The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition gold miners are obsessed with bigness. The Globe's Eric Reguly writes they want projects they can label "game changers," ones capable of vaulting medium-sized firms into the big leagues, or thrust the biggies to the very top of the heap. Bigness permeates their lives. They drive big cars, live in big houses. Some, like Barrick Gold boss Peter Munk, bob around the planet in the biggest of yachts. Big projects are big gambles. They invariably come in far over budget, some times billions over budget, which gets shareholders annoyed. Big projects also attract lots of attention from environmental activists, politicians and aboriginal peoples. The result is expensive delays and bad publicity. Executives are being tossed into the garbage like the remains of a steak lunch. Returns on equity are sinking into single-digit territory. Problems at flagship projects are not going away -- in some cases they are intensifying -- after years of fix-it efforts. Barrick has become the poster child of the dangers of oversized projects. Bigness, which is to say greed, can backfire. Gold does not rot in the ground. Some times slower and smaller can achieve your goals faster.