Our Success Depends on Others

AN ACQUAINTANCE OF MINE is the manager of a large coal mine just outside Johannesburg, South Africa. I know the mine, or at least the township where the workers live, their homes part of an informal settlement surrounding tall elevators that bring the coal to the surface. Snaking for miles beneath the town are deep shafts dug by generation upon generation of miners — shafts that occasionally collapse, leaving sinkholes in the streets above. Mountains of tailing rise like sand dunes on the horizon, their dry orange dust raised by yellow bulldozers that from a distance look like children's toys in a giant sandbox. The dust from the tailing coats everything and everyone when the rains don't come – and they rarely come. Shallow streams in the vicinity are filled with plastic bags and empty bottles.

Parents in the settlement tell their children to stay in school and get an education. What they mean by education is science. Forget the arts; forget reading for pleasure. A scientific education is the only way forward in a town that knows nothing but moving coal, the same coal that is heating the atmosphere and drying up the land. The same coal that will no longer be wanted sometime soon when environmentalists, not popular here, have their way. It's easy to understand why parents are so focused on preparing their children for a life underground, or in one of the extractive industries. There are few jobs that do not depend on the mine. Those who are lucky enough to have work save their money and dream of moving their families out from under the corrugated steel roofs of the informal settlements into brick homes with indoor toilets. Very few make it. Most will remain sleeping in mud-floor lean-tos under lampposts that reach to an impossible height. At night, these lampposts give the community the feeling of a prison without guards.

The lampposts are extra tall to prevent any unauthorized person from fussing with the wires. Some residents feel the risk of electrocution is a small price to pay for hooking themselves onto the power grid for free. They are also high because young men with nothing but time on their hands break the bulbs with rocks to prove they are as powerful as their warrior ancestors or the modern-day superheroes they watch online. Darkness is the reward for their foolishness. One cannot blame them, really. As wages have risen, coal production has been automated, and mines are not hiring. The workers kept on are older men with the seniority and technical expertise required for efficient operations in a dangerous environment, miles beneath the earth.

Automation has also brought on a spike in workplace deaths, not because of unintended injuries but because older miners have a work ethic that puts them at risk for heart attacks and strokes. My friend, the mine manager, does not want to sound callous, but he sees the irony of the situation. The commitment of the older men to getting their jobs done efficiently actually jeopardizes the profitability of the mine. The old guys will bore and blast at the same pace as they did when they were younger, only now the stress on their bodies routinely causes them to overexert. Each heart attack or stroke causes a lengthy delay in production while the victim (or body) is brought to the surface and an investigation is carried out by authorities. Bribes have to be paid. Unions threaten to strike. There are grieving widows and bad press. It is a serious problem for everyone involved.

The solution the mine has put in place, however, is inspiring, and it tells us a lot about how we can best help people thrive. It was arrived at in stages. Initially, the mine managers provided the miners with a simple wearable device that monitored their heart rates and other physiological data. The system was designed so that an alarm would ping in an office at the surface if a worker's vitals were dangerously out of control. In other words, the workers' supervisors would know if one of their men was medically at risk and could send word down the mineshaft for the employee to take a break. The union reassured their members that there would be no loss in pay or other consequences if they took a few minutes to rest. That did not work: the workers kept breaking the monitors because (no surprise) they felt like they were being watched, and they worried that they would be fired if they could not work without interruption. Once the supervisors figured out their mistake, they went to the union and asked if the shop stewards would monitor employees' heart rates. As expected, the union did not want the responsibility or the liability, nor did it want to appear to be in bed with management. There was another solution, however, and it should have been obvious from the start: it came in the form of the men's wives, girlfriends, and mothers.

The company gave these women a small alarm that went off if their husband, boyfriend, or son's vitals were compromised. It was then up to the women to alert the team leaders underground that something was wrong. I was told that the men stopped breaking their monitors, mostly because they feared a confrontation with the people who loved them and to whom they felt responsible. While I question the ethics of burdening women with the responsibility to keep miners alive, the example nevertheless holds interesting lessons about what makes people resilient. The solution to heart attacks and strokes among the miners did not rely on an individual change in behavior. The mine's Human Resources department could have taught the miners to meditate, self-regulate, or eat healthier. Having met a few of those rock-hard personalities, I doubt this would have worked. What did work were the external supports that gave the miners what they needed to survive in a genuinely tough environment. Managers, unions, families, and even the physical infrastructure of the mine had to change to make it possible for men to take breaks when they needed them without the potential for negative consequences. Simply put, the miners changed their behavior and began acting responsibly when the environment around them forced them to change. Acting in their own best interest was a better choice than going home to an angry wife, girlfriend, or daughter.

I wonder what could be accomplished if the same amount of creative thinking was applied to the settlement's other problems of poor housing, youth unemployment, and garbage-strewn streams. Taller lampposts are a necessary adaptation to a bad situation, but real change requires more thought and a better understanding of the science of resilience.

* * *

I enjoy an inspiring TED Talk as much as anyone else. I love that "Ah ha!" moment when I gain some new insight into myself or, at the very least, better understand why everyone else is so dysfunctional. I understand why motivational speakers seek to inspire us with the...