Teamwork....

The presentation through which I took the RTIO WA 2013 graduates for a virtual trip to Simandou is the result of teamwork. And there is a story behind this that I would like to share here as there is always a lesson to pick from life experiences.

I humbly acknowledged the good feedbacks from the auditorium and I cannot tell you how people were enthusiastic over the project scale, the partnership on which it lies and the engineering/environmental challenge it represent and also how beneficial it will be for the guinean people and therefore country's sustainable development.

Teamwork is one of the 4th values that make Rio Tinto a good place to work (others are accountability, respect, integrity). This is just not my opinion but also for many of my colleagues. The story is the following...

In the first quarter last year, there was a high level west african business and high ranking officials that were supposed to have a a series of economic meeting in Canada. The necessity to present something about Simandou came in and my GM HR designated me for this task.

The GM operations and I were the two to represent Simandou. I then had to do two things; get my canadian visa sorted out as well as work with one of our consultant and communications dept to prepare a presentation. however, I had to draft the first version and submit it for review. So did I and it went through the regular process of review/comments/amendements/suggestions....

And I remember that GM ops asked us to have a lot of pictures in it and I could see the value of it as last friday, graduated reallly enjoyed them.... So in your ppt presentations make sure you add some meaningful pics. It always helps to get people's buy in.

unfortunately, my visa came through two days after the meeting in our montreal offices during which I would have presented live in front of the Guinean minister of Employment Technical Training. I had to do it via teleconference. i remember our MD, GM ops (he could not make the trip either due to an unexpected emergency that occured) feeling sorry for me. It would have been the first time for me to get to Canada.

I could not imagine at that time, life would have offered me the opportunity to present these slides (on which so many people contributed within simandou), in front of a public of more that 150 persons.Last friday (feb 8) I just then realised that what you miss today may comeback to you later in another form. This also shows that wathever you do as a result of teamwork, try as much as you can to do it right. One way or another, as long as it takes, it will be recognised.