The Light and Fast Organisation
The Light and Fast Organisation
A New Way of Dealing with Uncertainty
Patrick Hollingworth
First published in 2016 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
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© The Trustee for the Patrick Hollingworth Family Trust 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by Wiley
Cover and internal climber images by Sam Scopelliti and Patrick Hollingworth
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
About the author
Patrick Hollingworth works with people, teams and organisations to help them deal with a world which is becoming more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous by the day.
After studying anthropology, geography and psychology at university, he spent a decade with a large international consultancy, working on some of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects ever built in Australia. He's seen the very best of what large organisations can create, and also the very worst.
At the same time he began exploring the uncertainty and complexity which go hand in hand with mountaineering, learning the art of alpine style in the mountains of New Zealand, Canada and France, and then the science of expedition style in the mountains of Alaska, Argentina, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet.
It's taken him to great heights – literally. He's summited multiple 8000 metre peaks, including Mount Everest, and over the past 15 years has been a member of small light and fast alpine-style teams and has led rather large heavy and slow expedition-style teams. He's seen the very best of what alpine style can offer, and also the very worst of what expedition style can deliver.
Patrick lives and breathes this stuff.
He is based in Australia and travels internationally to deliver keynote presentations, workshops, mentoring and consulting to a range of organisations. These include multinational companies such as British retailer Marks and Spencer, American energy giant Chevron and British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto, through to mid-sized, Australian, Asian and European banks, medical and technology companies, and government departments and educational institutions.
Find out more at www.patrickhollingworth.com
Introduction
There is a mountain face in Switzerland that from 1933 to 1938 held the attention of the world. Not just the attention of the mountaineering world, but the entire world. A mountain face so steep and imposing that it had become legend: one that, at last count, has killed at least 64 people who have attempted to climb it.
Extending in an unbroken upward thrust for nearly 2 kilometres, this vertical and overhanging face comprised of mixed rock and ice has variously been described as ‘ferociously steep', ‘inaccessible', ‘unclimbable' and ‘murderous'. Known as the Nordwand, German for ‘North Face', it belongs to the 3970-metre-high mountain called the Eiger.
Located in the Bernese Oberland in the northernmost portion of the Alps, the Eiger acts as a weather beacon and attracts the earliest of bad weather moving down from the northern plains of Europe. Not only is the Eiger's North Face incredibly high and steep, it is also somewhat concave, giving it a tendency to collect and amplify storms as they hit. Sunny days and warm temperatures can turn to maelstrom and freezing conditions within minutes, creating blizzards, deadly rockfalls and avalanches. The normal rules for mountain weather just don't seem to apply here.
The Nordwand is a powerful metaphor for the world we are living in today.
At this critical juncture in our history, we too are experiencing unpredictable and violent storms. Fuelled by never before seen and ever more complex interactions between people, places and technology, the sunny days and warm weather of the past are gone and we are now seemingly inundated with maelstrom, freezing conditions, blizzards, rockfalls and avalanches. For most people and most organisations – those that don't have the mindset and skills required to deal with this volatility and uncertainty – it's a terrifying and stressful place to be. It is inherently uncomfortable.
But for the few people and organisations that do have the right mindset and skills, it's actually an incredibly exciting time. There is immeasurable opportunity, unlike any other period in the history of mankind. The purpose of this book is to arm you, the reader, with the right mindset and skills to ensure that you, and the organisation you work for, can experience the excitement and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.
To understand more about the right mindset and skills needed to take advantage of these opportunities, in this book we are going to delve into the world of the mountaineer, a place not commonly associated with meaningful learning beyond superficial colloquialisms about ‘dreaming big', ‘never giving up' and ‘anything is possible if you try hard enough'.
More specifically, we are going into the world of a subset of mountaineers who climb light and fast, an approach known as alpine style. (We call this type of mountaineer the alpinist.)
There is arguably no type of person on earth who has a better understanding of the skills, knowledge and mindset needed to deal with the type of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that the world is enshrouded in today. And so, throughout this book, we are going to learn from the alpinist.
But just for a moment, we must go back to Switzerland in 1935.
Standing above the beautiful alpine meadows of the tourist resorts of Kleine Scheidegg and Grindelwald, in the 1930s the North Face of the Eiger became a global stage against which a group of young German and Austrian men pitted their lives in a tragic fashion. Although the mountain had previously been climbed via comparatively easier routes such as the south and the Mittellegi ridges, no-one had ever climbed directly up the North Face.
For the young men involved, each seemingly oblivious to their soon-to-be starring roles on the world stage, their motivation to climb the North Face was the intrinsic joy and challenge that mountaineering provides. But Hitler's Third Reich seized upon their feats as an opportunity to showcase the talent and supposed superiority of their citizens to the world. (It was even reported that following the Munich Olympics Adolf Hitler offered gold medals to any German or Austrian climbers who could successfully scale the face). And so during the mid 1930s, as Europe slowly lumbered towards another world war, the global spotlight was centred very much on the Eiger's main stage, the North Face.
The first serious attempt occurred in the summer of 1935, when two young Bavarians named Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer set up camp in the meadows below the face. With