Patrick Hollingworth

Patrick Hollingworth is a passionate mountaineer who has summited multiple 8000 metre peaks, including Mount Everest. Drawing on his learnings from the alpines and his unique business experience, he inspires and directs senior organisational leaders in their quest to navigate businesses through an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous landscape.

Describing himself as “a student of people and places,” Patrick Hollingworth completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours in anthropology, geography and psychology before spending more than a decade as an employee of a large multinational consultancy. He worked on the some of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects ever built in Australia and along the way experienced the very best of what large organisations can achieve, and also the very worst.

Patrick Hollingworth’s interest is in non-linear organisational leadership and structural responses to conditions of uncertainty and complexity. He firmly believes that from education, government and not-for-profit organisations, and through to commercial enterprise, the well-being of our society is based upon the well-being of our organisations. If our organisations fail, so too does our society. With this firmly in mind, Patrick works with senior leaders to help them reconsider their organisational approaches to a new world of uncertainty, complexity and change… and to be ready for any future, one where we accept that we do not have control.

In addition to helping senior leaders, Patrick Hollingworth regularly speaks at conferences both in Australia (he lives in Sydney) and internationally. His clients include multinational companies such as British retailer Marks and Spencer, American energy giant Chevron and British- Australian miner Rio Tinto, through to major Australian banks such as CBA, NAB and Westpac, communications giant Telstra, private hospital chain Ramsay Health and numerous government departments end education institutions.

A prolific writer, he authored the book The Light and Fast Organisation: A New Way of Dealing with Uncertainty, and writes a regular newsletter on the topic. He also writes for media outlets, including the Australian Financial Review, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sky Business News, QANTAS Radio, as well as ABC TV and radio.