Debswana Managing Director, Jim Gowans, is your typical nice guy. He is on first name terms with company cleaners and messengers. “Jim works best”, he told some of his charges who chose to call him Mr. Gowans. “My wife calls me hi you! When she is mad with me,” he says, before cracking up into a fit of laughter.
Just in case anyone thought the new Debswana boss is a wuss, a tag that is often pinned on nice guys, he makes light of such slights: “I am no weakling; I have false teeth and three operations to prove it. I had my first tooth knocked out when I was four.”
The job profile of the Debswana top post does not exactly list “dare-devil tough guy” among its many requirements, but it helps to have a strong ticker as Jim is quickly finding out. A few minutes after we sat down in the spacious Debswana executive boardroom, he was talking about working costs having grown “significantly higher than both revenue and production in the past six or so years”, and how the company is facing challenges of declining ore resources, aging plants and equipment as well as complex-to-mine deepening and widening pits.
Despite the solemnity of his subjects, Jim is oddly warm and lively in conversation. He exudes energy and enthusiasm even as he describes a company facing a crisis and “operating at levels lower than global benchmarks in a number of areas.”
For sometime shareholders have harped on a mantra that cost efficiencies are not what they should be. There have also been murmurs that assets were not providing the best returns under the circumstances.
The shareholders, President Ian Khama on the side of Government and Nicky Oppenheimer on the side of De Beers, have both been blunt in their introductory meetings with Jim on just how desperate for cash each one of them is.
The Minister of Minerals, Ponatshego Kedikilwe, has also waded in, telling the new Managing Director in no uncertain terms exactly what is at stake, given Setswana’s big impact on government revenue.
“My job is for Debswana to operate as best as it can. The President and the minister have both been very clear that Debswana should operate world class in terms of matrix. The thing is we are playing a bit of catch-up.”
Board member and Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance has been honest enough to tell Jim how the figures are not balancing and have not been for the last two years and will remain so for the next two unless more carat money starts to flow in again from the Debswana operated mines.
And the sooner the better!
Jim Gowans takes over from Marole who was nudged out last November when his contract still had four more years to run.
It was perhaps a sign of shareholders’ steadfast conviction to get a “world class manager” to run a “world class asset” that they saw nothing wrong getting the company to paying through its nose if only to get rid of Marole.
Because he had done nothing wrong to warrant his departure, Marole was able to extract somewhere between P10 and P20 million in severance packages ÔÇô an equivalent of four years pay plus bonuses – all for staying at home.
“I know the pressure is there, from directors and from ministers. I know the expectations are high but I don’t feel it. I love challenges.”
While he tends towards these-are-difficult-times approach, he does not display the world-weariness of the cynic and the defeatism of a genuine miserablist. Instead there’s an evangelic quality in those blue-grey eyes peering behind a pair of spectacles that lends a passionate zeal to his declaration: “I love a challenge. I can exert more pressure on myself than other people. I get a thrill from getting companies to operate at world class benchmarks.”
Jim who describes himself as a mining junkie has set the bar very high and is going about the challenge with a when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-gets-going-attitude. “Our mission as a company is to be a global benchmark diamond business. I have no doubt that the current management is determined to achieve this in order to sustain Debswana’s contribution to Botswana’s development, at the highest levels possible,” he says.
The first files to land in his ├ÅN” trays as he settled on to the pound seat that has claimed many tough men were directors’ report that gave him a sense of the goings on and the state of the company. His first impressions are that, “there is no doubt that Debswana comprises a pool of talented, innovative and passionate employees. It is even gratifying to note that these are young Batswana who are destined to take this company to greater heights. The commitment that the workforce has towards people safety is tremendous, with a lot of emphasis on everybody coming on board as a safety agent as we look to achieving our zero harm target. I am therefore excited at the opportunity that has been presented to me, to work with this great team and collectively give out the best in each one of us for the benefit of Botswana and her people. However the challenges that I alluded to earlier remain and we need to tackle them head on.”
Jim says although the market has improved “somewhat” over the past year, Debswana is still not yet back to pre-recession levels. For example, last year Debswana produced 22 million carats compared to 32 million carats in 2008. Damtshaa mine remains closed and will only open in 2012.
“We remain positive that in view of indications of a positive turnaround in the international market, our production and subsequent financial report will reflect this positive change. In terms of the overdraft and other credit facilities, I am happy to say that due to the improvements in the market, we have not had to use these facilities since April 2009,” he said.
Treading in the path beaten by his two immediate predecessors, Louis Nchindo and Blackie Marole for whom the Debswana corner office will always be remembered as a thankless job under a board that is impossible to please, Jim has a rough act to follow.
If he is worried then he does not show it: “I do not anticipate any issues. It is my job to manage that. It is my job to make sure there are no issues. Twenty-Five to thirty years ago, I learnt that it is difficult working for a nervous boss, especially when you are the one making him nervous.”
A fast talking, cheerful and informal man who calls himself an “operations guy,” it will be interesting to see how long the happy-go-lucky attitude lasts before the many contradicting and sometimes conflicting Debswana interests weigh down on Jim and erase what up to now has looked like a perennial smile on his face.
