Imagine yourself in this position: Less
than five months ago, you were summoned from the private sector to join a
newly formed national government. Your background is in retail; now you
are heading up the nation’s mining industry. You are abroad on a state
visit, still working to come up to speed, when word reaches you from
your home office that there has been a mining disaster – a cave-in deep
below, death toll unknown, nearly three dozen missing.
Or envision this situation: For decades,
your financial services firm has sailed along. Not only have revenues
soared, your company has also earned a treasured AAA credit rating while
creating an extraordinary wealth engine: a little giant of a division
that insures against debt defaults, including subprime mortgages.
Continuing prosperity seems predictable, but suddenly the market
implodes. Subprime mortgages turn noxious. Lehman Brothers goes under.
Your AAA rating slips to AA, then A-; and with the downgrades, you have
to post billions of dollars in collateral that you simply do not have.
This boat is sailing straight toward a roaring waterfall, and you are
standing at the helm.
These are not, of course, hypothetical
or anonymous events. Laurence Golborne, the new mining minister for the
Republic of Chile, was visiting Ecuador on the night of August 5, 2010,
when his chief of staff back in Santiago sent him a simple but urgent
text message: “Mine cave-in Copiapó; 33 victims.” Twenty-eight hours
later, at 3:30 a.m. on August 7, Golborne arrived at the remote site of
the mining disaster in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Soon,
hundreds of millions of people around the globe would be witnessing one
of the greatest mining rescues of all time.1
“Effective
leadership can be learned, and indeed should be learned, by those with
responsibility for the performance of their enterprises and their
employees.”
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