Jay’s running late, so we wait. And I think of Amanda Pollock. She’s with the other group of students who just left Ahafo and heading to Akyem—where our group just was.

Amanda’s rare. She’s one of the strategic brains behind the class but also the person who makes it go. Relationship purveyor. Hotel booker. Curriculum advisor. Fixer.

She’s also well travelled in Africa. She studied it in grad school and married a South African. She’s been all over the continent.

This is my first trip to Africa, but I’ve been to other international locales that are similarly challenging to get around and do things. Its a shared perspective that I think is bringing Amanda and I closer on this trip. Places like Ghana can seem capricious. Seemingly random problems with seemingly easy solutions that you are totally unqualified to help solve, even if you’re convinced you are. Patience is vital. Adaptability primal.

Amanda introduced me to a term: T.A.B.: That’s Africa Baby. I smile about that as I wait for Jay. (Amanda kinda makes you smile like that.)

Jay arrives. It seems that there was a multi vehicle auto accident involving a large goods carrier truck. It happened outside of the fence line, but right in front of the expat village. There might have been a death. Certainly there are serious injuries. Newmont isn’t obligated to help (although their health care and emergency response infrastructure has significantly more resources that the surrounding municipalities). But there were Newmont employees involved. So Randy dispatched some vehicles.

As is the custom in places like Ghana, where police are rare and ineffective and laws are vague points of reference, some of the Ghanaians were taking matters into their own hands. Exacting a bit of justice. The at-fault driver had abandoned his car and fled into the woods. It was a mob scene, and escalating.

Jay tells us about this quickly as if to get it out of the way. I don’t think he noticed the looks on our faces, the degree to which our jaws had dropped.

“Anyway, I think we have the Newmont folks in a safe place. Sorry I’m late. I thought I’d begin the presentation with some photos of the mine site. Is that okay?”

I instinctively look for Amanda. That’s not okay, Jay. But that’s Africa, baby.

When you go to fancy-pants MBA school, you learn a lot of fancy-pants terms. It’s nice at first to throw them around and sound smart. Kind of justifies the expense of the degree.

But pretty soon you realize they aren’t that meaningful if (a) they really aren’t communicating anything other than you’re a snotty MBA with some fancy-pants terms, and (b) you really don’t know what it means in the first place.

And by means, I’m talking about the experience of driving through the barely-settled hills of Ghana and happening upon a working gold mine.

Towering processing machinery clustered together, the size of ten, maybe twelve city blocks. Caterpillar’s repair facility four stories high, two football fields long. Security check-points like NORAD. Vehicles zipping about in some presumably rational way, creating traffic like the town square of a small Midwestern town. Compounds of mess halls, pool parlors, the bar, and decent motel-like barracks.

And we haven’t even seen the mine. Or its haul trucks. Or drillers. Or excavators.

Maybe this is what my finance professor meant by Capital Intensive.

When you’re anxious to go on a tour of an African mine site, sitting in a florescent lit room listening to presentations makes you a little jumpy and inattentive. Even so, when Jay Bastian started talking about the mowing operations at his mine, my ears perked up.

In a way, Randy Barnes and Jay Bastian’s relationship is a micro-reflection of Newmont Mining. Randy is the External Affairs Manager at Ahafo. Jay Bastian is the General Manager. Randy, citizenship and social affairs. Jay, operations. Randy, keep the peace. Jay, make the profits.

A few years ago, former Newmont CEO Wayne Murdy approached Scott McLagan — lead professor on this trip and director of Daniels’ executive programs — to help him change the culture at Newmont.

“We’re really good at operations,” Scott will tell you Wayne said. “We know what we’re doing behind the fence line. But I need our people to be spending more than half their time thinking outside the fence line.”

Academics call this focusing on your social license to operate. Newmont calls it profitability.

Newmont engaged Daniels to deliver custom corporate programs on team building, ethics, and sustainability. Multi-week programs, delivered multiple times over the course of several years for all management-level employees flown to Denver from around the world.

Daniels will have you believe that these programs contributed to Newmont’s cultural turnaround. A turnaround that resulted in Newmont’s media placements moving from arrests and water contamination in Indonesia to being placed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (the first and only mining company with such a listing).

As they say in PR, that’s much better ink.

It’s a turnaround that began by placing Newmont’s Environmental and Social Responsibility managers at the decision making table with operations. They’d have to work hard to align values. A risky proposition for a company (in an industry) that’s always been all about operations.

Jump back to Ahafo. Jay tells our group that it would easier and cheaper to not hire so many people at the Ahafo mine. They employ less people, he said, for much larger operations and more production at their Nevada, U.S. site.

“I could do mowing operations cheaper, faster, and at a higher quality with a tractor than I could hiring a dozen guys with machetes.”

Randy interrupts to remind us that it’s a payoff against being a good corporate citizen. A valued member of the community.

Jay looks at Randy as if to say “That’s nice. Can we get back to operations?”

I wonder how many Newmont shareholders, way back in the comfy environs of the west, have had the same sentiment.

Many Newmont employees are required to wear jumpsuits. Makes them easier to spot by the mining vehicles, and a little easier for security.

Apparently they’re a hot item. Counterfeit Newmont jumpsuits started popping up in the small towns around the Ahafo mine site.

Newmont folks tell me they have yet to see them used in any kind of fraudulent ways. Ghanaians are telling Newmont that they’re simply a status symbol. They signify you’re employed. It’s impressive around town.

“You see them on the streets at night in some of the villages,” one Newmont employee told me. “They’re all the rage.”

Around Ahafo, 12-foot flag posts (like the kind you used to have on your bike only… well, taller) are attached to full sized, two-ton Chevy pick-ups so the haul trucks don’t run them over. Haul trucks, it should go without saying, always have the right away. You wait at intersections in the mine site for the “all-clear” over the two-way radio before proceeding. Haul trucks won’t stop.

The director of training at Ahafo tells me women Ghanaians make better haul truck drivers.

“They aren’t as arrogant. Not as attracted to the power. More responsible.”