Change Management in Mining:

For many companies, the question of change is not really about the need or desire to do so, but the probability that it will be successful. Change can be hard and can easily be derailed through lack of continuous focus on seeing it through. It can also be inconsistent, with some business units and personnel being more successful because they were more open to it, or were more dedicated to keeping on top of progress that is being made.

The question of probability of success is often informed past failed attempts, which everyone will have experienced in their professional lives at one organization or another, whether as a force behind change or as a team member. Fear, naturally, is a dissuader to change, as is the monetary cost of failure. But in today’s mining industry, change is not only needed, it is necessary to address systemic, historical inefficiency.

Change can be managed effectively and seen through to success when driven by shared goals that can connect to the C-suite to the rest of the organization. Of course, these goals must be trackable, in different levels of granularity and in different parts of the business. Establishing this requires a technological backbone that can break the silos down between operational functions, between disparate software applications, data types, and ultimately the professionals who use them.

A road map for successful transformation includes:

• Sharing your vision and goals company-wide and backing them with common metrics that can be measured in the C-suite. The vision and goals must be turned into metrics that flow throughout the organization, the operations and the functions that comprise them.
• Establishing a single source of the truth to break barriers between systems, processes, and people.
• Ensuring metrics are trackable and shareable on-demand, in the same consistent formats and user interface, using the same methodologies of calculation.
• Enabling data flow from one process to the next to allow the processes to be measurable and improved upon holistically.
• “Googalizing” value-adding information in the business to make more/all of it of it accessible.

Commonality of measures and data ensures a consistent ability to analyze, understand progress and communicate needed actions to keep it on track. If everyone and everything is connected together, the processes to gather data and turn it into useful information are no longer manual. If processes can be connected to one another and made visible, they become trackable, and their performance measurable. With this, there are no excuses for lack of adoption, it becomes embedded in how people work – in how they must work.

With a tie-back to the C-suite’s goals, everyone in the company understands what, why and how things need to be changed, and they have a process to make it happen. Communications from the top to the bottom of the organization and back up are consistent, and based on a common set of rules to establish facts. This allows everyone to understand what is working and what is not while giving them the ability understand the impact they are making, see the results, be measured on it, and supported in achieving it.

Learn about technology that can help you manage change at https://www.3ds.com/industries/natural-resources/natural-resources-business-excellence

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On the web: 3DS.com/natural-resources/