Leadership Behaviours At The Iron Oxide Mineral Corporation

answer those two question as soon as possible
LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS AT THE IRON OXIDE MINERAL CORPORATION

The Iron Oxide Mineral Corporation (IOMC) was a publicly held Canadian mining company operating in Canada’s far north. James Joner Javier (JJJ), a qualified mining engineer, was the Chief Operating Officer and had been with the firm since 1982 as one of its first employees when it started as a penny stock prospecting company. In its thirty-six year plus history IOMC had progressed from a high risk, small time, relatively obscure mining company to a highly respected major international player in the mining of diamonds and precious gemstones. Much of the company’s success was due to the uncanny and sustaining ability of Javier to locate areas of high yield and to mine the areas at lower cost than most of the competition, as well the very low level of staff turnover at all levels – in the past five years the only staff departures had occurred due to retirements. This allowed IOMC the luxury of not always having to urgently train new employees and to adopt careful and managed succession plans.

JJJ, occasionally referred to as “J-cubed” by some of his followers, was a highly competent mining engineer with Bachelor and Master degrees in applied science, as well as a Master of Business Administration degree. JJJ was well respected as a professional engineer – regarded as the best in the business by his peers, and had received many awards over the years relating to innovation in mining. Notwithstanding his exalted status in the company as its Chief Operating Officer, JJJ spent as much time in the field with his sleeves rolled up as he did in the boardroom. Very self-confident there were no tasks his staff could do that he could not. This was no small accomplishment as all of his staff were competent and highly skilled in a wide variety of tasks ranging from intricate computer modelling and essay analysis to operating heavy equipment.

This knowledge and ability provided JJJ with credibility as a fair assessor of the performance of his followers, who also perceived his assessments as being fair. The nature of the mining industry today demands that accurate performance measures are developed and articulated for the numerous skilled jobs at hand, and that the overall performance of the mine depends, to a great extent, on the skills, efforts and abilities of the workers. JJJ supported those workers who worked hard, replaced those who did not with those who would work hard, and was not shy about clearly outlining his expectations, telling the workers the best way to do their jobs and how not to do their jobs. In the last 35 years JJJ had “replaced” only 10 employees for cause – out of an average total staff complement of 205.

JJJ was also known as a manager who ran a “tight” ship, and believed strongly in remuneration directly related to performance. Performance, in his mind, was about both effectiveness but also efficiency. All staff was encouraged to look for ways to cut costs without sacrificing quality, and any staff member or staff group who suggested sensible, practical and implementable cost-
cutting approaches to mining processes were provided with incentive bonuses – cash, time off, first choice of shifts, or some combination thereof. At the same time staff whose work was not up to par, or whose sloppiness resulted in a waste of company resources were docked pay, and given last pick for vacation time and shifts. As well, every employee shared in a certain percentage of company profits when the profits exceeded a predetermined threshold. The profit-sharing typically took the form of company shares that could be sold on the stock market, or retained as an investment. Over the last 10 years, every employee of IOMC had received an amount of profit share that represented 6 percent of their annual income every year, and virtually all employees were committed to do whatever was necessary to ensure the company continued to do well. It is noteworthy that all of the measures that resulted in efficiency gains and cost-savings over the past 10 years had come from the work of JJJ’s Operations Branch. For this and other reasons there was never any doubt that efficiency, effectiveness and productivity gains would be compensated. JJJ was held in high esteem by all members of the IOMC Senior Management Committee.

Of course every boss has a boss. JJJ’s boss was the Chief Executive Officer, Mike Brewmaster who supervised, in addition to the Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Administrative Officer, and the Chief Audit Executive. Together they formed the IOMC Senior Management Committee. “The Brewster”, as he was affectionately called, had been hired by the IOMC Board of Directors five years ago. A competent manager with an excellent track record at leading senior management teams, he was a caring and considerate boss, showing sympathy to the problems of his direct reports and always treating them with trust and respect. As far as making decisions, the Brewster liked the consensus/group decision approach and all of his direct reports did reasonably well under his leadership except for one: JJJ. While there were no outright “clashes” it was obvious to the rest of the senior management committee that the dynamic between the Brewster and J-Cubed was not always great – the latter thought the former took too long to make decisions (feeling perhaps he could not make any decisions on his own), that the decisions did not always require input from everyone (and certainly never consensus), and the company would be better served by the Chief Executive Officer focusing more on task and outputs, than on concern for his management team (who were, by all accounts, doing quite well).

One afternoon during a break in the management meeting JJJ’s frustration boiled over.

“I can’t believe this guy!” he said quietly to the Chief Audit Executive. “I have men and women out in the field doing real work under dangerous conditions. They are the entire backbone of this company – they always have been and always will be. They are looking to us for important decisions and leadership on the future, innovation, investments, research & development, safety improvements, etc. etc. and what does the Brewster want to discuss while he sips his mint tea? Some BS consultant’s report written by a world class BS’er who was paid an outrageous amount of money to tell us whether we should consider undertaking underwater basket weaving in the Bering Strait! What’s worse, this no brainer decision needs to be made by all of us! Can’t Brewmaster just say ‘no’ all by himself, like any other normal Chief Executive?”

Robert Campbell, the Chief Audit Executive smiled, “actually Jim, it is about underwater mining which is, I grant you, a bit out of our league at the moment.”

“Martin, you’re amused by this” said JJJ. “But don’t you remember the last ‘séance’ we had when the Brewster was trying to decide whether we should invest in the laser geomatics technology? That was classic ‘decision-making by committee’ at its finest. We spent all morning discussing it, and then we all agreed it was the way to go – perhaps because we were all dying by then and the Brewster said it was the way to go. So as the oxygen was running low in the boardroom we all decided ‘yes’ with our last breath, and what happened? The Brewster decides ‘no’, for some unknown reason, and ends the meeting. Well, he can’t suck and blow at the same time – he either wants our input or not, and if not, fine – but then make the decision!”

“Sometimes there is value to making decisions by asking for input from everyone with a stake, and in this case if we decide to explore underwater mining you are the key stakeholder among us, I would say,” replied Martin.

“Someone said once that a camel is a racehorse built by a committee. Look Marty, I’m only suggesting that every single management decision that needs to be made does not need to involve all of us. This is a no brainer – we are not tooled up even to explore this style of mining, the report indicates no proven reserves of anything we would even consider mining, and the risks are too high to our people even if this might be viable some day. And the Brewster knows this full well, so why waste all our time on this? Anyway, hey, if the Brewster wants to explore underwater mining in the Bering Strait I say we put some fins, a mask and an mixed gas scuba airtank on the consultant, drop him over the side, let out one thousand feet of rope – and that’s how deep it is there, by the way – and ask him to give two tugs on the rope if he sees anything shiny that’s not a fish, and three tugs once he’s got it all collected and wants to come up.”

Questions:

1. Analyze the management and leadership styles exemplified by Mike Brewmaster and JJJ.
2. Discuss how the differences in management and leadership styles might affect the IOMC.