Op-ed: When mining’s leaders no longer fit the moment

Great leadership is inseparable from context, and history shows that leaders who excel in one moment can falter in another not because they change, but because the problem they were built to solve does.

Winston Churchill is perhaps the clearest example. His leadership during Britain’s darkest hours in World War II was extraordinary. He was decisive, unflinching, and capable of mobilizing a nation under existential threat. Yet when the war ended, those same qualities proved less suited to the work of domestic reconstruction and consensus governance.

The British electorate’s decision to move on from Churchill was not a rejection of his greatness, but a recognition that the challenge had fundamentally changed.

The same pattern appears outside politics. Lee Iacocca saved Chrysler through ruthless cost control and financial discipline, but struggled to position it for long-term innovation. Jack Welch transformed GE through efficiency and capital rigor, yet left behind a culture that faltered and effectively collapsed in a different economic regime. In each case, the leader was not wrong. The moment had simply moved on.

The mining industry may now be confronting a similar inflection point.

How mining adapted to survive

Over the last 30 years, and especially since the 2011 commodity bust, mining has undergone a profound cultural and structural shift. The era of expansive ambition and discovery-led growth that defined the 1970s through the mid-2000s gave way to a long period of austerity.

That austerity was rational. The industry had earned its scars. Capital was destroyed, balance sheets were overextended, and shareholders revolted against growth for its own sake. Boards responded by elevating financial discipline as the dominant virtue. Leaders who could run tight ships, reduce costs, return capital, and avoid bold bets rose to the top. Accountants, operators, and former CFOs replaced the geologist-visionaries who once defined the sector.

This leadership cohort preserved much of the industry. It restored credibility with investors, repaired balance sheets, and forced a sector long prone to excess to confront reality. Many major producers survived the last decade because of this shift.

But survival is not renewal.

A new environment, an old playbook

The conditions that shaped that leadership model no longer apply. Gold prices are not testing $2,000 an ounce. They are well beyond it. Supply elasticity has collapsed. Permitting timelines are longer, regulatory hurdles higher, and reserve replacement more difficult than at any point in modern mining history.

Yet much of the industry still behaves as if capital remains scarce. Faced with record margins, many major producers prioritize dividends and buybacks over meaningful production growth. Exploration budgets remain constrained. New projects advance slowly. Incrementalism crowds out bold strategy.

This behaviour is not irrational. Incentives reinforced it for years. Leaders selected for discipline and risk minimization continue to apply the tools that once delivered survival. In a structurally higher-price, supply-constrained environment, however, those same tools now risk underinvestment in the future.

Rotation, generations and the pressure to change

Markets tend to resolve these mismatches.

As gold prices remain elevated, investors already rotate toward companies offering visible growth. Producers that kept building through the downturn and advanced new mines now outperform more cautious peers. That relative performance gap matters more than absolute returns.

As capital flows into growth-oriented miners, their share prices benefit from both fundamentals and narrative momentum. Capital-return-focused incumbents risk falling behind. Over time, that divergence pressures boards and management teams. Inaction starts to look riskier than action.

This shift coincides with a generational transition. Many leaders who rose during the austerity era approach retirement. A younger cohort of geologists and project builders exists, but often without strategic authority. Financial discipline still matters. The real question is whether it has become the default answer to every strategic problem.

A call for audacity, with memory

This is not an argument for reckless empire building or a return to the excesses that made austerity necessary. Mining does not need fewer accountants, but it urgently needs balance.

The industry needs to restore geologists and technical visionaries to positions of strategic leadership, not to replace financial discipline, but to complement it. The next phase of mining will unfold over long timelines, scarce assets, and difficult tradeoffs. That environment demands leaders who can see ore bodies as clearly as balance sheets, and who treat geology not as a cost centre, but as a strategic advantage.

The pendulum does not need to swing wildly, but it does need to move.

Mining has survived its long winter. The industry that emerges will depend on whether it has the courage to invest in its future, and whether it chooses leaders optimized not just for survival, but for growth under constraint.

The question is not whether the industry can afford audacity again. It is whether it can afford not to.

_{* Erik Groves is Corporate Strategy and In-House Counsel at Morgan Companies.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of MINING.COM or The Northern Miner Group.}