Exactly what the Canberra Institute of Technology got for its money (or, rather, taxpayers got for their money) remains unknown. Details have been blanked out in the documents released to the public, and the information that is public is vague and unclear.
What we do know is that the institute paid $852,500 for one-on-one mentoring services for its chief executive that included five meetings a month, "unplanned advice" and phone calls returned within 24 hours. All told the contracts awarded to him amounted to $8.5 million.
But we do get a glimpse of what the mentor, Patrick Hollingworth, offers. On his own website, he describes himself as "a complexity and systems thinker".
The Celebrity Speakers' agency through which he can be hired to talk at events says: "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."
It adds: "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."
And the website has testimonials:
- "We had terrific feedback from all our sponsors, corporate clients and members who were all enthralled with your tales of your superhuman effort in climbing Mount Everest", gushed Fremantle Football Club.
- "His story is inspirational," according to Azure Capital.
- "A real person with amazing achievement, outstanding," Westpac said.
- Patrick delivered two outstanding presentations," Melbourne Grammar School said.
Apart from speaking, he is a man of action.
He mentors mountain climbers, according to "Himalayan Ascent".
And it's not just mountains: "He is also a keen surfer and long distance swimmer, having twice completed a solo crossing of the 20km Rottnest Channel."
So his insight and inspiration is in demand. He has a philosophical bent which is apparent in the newsletter he wrote until recently, and published as his "journal".
Here are some of his insights:
"My main thesis - which you're probably very much aware of - is that we have recently passed through a complexity threshold that will be incredibly difficult - and more-than-likely impossible - to pass back through," he wrote on October 29, 2020.
He explains a few paragraphs later: "The things I'm speaking about all manifest from wisdom, a wisdom which was accrued from many millennia of living locally and sustainably within the natural world. Tacit, uncodified and unstructured wisdom has its origins in praxis, and both require time to develop: thicker-duration temporal scales are key."
Mr Hollingworth explains his writing style: "It is structured in a way, using sentences and paragraphs and headings and so forth, that enables you to make sense of it relatively easy. It's also sent via a technological medium - in this case, email and web browser - that makes it accessible to anyone on earth who can access the internet and is literate."
He concedes there may be doubters: "But what if what I am writing is completely bogus? What if it's all bullshit? (It's not, I assure you, but please bear with me)."
"We have removed so many of the scaffolding mechanisms that kept things in check, to the extent that any village idiot now has a platform to exhibit their idiocy to the world (and to join up with other village idiots, and form online communities). There's nothing wrong with the village idiot - after all, every town has one - it's just that in the past, everyone in each town knew who theirs was. These days its far less obvious-to some people at least-and they now host Facebook groups, blogs, podcasts and the like."
That is the broad-brush of his skills. The particular expertise which he offered to the CIT remains unclear.
