Fitzpatrick keeps on keeping on

AT a time when many other people might be winding up their working life, retirement is seemingly the last thing on Peter Fitzpatrick’s mind.

Instead, he just keeps packing more engagements into his already busy diary.

Mr Fitzpatrick is a business mentor for The Executive Connection, lectures for the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the UWA Business School, chairs the Ministerial Council on Suicide Prevention and the Motor Industry Foundation, works with half a dozen war veterans groups, and has just accepted the chair of the Waste Authority.

And perhaps most intriguing of all, he is trying to drum up business investment in North Korea. 

Not bad for a 67 year old who has already had successful careers in the Army, as state director of the Law Society, and as executive director of the Motor Trade Association of WA. 

Mr Fitzpatrick, who left the MTA nearly two years ago, says that no longer having a full-time executive job has helped his new roles.

“When you’re away from the bump and grind I find you can be more intuitive, you have a wider vision, more clear-headed,” Mr Fitzpatrick told WA Business News.

Staying healthy also helps – Mr Fitzpatrick goes to the gym every day and can still bench press his own body weight.

Meeting at his favourite cafe and second office – a booth at the Kailis fish cafe in Leederville – Mr Fitzpatrick shows obvious enthusiasm for the many roles he now holds, including mentoring 35 business people through The Executive Connection.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes and don’t want others to repeat them,” he says.

Mr Fitzpatrick has identified a number of issues common to many of the chief executives he mentors.

One is the inclination to be too tactical, getting caught in the detail of their business rather than focusing on strategy.

Another is the isolation of CEOs, who don’t have a network around them.

Failing to stay up to speed with the changing world can also be a problem. Mr Fitzpatrick says chief executives need to be at the forefront, as change agents.

A fourth critical issue is having a work-life balance. This can mean many things, but to Mr Fitzpatrick it means looking after your health, even having an annual medical check-up, and having time to stop and think about your business.

Mr Fitzpatrick says he always ensured he had people to use as a sounding board, adding that the TEC mentoring group fills that role for many of its members.

“The group sessions are like having a private board, they get to know each other’s business and they challenge each other,” he says

Mr Fitzpatrick’s first career was in the Army, where he rose to be lieutenant colonel in the elite Special Air Service regiment.

He retains fondness and admiration for that period in his life.

“The SAS is one of the best trained army units anywhere in the world,” he says.

“It was great to be with such a disciplined group.”

The highlights he recalls include taking his regiment into the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, during the destructive Ash Wednesday bush fires in 1983.

His next role was state director of the Law Society, where he took the group into a more activist role.

This included a battle with Court government minister and ‘crash-through’ reformer Graham Kierath over workers’ compensation, and a heated public debate over sentencing laws after the famous Tan case.

“That was a very tough initiation into dealing with the media,” Mr Fitzpatrick says.

After 11 years, he moved to the Motor Trade Association, which represented 7,000 businesses turning over a total of $16 billion.

“I didn’t think it got the recognition or respect from government that it deserved,” he says.

The high point was a massive truck blockade of Parliament House, which he believes halted the automatic indexation (annual increase) of fuel excise.

“Petrol was over a dollar a litre and everyone was going feral. Our rally stopped it; that was a great day for the MTA,” he says.

The energetic Mr Fitzpatrick has for years held roles additional to his day job.

For seven years he was chair of Celebrate WA, which organises many events, most notably the annual Oz Concert and the citizen of the year awards.

“It was trying to build pride and generate interest in being Western Australian,” Mr Fitzpatrick says.

He chairs the Motor Industry Foundation, which supplies customised vehicles for families with disabled children.

“It’s a life-changing event for a lot of families when they get one of these vehicles.”

The foundation currently has 23 vehicles on loan and is targeting 100 in five years.

Mr Fitzpatrick is also involved in several war veterans groups, including one that is developing a respite camp in the Pilbara and another that seeks to formally recognise indigenous Australians who fought in wars by providing proper headstones at their graves.

“There were about 5,000 of them, and they came back with virtually no recognition,” he says. 

“Some of them even lost their land, which was broken up for soldier settlement schemes.”

He was the founding chair of Youth Focus and currently chairs the Ministerial Council of Suicide Prevention, which addresses a hidden tragedy that claims more lives than motor accidents.

Mr Fitzpatrick acknowledges this is a very complex area, especially in indigenous communities, and says it needs both more funding and more community engagement.

“It’s not just a question of handing out money, it’s engaging the community to take responsibility; finding champions, young people and volunteers to take on leadership roles and be the agents for change,” Mr Fitzpatrick says.

His interest in North Korea stemmed from connections built by his business partners in the reclusive communist state.

Mr Fitzpatrick says it is inevitable that North Korea will follow countries like China and Vietnam, which are communist nations but with a large private sector.

His main focus is a sustainable development program, designed to improve food security, but he adds that early investors have enormous opportunities to use the country’s vast mineral deposits.

“It’s a question of getting people to go in there and take the sovereign risk,” he says.

Mr Fitzpatrick’s newest role is likely to lift his public profile. One month ago he was formally appointed chair of the Waste Authority.

“It needs clear direction and it needs strong leadership,” he says.

Mr Fitzpatrick will be the authority’s fourth chair in 18 months, and is keen to make a difference by applying the same sort of advice he provides as a business mentor.

“It’s an enormous challenge to try and turn things in a useful direction,” he says.

“We are talking about resource recovery; we should not be throwing stuff in landfill if it can be used again. This planet can’t support 6.5 billion people at our standard of living, and we’re throwing stuff away that is valuable.”