#006 Harry Sinko and Gary Lane | Disruption in the mining industry

Gary Lane, guest · [05:17]The first point to make is that the South African mining industry is no unique, not unique to any of the other mining companies globally. We're sitting with productivity issues globally. South Africa isn't actually lagging. What does it actually mean for the future? Well, if we don't modernize our mines globally, we can't open up and access all That are actually non-economic, like using current mining methods. So it's not a case of losing jobs, it's a case of making the industry more competitive, and there's going to be an upskilling of people. We're going to need more people with more advanced systems and digital skills in the future. So yes, there will be potentially a loss of the jobs in the unskilled sector, but it's going to be made up with the more skilled labor, plus we're going to open up more ore bodies, because there are ore bodies right now that aren't mined, that could be mined. Just now we'll talk about the global shortage there will be with those skills across all industries.

Harry Sinko, guest · [06:10]So it's also historically been proven that with productivity increases comes greater wealth. Greater wealth then produces greater consumption, and greater consumption usually broadens the production that's required, so the labor force that's required to service that consumption. So for instance, years ago, there were only a few choices in what you could do with your lifestyle if you had excessive income. Nowadays, there's a plethora of that. And so the ready or not in South Africa for the change is probably secondary to the question of we've got to change to increase productivity, to increase and generate greater wealth, and to then broaden the base of labor and skilled labor that's required as well. The other thing, as Gary mentioned a moment ago, is that there's this broader requirement across the globe For skilled labor, that a lot of predictions are suggesting there's going to be a shortage of, and South Africa's well-placed to be able to take advantage of that situation.

Harry Sinko, guest · [07:29]Interesting question. Most of it's related to an individual's behavior patterns and changing that. If you think about the longer a person does a job, And the more frequently they do it, they develop these solid behavior patterns that are hard to change. So on an individual level, it's being able to work with them to transfer across from those behavior patterns to something new and different. And we all know that when we learn something new, it's awkward, it feels weird, it's uncomfortable, it takes longer, and often the results less satisfactory or of a lesser or lower quality than what we are used to. So it requires us to be able to support those periods of transition for individuals. And nowadays we can do that offline as well, rather than having to do it in the workplace, being able to do it offline, and hence our focus around experiential learning. We can fail in a safe environment and be able to then get confidence in picking up the skills and moving into the professional world. For us, it's really about being able to help people work through those concerns, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties around their behavior skills and, and how they apply them.

Petro du Pisani, host · [08:50]So pretty much breaking habits, because you get, you get so used to doing something in a specific way that you want to change people's behavior so that they can be receptive to doing something in a different way.

Harry Sinko, guest · [09:01]So absolutely, breaking habits so that, firstly, there's a want to want break the habit because it's a better way, acknowledgement around that. Secondly, to be able to then work with them to introduce the new techniques or approaches. To be able to then create a new outcome. And then thirdly is to be able to support them so that they become very skilled in the depth of doing it. If we think about change in its highest level or broadest context, the requirement of things to change requires at this stage, as far as we know, people to do things differently. If things aren't done differently, nothing changes. And if people need to do things differently, then we've got to tackle that fundamental area.

Gary Lane, guest · [11:06]Yes, so we've built a facility at the Mandela Mining Precinct. It is a physical mining simulation that represents the full value stream of mining. So from the drilling right through drilling, blasting, loading, hauling, all the processing and outbound logistics to the final customer. So we can bring in a team. Some people are operators of each of the different activities. We have a middle management layer, which run each of the overall departments. We have a general management layer as well. So it represents the full mining organization, and we actually run an experiential simulation where you run the mine to see the impact that you have, and it brings out all the issues around managing a mine around systems thinking.

Petro du Pisani, host · [11:47]What can you add, Harry?

Harry Sinko, guest · [11:49]So it looks at a system and identifying where the constraints exist in the system. So from a technical point of view, it highlights how we often miss those, how activities within silos tend to correct their areas and processes without necessarily impacting on the entire value chain. So it highlights that very effectively. What it also highlights quite often is that people may start to identify where some of the constraints exist. However, In a complex system with a lot of people involved making decisions, doing the work that they normally do, particularly the middle management layer, that quite often that's lost, that's evaporated, and so we go back into the traditional way of solving problems which tend to be long-winded and don't achieve the outcomes that we need. In fact, the game has been specifically designed, and typically what happens is in the first round, every group that's ever played it so far, and we've probably played it close on a hundred times now with different groups, do not achieve anywhere near the profitability that the game should achieve, a break-even profit. They then go and spend quite a lot of money, time, resources on improving things, because we give people an opportunity to go and improve their first result. They come back and they introduce all of those, improvements, and what we find then is they typically do a better job, they increase the output, however, they're still nowhere near achieving a profit. Then that's where we start to do the development work with them understanding how and where they need to focus their efforts, what tools they need to use, and how to look at the whole process in a very systematic approach.

Gary Lane, guest · [15:42]So it is actually one of my sort of focus areas at the moment. So let me, let me try and clarify that. There's a lot of, the term digital twin's been used quite broadly across industries without a real understanding of what it is. It is really a virtual replica of the actual item that you want to represent. So in the case of a mining organization, a digital twin represent the full mining value chain together with its activities, the equipment, the resources, the operating model, together with an actual geospatial picture of what that mine looks like. That pays respect to the, distances that trucks travel, for example. And you can literally simulate every single decision you'd make on a normal mine. To simulate in a virtual environment, so we can literally test what will happen if we make changes and what the impact will be on the mine.

Petro du Pisani, host · [16:32]Would you like to add to that, Harry?

Gary Lane, guest · [16:34]The

Harry Sinko, guest · [16:35]additional thing I might suggest is that it also includes in our definition the different hierarchies or levels of work that exist within that system.

Harry Sinko, guest · [17:06]So the traditional answer is probably the safest. We'll start with senior management in all of the organizations that are impacted, so the mining organizations in this case. A large part is to work with them, educate them, broaden their thinking and understanding of what's possible out there. And ultimately, they need to lead the program or the new charge in this area. It's, I mentioned the auto industry being a, a significant leader in productivity increases over the last thirty years, in fact. The large part of that is because they had some very strong leadership in some of the companies that were driving, breaking the barriers of traditional manufacturing techniques and methods. And I believe the same is required in the mining industry. However, it doesn't just stop there. We also mentioned that the new mining 4.0, the digital future of mining, will require a significant amount of resources, new resources, new talent, new capabilities, and skills. And for that, we need to rely on government to be able to help The education processes achieve those requirements that we need for those people as well. And then broadly, it's about communities, communities that need to be involved at every step of the way. The future is largely where we all participate in, and we all have a requirement to be able to impact on that. And so I think that communities are a big part of it as well. Moving away from focusing on, you know, what happens to my job today, and starting to think about what are my children going to be doing in the future in this industry.

Gary Lane, guest · [18:52]The toughest part about what the mind of the future looks like is actually the people challenges. The technology and the technology implementation and the digital is actually the easy part. It's going to be around the change of people and the stuff we spoke about earlier around the fear of change and the root causes of that. Right now, the industry's bombarded with lots and lots of digital solutions for mining 4.0 or for the digital mine. I would say there's a lot of confusion in the industry. If I was the CEO of a mining company right now, I'd be a little bit scared because I think there's a lot of solutions being punted by different vendors. In some instances, we've just renamed stuff with a 4.0 after it. And it comes down to what are the right things to focus on that are going to create the value of what we're trying to achieve, whether it's a safety improvement or increase in profitability, which leads into efficiency improvement. And our belief is the fundamental starting point of that is systems thinking. Without an understanding of the mining system, you're not gonna be able to prioritize where to focus, and you're gonna spend money across a whole list of initiatives, which is what the mining industry currently does, without understanding incremental value of what that's gonna result in.

Petro du Pisani, host · [23:52]So Harry, I got to know you as a coach and master facilitator for a couple of projects that we worked together on. So what I'd like to talk to you about is specifically the topic of Change Management, and how important is Change Management and bringing people along?

Harry Sinko, guest · [24:10]Very crucial. Where of the opinion Change Management starts at the top. It needs to have total commitment belief at a senior management level. The only way that you can truly bring people along is to have nearly blind belief that what you're engaged in, what you want to do, is going to create the new future. And too often we see that that's quite neglected. People seem to do it because there's a requirement, because there's some external pressure. And they forget that the belief, internal belief, is a critical thing. Once that happens, then great things can come out of that. Because change at the end of the day requires communication, effective communication, engagement with people, and all we have is that in the change toolkit. And to be able to do that effectively, you've got to come from a true source.