state's lack of confidence in independent thought is Public Enterprise Minister Alec Erwin's belief that the private sector is incapable of delivering services. He has chosen to develop new broadband capacity via a state-subsidised monopoly called Infraco. Mbeki's support of his most incompetent ministers is a clear message of his style of leadership. It is a loud statement to any who will hear it, "Your initiative, your talent, your passion, and your commitment to professionalism are not important. All that is important is your loyalty and devotion to my orders." It is no wonder that skilled people leave the country and we have to import artisans and engineers from abroad. Without a commitment to independent private thought and action there are no jobs available for anyone who wants more from life than to be a mere robot. Mbeki is the most obvious proponent of the cult of sycophancy – of brown-nosing your way to the top – but he is definitely not alone. What reward do talented employees receive for identifying problems in their employer's strategy, or producing radical new innovations that contradict the prevailing way of doing things? Usually they're just ignored. Too much of the South African business sector relies not on competitive innovation to keep their customers, but on the protection of being monopolies or oligopolies; where a few companies are able to keep out any new entrants through market weight or legislative clout. Whenever external competition emerges – as with China and textiles – our companies beg for subsidies and then fail. Yet there are ideas. Buried inside the heads of individual men and women sitting in airline seats as they emigrate to nations more accepting of such "deviancy". Massive public works programs and state-owned monopolies can only create an illusion of opportunity. True opportunity requires great leadership. And there is precious little of that in South Africa. Virtually none in the business sector and none at all in politics. The support received by Madlala-Routledge is simply the squabbling of opportunistic players over the Emperor's new clothes. And we all know what he was wearing. Nothing. |
