Mining Needs Cultures where Truth Survives In mining, data is everywhere - from fleet telemetry and drill logs to processing plant outputs and tailings dam monitoring. Yet as digital or analytics projects progress, the tipping point often is reached when insights from data do not match with expectations or even prove former decisions wrong. The blame then often falls on the data: "It's incomplete", "It's not ready", "It's biased!". While those critiques may carry some weight - especially at the beginning, when iteration is a mandatory part of the process - the real problem often runs deeper: A culture that rewards comfort over confrontation and hierarchy over honesty. Mines accumulate data at industrial scale, but need to master the challenge to achieve a coherent framework to interpret or act on it - across all organisational levels. This framework or governance should be purely mining driven. It is about mining correlations, process dependencies and business rules. To a large extent findings will confirm assumptions and established practices, but there will be also uncomfortable truths. However, dealing with those truths with comfort (and without filtering them out) is neither a data nor a mining problem. It is about an inclusive and hands-on environment - in short, it is about culture and what creates culture: the people. Beyond the need for mining experts to interpret and connect data, it is essential to involve those directly impacted by the digitalization initiative. Their input is valuable not only for interpreting data related to their specific process steps, but also for engaging them in the journey and fostering transparency about how digitalization might affect their individual roles. Without clear communication and context, many people understandably worry about worst-case scenarios - chief among them, the fear that digitalization will eliminate their jobs. While job displacement may occur in isolated cases, the broader reality is that digitalization often enhances roles: it supports better decision-making, reduces the burden of documentation and enables employees to focus more on meaningful aspects of their work, sometimes even allowing roles to evolve in positive new directions. The significant part of successful digitalization is people-centric (culture!): Actively involving employees in the process and clarifying the range of possible outcomes! Core of this journey is basic groundwork through one-on-one conversations, regular discussions and ongoing engagement beyond. This is not a trivial task, nor is it realistic to expect already fully loaded lead engineers or managers to take it on in addition to their existing responsibilities. These discussions require substance to be meaningful (and not to turn into being counter-productive), with a clear and thoughtful preparation. Typically, this calls for dedicated resources - individuals who can bridge the worlds of mining, IT and human factors - to ensure digitalization in mining is both effective and embraced by all stakeholders. Mining is complex and unforgiving. To thrive, mining companies need more than numbers - they need cultures that can confront reality. That means engagement and empowering technical teams to ask hard questions. It means rewarding those who challenge assumptions with evidence from data. And it means building processes where inconvenient truths aren’t buried but investigated. Only then digitalization and analytics can serve what they’re meant to: clarity, not consensus. Stefan Ebert, Digital Mining Technologist