Countries
Independent analysis and opinion pieces from our community's approved authors.
Across major industries and sectors worldwide — including mining, energy, construction and retail — organisations have developed sophisticated systems to measure costs, productivity, safety performance, equipment availability, project delivery and financial results. Yet one variable rarely appears with the same clarity on an executive dashboard: the cost of poor leadership. When an employee leaves an organisation, performance declines, absenteeism increases, or a safety concern goes unreported, the impact will eventually surface in one indicator or another. What is far less visible is what happened before that indicator began to move. And often, what came before was the way that person was led. But reducing the issue to the relationship between a manager and their team would be too simplistic. Behind every leadership role sit corporate decisions: business strategy, financial and organisational challenges, cultural and productivity goals, selection processes, available resources, expected impact, and the capabilities required to deliver against the organisation’s strategic priorities. Leadership, therefore, is also a matter of business and corporate responsibility.
A mining cluster is a network of mining companies, local suppliers, educational institutions, and public entities that come together in a specific geographic area. Its importance lies in its ability to transform resource extraction into an engine of innovation, high-quality technical employment, and sustainable economic development for the region.
The knock-on effects reach all the way to the cars people buy. The chemistry CATL is stockpiling, LFP, is the cheap and durable one that makes affordable electric cars possible, which is good news for buyers. But the same deals concentrate power in a very small number of hands. When one or two companies control both the batteries and the materials behind them, the carmakers that depend on them become price-takers. They do not control the most expensive part of their own product. A brand that has secured its supply can price an affordable electric car with confidence. A brand that has not is exposed to every swing in the lithium market. This is becoming the normal way the battery industry secures its future, and in doing so it is quietly deciding who will be able to build affordable electric cars, and who will be left buying at the gate.
The importance of public investment planning for incentivizing and developing private investment is exemplified by Chile’s PROPIR instrument (Regional Public Investment Program). PROPIR is a planning and budgeting tool that details all public spending committed to carrying out studies, projects, and programs in each region during the budget year. In practice, it requires private companies to provide information to the state and, vice versa, the state to share program pipelines and regulatory timelines—so that joint efforts are strengthened and both sectors can contribute to broad-based development
In reference to our global production and energy efficiency program. Taken from my Book Mining Energy
