Mining is a risky business, right? And the men (or women) who are the leaders and the risk-takers are frequently under a lot of pressure as they weigh the various factors involved in finding and developing a mine — physical, political, environmental; factors few other industries have to contend with to such a degree.
Having to make mining decisions based generally on such an unusual number of elements, (at least some of which are beyond the control of the decision-maker anyway), is bound occasionally to make for fuzzy heads and wrong solutions.
We offer mining executives possibly a part-answer to such problems.
In the U.S., it appears, there are universities offering courses to harried business executives which expose them to risk, not of a business kind, but of a physical kind. The courses involve such things as glider flying, scuba diving, handling of venomous snakes. It purportedly gives the graduates a whole new, much more relaxed and balanced perspective concerning the purely business risks they normally face.
Maybe not a bad idea, at that. For mining people though, who are risk-takers extraordinaire, we might have to devise some rather more startling physical challenges. How about parachuting down mine shafts. Treading a ball mill (like rolling a log). Riding the torpedo-shaped sensor “bird” beneath a survey aircraft.
A certain very senior Canadian mining executive we know of likes to plunge down mountains on skis, and we can attest to the risk in that. We don’t know, of course, if it really helps him to make better decisions back at the office, but chances are it does.
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