The Nature of Business

Any real and lasting shift in our business and wider socio-economic system is predicated upon a shift in mindset. As the much-admired award-winning former Chairman and CEO of Interface, Ray Anderson explained,

‘We have been, and still are, in the grips of a flawed view of reality – a flawed paradigm, a flawed worldview – and it pervades our culture putting us on a biological collision course with collapse.’

Our worldview affects how we perceive life and our sense of place and purpose within it.  Without a new understanding of reality, and the shift in consciousness this demands, we continue on a collision course with collapse. The time has come to get radical and deal with the root problem, a flawed view of reality.

Worldview Shift

We are living through the very moment that a four-hundred-year-old worldview is dying, and another is struggling to be born. This evolutionary breakdown-breakthrough ushers in a wholesale reconfiguration of commercial life, a new world of work, and a reinvention of the organization.  What’s the emerging future of this transformative time we are in? No one yet knows. Yet, we can see what’s dying – the old worldview of Mechanistic Materialism with its mechine logic – and what’s birthing – the new worldview of Quantum Complexity with its living-systems logic. 

An important aspect of cultivating a regenerative mindset is comprehending the wider context within which a challenge is situated.  So let’s explore the historic context of the dying Mechanistic Materialism and birthing Quantum Complexity.

A Canter Through Western Worldview Shifts

Spanning from around 100,000 years ago to around 10,000 years ago (8000 BC) evidence points to Homo sapiens living in deep communion with nature. The cultural norm in these aboriginal cultures was to uphold a deep sense of reverence for all life. Nature was perceived as sentient and sacred, with every living-being forming part of a greater whole.  Humans worked in harmony with the rhythms innate within nature.  Let’s call this worldview Animism.

For the animist, the spiritual energies encountered in the depths of the psyche were also working in the depths of nature. The ‘outer’ world of nature was an opening into the ‘inner’ world of psyche and soul. The boundary between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ was more permeable than experienced now, and there was an essential unity between humanity and nature.  The human soul participated in a psychic world common to all. By bringing one’s consciousness into harmonious relationship with deep archetypal patterns and forces innate within nature and psyche one achieved a sense of self-integration and true-nature/dharma.

For Animism, life is full of subtle energies active behind the scenes. Everything is perceived as made up of energy/spirit. This energy/spirit is conscious, and therefore everything is conscious; everything is part of a living, interconnected web of energy. Right-relation is found through practices that bring a deep empathy with, and reverence for, all things. Shamanic rituals, dance, drumming, journeying, vision quests and such like, help keep the ego-psyche open and permeable with these subtle energies for right livelihood. Nature is experienced as not simply ‘out there’, perceptible only to the senses, instead contains an inner soul-life that enacts eternal myths and archetypal narratives through natural processes and events amid everyday life-experiences.

Then in Europe, around 10,000 years ago there was a shift in climate and a shift in society, beginning what anthropologist Steve Taylor refers to as the Ego Explosion. Our sense of self-identity shifted from seeing ourselves as part of nature to a sense of separateness rising in the human psyche. This rise of ego-consciousness brought increasing self-agency and self-empowerment, along with a significant shift in how we operated and organized. With it, Animism in Europe gave way to the Neolithic and Agricultural Revolutions, the rise of Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Empire, Christendom, then the Middle Ages of Medieval Europe.  Let’s call this worldview, with its heightening ego-consciousness and increasing prioritisation of rational intellect over intuitive empathic connection, Greco-Medieval.

One of the key formative minds of the Greco-Medieval worldview was Aristotle. Aristotle’s ‘eudaimonia’ – wellbeing & happiness – is cultivated by connecting with one’s inner light (soul). Soul virtues such as ‘synesis’ (right-understanding, inner conscience, insight), ‘sophia’ (intuitive spirit-wisdom), and ‘phronesis’ (practical wisdom, mindfulness, prudence) help cultivate our inner-nature to find harmony with outer-nature.  The human soul is a portal into the World Soul or ‘Mind of Nature’. Aligning inner-outer nature provides for right livelihood, a morality found not through ethical codes of conduct, religious commandments or shamanic rituals, but through an inner-sense of rightness. No longer was the human needing to consult the gods or oracles for decision-making, instead one becomes an autonomous decision-maker. This comes with a drawing away from the archetypal forces in nature, and a focusing on the human soul as moral compass.

Aristotle’s ‘eudaimonia’ recognises the human soul as a portal into the spirit-realm innate within nature, yet puts the human soul at the centre of things. So, let’s call this Greco-Medieval mindset ‘humanist-animist’ as it recognises the importance of attuning inner-outer nature for wellbeing and right-livelihood (animism), yet prioritises human agency (humanism). 

Add to this the rising dominance of Christendom in the Middle Ages, and we see a further separating of the human psyche from nature. With it, the last vestiges of animism are banished from the Western worldview.

To be clear, this is not because the Christian teachings of Jesus encourage a sense of separation from nature, as his original teachings clearly emphasise the sacredness of all life. Nor because Christianity as a belief-system is anthropocentric, as many Christians throughout the ages deeply sense the sacredness innate in nature (John the Scot and Francis of Assisi being two well-known medieval examples), and many practicing Christians today would resonate with Aristotle’s ‘humanist-animist’ approach. Instead, it’s because a form of Christian fanaticism rose during the Middle Ages. As with many organised belief-systems at scale, power-control tendencies started to dominate the Church infrastructure. A quest for supreme control, rather than living the values of Jesus’s original teachings seemed to take hold. Inner-connection to the divine soul within us was deprioritised by the Church in favour of worshipping a transcendent God separate from nature and humanity. In a quest for total power, any vestiges of animism practiced amongst European communities were viewed as heretical and violently stamped out. The Crusades, Inquisitions and Witch Hunts burnt and tortured thousands upon thousands, and a previously harmonious relationship between Muslim, Christian and Jew was ruptured.  This prioritisation of worshipping a patriarchal transcendent God separate from nature and accessible only through the Church sowed the seeds of its own decline.

Enter another cultural shift hand-in-hand with a shift in climate around 400 years ago in Europe. The Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Industrial Revolution unfolded, all drawing upon an increasingly reductive and mechanistic perspective of life hand-in-hand with heightening ego-consciousness and separateness. ‘What gets measured gets done’ is the new maxim, and reductive objectified science becomes the new religion. Any archetypal immeasurable realm in nature is ignored as irrelevant or non-existent.  A split occurs between mind (spirit) and matter (energy). The dynamism of life, along with its emergent and evolutionary potential, is drained of sacredness. Nature is viewed as a collection of objects to be managed and controlled for human betterment. The evolution of life on Earth is seen as a process of selfish ascendency, separate species struggling for survival in a dog-eat-dog world devoid of meaning or purpose.  

This rise of Mechanistic Materialism takes over from the dying Greco-Medieval worldview, liberating us from the superstitious religious dogma of Medieval times, and yet substituting religious dogma for materialistic dogma. Any perspective of an animate consciousness or spirit-realm innate within nature is banished. Along with this banishment so too a deprioritization of receptive, intuitive and soulful ways of knowing, with the logical rational mind reining supreme.  The ‘humanist-animist’ approach of Greco-Medieval times morphs into a ‘humanist-materialist’ mindset. The human being is not just set apart from nature but from its own soul. It’s in the rational thinking mind that we find happiness ‘out there’ attained through the material ‘good life’ with ethics and morality found through adhering to rational-analytic moral codes mapped out by reason and science. This has come with all sorts of advancements we all enjoy today from the morality of human rights and liberalism to the technological advancements in modern medicine, transportation and digitization.  There is nothing inherently wrong with Mechanistic Materialism and yet it has had the effect of separating the human psyche from the sacredness of life and the insights of the soul. Without this sense of connection into the soul of inner-outer nature, all-too-easily we get consumed by the ego’s fickle wants and needs. Rather than a quest for harmony with life, or for wellbeing through right livelihood, the purpose of life orientates around satisfying material needs. Enter the rise of capitalist consumerism, egotism and individualism.  As Frankie Goes To Hollywood infamously notes – sex and horror become the new gods.   

It’s this ungrounding from reality that lies at the heart of our manifold social and environmental crises today. Trying to dealt with these challenging with the same level of consciousness that created them (Mechanistic Materialism) is futile, and wastes precious time, energy and resources. Enter the Age of Regeneration which draws upon a worldview of Quantum Complexity, the foundations of which have already been painstakingly laid by pioneers for us to build upon.

At the beginning of the 20th century, breakthrough scientific discoveries in physics were made by great minds such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Planck, and Walther Nernst, all of whom profoundly influenced our understanding of how the universe works—and with them Quantum Physics was born along with a scientific understanding of the innate interconnectedness of life, and the presence of an invisible realm – the Quantum Vacuum or Field.

By the mid-20th century more ground-breaking scientific discoveries started to unfold, this time across the fields of biology, chemistry, cybernetics, and social science, made by great minds such as Gregory Bateson, Ilya Prigogine, Donella Meadows and Fritjof Capra, profoundly influencing our understanding of how nature works—and with them Complexity Science was born along with a scientific understanding of the emergent and evolutionary nature of life. Add into the mix the pioneering findings in developmental psychology, analytical psychology, depth psychology, transpersonal psychology, ecological psychology, integral psychology and spiritual psychology made by the likes of Carl Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, Clare Graves, Susan Cook-Reuter, Robert Sardello and Ken Wilber, profoundly influencing our understanding of the human psyche and soul immersed in an invisible realm that informs all form.

This emerging worldview of Quantum Complexity echoes our animist past yet is inclusive of the experiences and wounds endured through our Journey of Separation (Greco-Medieval and Mechanistic-Materialism). The self-agency, autonomous decision-making and freedom from earlier superstition and religious dogma is not lost, nor are the immense technological advances in medicine, automation and digitization we all enjoy today. What the worldview of Quantum Complexity invites is a deepening relationship with inner-outer reality in order to once again find accord with the way life works for our own wellbeing and for the wellbeing of all life on Earth. It’s a Journey of Reconnection; a process of becoming more of who we truly are; a fulfilment of our natural potential; a realization of Aristotle’s ‘eudaimonia’ by connecting with one’s inner light (soul); a re-animation of nature; a new understanding of and relationship with the subtle energies active behind the scenes of everyday life. 

We may call this regenerative capacity ‘systemic awareness’ which requires a deepening of ‘self-awareness’. 

We can’t just activate this next-stage consciousness with a flick of a switch, we must endure a journey of transformation that involves deep psychological renewal – a process of dying and being reborn, a threshold-crossing into a deeper state of being that morphs how we relate with our own selves, each other and the world around us.  My latest book Leading by Nature provides tools and practices to add this death-rebirth threshold-crossing. For instance, we can activate our super-nature by integrating our natural intelligences – intuitive, rational, emotional and somatic – and tap into the Mind of Nature where Nature’s Wisdom resides.

Quantum Complexity and the Mind of Nature

The mechanistic attempt to separate humans from nature is at the heart of our problems today.

Whether we like it or not, the reality is we humans are immersed in nature both physiologically and psychologically. 

Physiologically, over 90% of the cells in our bodies are not even human. Without the help of these non-human cells we would utterly fail at life. Without nature’s air we breathe, food we eat, and ingredients we use for clothing, housing, medicine and transportation, we’d be nothing.

Psychologically, over 90% of our human history has seen us spiritually connected within nature. Mounting scientific evidence shows how our psychological sense of separateness from nature is undermining our capacity to become more fully human. In re-establishing a deeper sense of connection within nature, evidence shows that humans not only enhance their creativity, compassion, concentration and collaborative capacity, they more readily tap-in to a deeper sense of meaning, purpose and wisdom.  The inner-psyche and outer-activity of our being-in-the-world attunes more readily and we overcome egotism, hyper-competition, fear, anxiety and othering (projecting a sense of in-crowd/out-crowd on to an ‘other’).

Mechanistic Materialism assumes that human-beings have minds that are totally separate from nature.  What Quantum Complexity research into consciousness shows is that mind pervades nature, and our individual minds have the capacity to create a sense of separateness through the ego – which is an important aspect of the psyche that enables us to function as autonomous individuals. This self-reflexive capacity of the ego is a tool we have as human-beings that enables us to gain perspective, focus in or pull ourselves out of the flow of life.

If we start to get too caught up in our own egos – egotism – then we forget who we truly are, and start to believe that we really are separate from nature. As Einstein knew, this creates a devastating delusion that cripples our humanity and starves our soul. It’s this sense of separateness that causes us to act in ways that are out-of-kilter with life on Earth.

A vital step on the journey toward becoming regenerative is in being able to recognise that we are not separate psyches bouncing around in a world of separateness, but rather we have egos to aid our self-agency and self-reflexivity so that we can learn and evolve, in order to work with the deeper rhythms and song-lines innate within the human soul and World Soul (aka Mind of Nature).

In his pioneering work on Holism & Evolution, Jan Christian Smuts emphasises how the individual mind attunes and reverberates with Universal Mind (aka Mind of Nature) – the systemic, social, ecological and universal relationality from which our individuality springs. The individual mind learns to open into the Mind of Nature and cultivates the capacity for ‘psychical sensing or intellectual intuition – a holistic sense of relating’ according to Smuts.  The psychoanalyst Carl Jung shared a similar perspective with his Pleroma or ‘collective unconscious’ (aka Mind of Nature) within which our individual mind is immersed, never separate from. Through a process of ‘individuation’ the individual can develop the capacity to become a truer version of oneself in finding accord with the Mind of Nature. Bateson too explored the Mind of Nature and the importance of inner-outer coherence, along with many other notable pioneers such as Whitehead, James and Bergeson acknowledging the importance of attuning with an animating force innate within life.

How Does Inner-Outer Nature Connection Inform Leadership & Organizational Development (L&OD) for Future-fit Business?

Adult developmental psychology studies indicate that leaders able to sense and work with the emergent and evolutionary dynamics of life are better equipped to lead 21^st century future-fit organizations. Take developmental psychologist Clare Graves who painstakingly researched levels of consciousness across thousands of adults. What he called Tier 2 consciousness (the next stage of consciousness he witnessed emerging in adults across business and society) is hallmarked by the capacity to sense the systemic inter-relational nature of emergence in both natural and human systems. “Know how nature functions and you know how to behave [in Tier 2],” said Graves.

This gives way to the rising trend to learn from nature. Yet, even when seeking to learn from nature, we all too often get caught up in Mechanistic Materialism, which seeks to compartmentalize, categorize, and rationalize. We bring the same mechanistic lens to our biological explorations that desensitized us to nature’s relationality. While a reductive scientific understanding of nature along with a systematic set of nature’s principles is indeed useful (and certainly something we can draw-upon to inform the new L&OD logic), the challenge and the opportunity lie in shifting our consciousness into a more holistic attentiveness to the nature of life all around and within us. This endeavor is as fresh as it is ancient.

Chinese sages perceived the manifest phenomena of nature as conveying deep insights about how change unfolds in life. It is not the forms, functions, and designs of nature but the underlying rhythms of transformation which precede the forms that provide insightful wisdom. My nature-inspired coaching work draws upon the numerous wisdom traditions that understand the importance of the underlying wisdom innate in life—Ayurveda, Buddhism, Shintoism, Daoism, Confucianism and Sufism from the East, Alchemy and Hermeticism from the West, and Tantric and Shamanic traditions found the world-over.  This underlying wisdom of life is what I refer to as Nature’s Wisdom.

Nature’s Wisdom

The ability for our sophisticated, digitized, yet stressed-out organizations to attune with Nature’s Wisdom is the next frontier. It means aligning with life itself, nothing more nothing less. All of life—including human society, the organization, and the leader—is immersed in an ever-changing rhythmic and relational dance. When off kilter with the rhythms of this dance, chaos and fragility ensue; when in-tune, all parts find flow and the capacity to flourish. It’s the same for life within the organization as it is for life beyond the organization. Those organizations and leaders who learn to attune with the rhythms and ways of nature are the ones most able to adapt to change. 

Through many collaborative initiatives and my own practitioner-based fieldwork, I have spent more than a decade exploring nature’s principles as applied to organizational development. What I offer in my latest book Leading by Nature goes deeper than such principles. It’s a universal substratum underpinning how nature and human nature operates. It’s Nature’s Wisdom. We can live in accord with this wisdom through certain practices of learning how to sense and work with life’s subtle ways. It’s a learning journey that involves becoming more intimate with our own true nature (self-awareness) and with the relational behaviors and characteristics of the living-organization (systemic-awareness).

Let’s take a look at three aspects of Nature’s Wisdom:

• Life is ever-changing: Change is happening everywhere all the time. In everything there is both stillness and movement. Movement is pervaded by stillness. Stillness gives rise to movement. The evolution of life spawns from this movement arising from stillness. This dance of life follows the pulsating rhythm of arising and expressing and doing (yang) and falling away and reflecting and being (yin).

• Life is full of tensions: Tension creates the crucible for creativity. There is tension between the yang and yin, which is what impels nature’s creative advance. Sometimes there is a little more yang, sometimes more yin. This yin-yang tension creates opportunities for synergy and “dinergy.” Synergy is where two or more inputs come together and form something new through their tension of complimentary difference. Dinergy is where seemingly opposing perspectives, such as a clash of views, may feel uncomfortable yet if worked through something new can emerge beyond the initial perspectives. Learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortableness these tensions give rise to is an important leadership skill to acquire.

• Life is relational and interconnected: Infusing all life is a universal field of consciousness that informs and interconnects everything. Scientists call it the Quantum Vacuum or Field. Each manifest aspect of nature, along with ourselves and our organizational systems, is distinct in its own right—holding its own boundaries, essence, and purposefulness—yet all are immersed in this Field.  Nothing is separate; everything inter-relates in varying degrees. The leadership team is nested within the organizational system, which is nested within its wider stakeholder ecosystem, which is nested within societal and ecological systems. All living systems, including human ones, thrive through reciprocity and give rise to systemic dynamics—pulsations, ripples, repercussions, flows, and potentialities.

While we might be able to intellectually comprehend these aspects, Nature’s Wisdom is revealed only through embodied experience. Future-fit leaders can cultivate this embodied capacity by embarking upon a transformational journey. I’ve honed a coaching-based practice that guides senior leaders, leadership teams, OD and change catalysts, and organizational cultures through advanced developmental learning journeys.  These journeys—whether taken in-person or virtually—are immersive in that they invite leaders to learn-through-practice by going inward into themselves and also into the inner hidden dynamics of the organizational system and wider stakeholder ecosystem in which they operate. These journeys are the lived experience of Leading by Nature.

“Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.” – Lao Tzu

The Journey of Separation & Reconnection Through the Lens of L&OD

As we have explored, the Journey of Separation out of Animism into Mechanistic Materialism bears witness to a rising separation of inner and outer both within ourselves (self-awareness) and outside ourselves in how we attend to life and its living systems (systemic-awareness). The inner-soul dimension of nature and the inner-soul dimension of the psyche become deprioritized with the rise of reductive science’s objectivizing focus on outer measurables and tangibility. Outer-doing trumps inner-being.  This affects not just our leadership consciousness but also how we perceive and attend to the organization. Rather than attending to the organization as a complex system full of human processes of relating, we start to compartmentalize and silo it into utilitarian functions and apply a machine mentality to maximized efficiency and effectiveness through outer-doing.  There is nothing wrong with this focus on the outer, and we need it to get-the-job-done. Yet the deprioritization of the inner impoverishes both the individual (self-awareness) and the living-organization (systemic-awareness) leading to a plethora of problems in our organizations today that end up in the very ineffectiveness the machine-mindset is trying to avoid (unproductive talking-head back-to-back meetings, people bringing only fragments of themselves to work, cultures of mistrust and fear, sapping of creativity and meaning, inauthentic brands, unsustainable behaviour, mental health and wellbeing issues, loss of talent, etc.).

An essential starting point on the regenerative leadership journey is beginning to sense the organization-as-a-living-system with inner dynamics (soul/essence, evolutionary purposefulness, developmental growth challenges; what I call ‘cultivating a DEE Culture – Developmental, Emergent, Evolutionary’ explored at length in Leading by Nature). This shift in awareness also entails a recognition that the ‘outer’ nature of the organization (its value propositions, stakeholder relationships and brand) is fully enlivened and authentic when in accord with the ’inner’ nature of the organization (its culture, values, essence and ways of relating). 

One of the products of Mechanistic Materialism has been the organization-as-machine sweating assets for short-term returns, often because of a pressure from lenders and shareholders for consistent upward quarterly returns regardless of the growth stages and contextual changes the organization experiences as it matures.

The outer-nature is projected in the most favourable ‘achiever’ way as possible, and the inner-nature is managed and controlled in what is perceived as the most ‘efficient’ way as possible.  Authenticity and alignment between inner and outer nature is not seen as a business priority within this narrowed machine view. Yet authenticity undoubtedly aids the future-fitness of the organization for a whole host of reasons – attracting and retaining talent, agile decision-making, unlocking brilliance and creativity across the business, improving customer retention, enhancing brand value, etc..

As well as a split between the inner (culture) and outer (brand) of the organization, Mechanistic Materialism has also encouraged a split within the inner and outer nature of the individual – inner-being has become impoverished at the expense of a relentless achiever-focus on outer-doing.

The task for ‘regenerative L&OD’ is to help the attunement of the inner-outer nature of the organisation/system and the inner-outer nature of the leader/self.  Its this integration of inner-outer nature within the individual and the organization that allows for regenerative business to find accord with Nature’s Wisdom and truly thrive amid the volatile times ahead while delivering life-affirming offerings that help humanity toward regeneration.

To orientate ourselves within any living-system, ecosystem, neighbourhood and society, we need to open into the inner-dimension of the system that informs its outer forms. Without this reorientation we are but lost in the labyrinth of Mechanistic Materialism.  Unfortunately, many well-intended endeavours in the climate change and CSR movement today are machinations of Mechanistic Materialism, further estranging inner and outer nature, while distracting essential energy from where its most needed.  Without attention being given to a regenerative mindset for leaders and organizations, we shall continue to lose ourselves in illusions of separateness.

Inner-nature and outer-nature are inextricably entwined. There is no separation. Everything evolves through continuous sensing-responding and energetic exchanges within the relational environment of everyday life.  Science now knows this and has proven it not just in the quantum and cosmological but also amid the complex systems of our organizations and neighbourhoods.

Through deepening our sensitivity to Nature’s Wisdom we allow our consciousness to become regenerative, and we heal the separateness within the human psyche and its division with nature. This Journey of Reconnection is not a return to ancient times, rather it draws upon the ego individuation and autonomy gained through the Journey of Separation in cultivating a more holistic consciousness that once again senses the inner-outer depths of nature and psyche within and all around us. 

Adult developmental psychology research shows us that as we go through deeper stages of meaning-making in our lives the ego simultaneously maturates and permeates. In other words, we do not need to dissolve our sense of self but rather deepen our sense of who we truly are, and in-so-doing our ego becomes more receptive and open to life; our way of experiencing life becomes less defended, judgmental, fearful and change-averse. We become more able to adapt to change, relate to different people and different situations with ease, and tap into the wisdom that each unfolding experience of life affords us.

This ego maturation and permeation does not subsume us in a grey miasma of uniformity, conformity and collectivism; rather, it allowing us to work with the grand symphony of existence while staying true to our unique tune. We celebrate individuation within harmonization as we reconnect back into real life.

Death/Rebirth Metamorphosis

To truly shift our consciousness a death/rebirth process is to be endured, whereupon psychic fragmentation and reintegration deepens our communion with the spiritual source of the human soul and World Soul.

This process of psychological death, dismemberment, reconstitution and rebirth is central to all the initiatory myths throughout the ages. It’s this process of death/rebirth that society is undergoing now, with all the uncertainty, frustration, anxiety, fragmentation, polarization and fear it can invoke.   The more conscious we become of this process the more we can work with the archetypal forces innate in inner-outer nature, and the more regenerative we become.  Afterall, ‘to regenerate’ is to die and be reborn while finding deeper accord with inner-outer nature.  This is the task of our time.

As the French writer Antoine Saint de’Expury once noted,

‘If you want to build a ship, don’t assign people tasks and get them to chop wood. Instead teach them to long for the immensity of the sea.’

The immensity of the sea is all around and within us – Nature’s Wisdom – a real and potent presence in our lives. Too often we get caught up in fixing things out there and forget what needs fixing first is in here. In attending to the inner-dimension within and all around us, we begin to see with new eyes a world that has always been and always will be sacred, sentient and sensitive to our true nature.  What we need now more than anything is to reconnect with the rapture of reality and remind ourselves of the magnificence of this existence. Then, the building of the ship becomes a labour of love, filled with passion and enthusiasm, and we cocreate futures that cultivate our true nature.

See here a one-off one-day regenerative leadership immersion for those who wish to gain an embodied experience of regenerative consciousness amid ancient woodlands – we are nearly full, so if of interest please apply soon.

Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK.  Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, and trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development as well as other modalities.

“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for conscious leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’   Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK

“A truly exceptional and timely book that redefines the locus of power in relationship to leadership; leadership that seeks harmony and alignment with nature.    Giles reminds us to bring awareness/presence to everything that unfolds.    This book is the teacher we all need.” Sue Cheshire, Founder and former CEO of The Global Leaders Academy

“Leading by Nature gets to the heart of the shift in leadership that is now required to create a sustainable future for humanity.”  – Richard Barrett, Director of the Barrett Academy for the Advancement of Human Values.

“This book is a must-read for those involved in the future of business.  I can’t recommend Giles’s work highly enough.” – Norman Wolfe, CEO of Quantum Leaders and author of The Living Organization: Transforming Business To Create Extraordinary Results

“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book that will inspire all those whose role it is to champion resilience and adaptability, ethical commercial development, wellbeing in the workplace and the nurturing of a moral compass.” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project

Feel free to connect with the LinkedIn Group Leadership Immersions here

See here a one-off one-day regenerative leadership immersion for those who wish to gain an embodied experience of regenerative consciousness amid ancient woodlands – we are nearly full, so if of interest please apply soon.