Innovation Workshop for Hellenic Copper Mines

Dr Paul Thomas of County Management Consultants has just finished his latest assignment in Cyprus, helping the management team at Hellenic Copper Mines to improve their creativity.

Hellenic Copper Mines carries on a centuries old tradition of extracting copper from the hills of Cyprus, first recorded in the fourth millennium BC. The words "aes Cyprium" appear in Roman writings of the Early Christian Era because so much of the metal came from Cyprus and 'Copper' is the anglicised version of this Latin phrase. Paul was particularly pleased to be involved “I learnt about extraction metallurgy at Lanchester in the 1960s and it was great to see what it looks like in the field after so many years”, he said.

Despite, or perhaps, because of, the long tradition of copper extraction, the challenge faced by all copper producers is to find new ways of minimising the cost and improving the productivity of the extraction process. The mine at Skouriotissa in Cyprus works with a very low grade ore (0.3% copper compared to an average of 0.82% across the world). This drives the need for the Cyprus operation to become more efficient. The Chief Executive, Constantinos Xydas, asked Paul to design and deliver a programme to improve the innovation and creativity skills of the management team.

Paul based the programme around the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality assessment instrument which was completed by 12 members of the management team. After individual feedback to each of the team members a series of workshops was held to develop a new way of working, focussed on the Innovation Process – Defining the issue; Discovering different ways of addressing the issue; Deciding which approach to adopt; Delivering the selected approach”.

The programme was “workshop-driven” rather than being “management-led” and the last workshop resulted in the creation of three new action teams to address issues in the business chosen by the delegates themselves. Bringing about change is difficult; it takes a long time to replace the habits of a life-time. Experience shows that people produce the best results when they work on issues that are important to them, as well as to the business.

Time will tell if HCM are able to build on the programme, but as Constantinos Xydas says “Paul’s workshop has been a wake up call to all participants. In the turmoil of the day to day work in a mining operation, we sometimes forget that innovation and change is what can take our project to another millennium of operation and success and it is what has kept it alive up to now”

This is echoed in the words of his PA, Marina Neophytou, who has said since attending the programme “I would like to thank you (Paul) for all useful “advices” you have passed to us, which we are trying to adopt in order to make the “baby steps” for the big changes”.

Change affects everyone in an organization, and Paul focuses on making sure that everyone involved has an equal opportunity to contribute. From shop floor to top management, everyone has a contribution to make and remembering that the Chinese journey of one 1000 miles begins with one step, Marina’s ‘baby steps’ mark the beginning of that journey for HCM.