Aligning Business with Nature for Future-fitness
Here I’d like to bring two worlds together that rarely sit well together and yet can – and must – if we are to face into our future humanity.
The world of business – with its tools & technologies, needs & desires.
And the world of nature.
What possibly could the world of nature with its sand, seas and soils, muddy footprints, forests and fungi bring to the world of business?
Rather a lot as it happens, and it might just be what saves us from our precarious predicament.
Because today it’s not just one or two black swans over the horizon with disparate catastrophic events, it’s a whole flock of black swans unleashing interlocking crises that feed-off each other.
The term ‘permacrisis’ has recently entered the business lexicon to describe a long period ahead of rising catastrophic disruption, a new-norm of unceasing transformation, with a maelstrom of motives contributing to this sea-change.
Organizations best able to adapt and evolve amid unceasing transformation will be tomorrow’s success stories. Those resistant to change will be yesterday’s news. Adapt or die is the hard reality. And its nature that provides the masterkey for future-fitness amid this rising complexity.
The famous systems scientist, Gregory Bateson, put his figure right on it when identifying that the world’s problems stem from the gap between the way people think and how nature works.
“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.” Gregory Bateson
My work over the last thirty years as Senior Adviser, Management Consultant and Executive Coach to hundreds of leaders and organizations throughout the world explores how to close that gap between how leaders tend to think in machine-mentality with how nature works in a living-systems relational way.
Nature Works, and it does work for atleast two good reasons for ourselves as leaders and change agents:
First, all around us is a treasure-trove of what works amid continual change and upheaval; 3.8bn years’ worth of R&D at our figure-tips if we so choose to see.
Secondly, the very act of going into nature is scientifically proven to shift us physiologically and psychologically, enabling us to embrace change and cultivate future-fitness.
“Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.” Lao Tzu
Over the last fifteen years I’ve taken hundreds of leaders and their teams into nature on what I call Leadership Immersions; specifically designed to catalyze the shift from machine-mentality into the way nature works – which I call ‘Nature’s Wisdom’, as its not just outer forms, patterns or principles we can learn from nature but also ways of relating, knowing and perceiving.
Here, I’d like to share three aspects of Nature’s Wisdom with you, that when embodied enable future-fitness for the leader and organization. Then, the permacrisis becomes more of a ‘metacrisis’, as in ‘moving beyond’ the hunkering-down, crisis management of machine-mentality that at best only copes amid complexity, into learning how to thrive amid rising complexity. Because as we move beyond the very limitations of today’s worldview of machine-mentality, we realise that the numerous global crises we face – from environmental to social, and from political to psychological – are indeed interrelated, and find their root cause in the machine-mentality tyrannizing over our ways of leading and operating in business and beyond. Hence, the ‘metacrisis’ might just provide our wake-up from this machine-mentality and, therefore, provide a profound pivotal moment for humanity. This unfolding crisis of crises may not be sowing the seeds of our own suicidal demise but rather sowing the seeds of our necessary evolution into a new dawn – a new way where business wakes up to the way nature works.
These three aspects of Nature’s Wisdom are: (for a more comprehensive exploration into these aspects see Leading by Nature).
- Life is ever-changing
- Life is full of tensions
- Life is relational & interconnected
So, let’s dive into the first.
Life is ever-changing: all the time amid every moment life is a seething excitation of change upon change, nothing stays the same everything is continually renewing and adapting amid constant flow. If this unceasing change ceased but for an instant, life would instantly die.
Let’s take a cell in our bodies, say one within the finger in our hand, for instance. Within each cell there are millions of maneuvers happening every second. The genes are not static blueprints or codes, but more like open-source libraries continually exchanging through these millions of maneuvers, from electromagnetic fluctuations to chemical changes and more.
The cell also has millions more maneuvers through its membrane sensing and responding to the changing outer environment every second. A continual co-creative dance of inner-outer, a heaving churning of change. The cell is not reacting to outer-change in the environment, instead there’s a continual interpenetration of inner and outer maneuvering. The cell and the environment change together in participatory dance with each other.
Let’s say we cut our finger. All sorts of miraculous adaptations unfold. New corpuscles and capillaries being formed as well as skin being regenerated, all through locally-attuned sensing-responding. There is no top-down hierarchic control-managing here, the brain is not even involved. Everything is happening locally. This sensing-responding locally-attuning is the very nature of life.
It’s the same for our organizations: people closest to changing customer requirements and market fluctuations need to be empowered to sense-respond at the local level. Top-down hierarchic bureaucracy is at best cumbersome, but also disempowers and saps away at the ability of the organizational system to adapt to change.
So we need to shift the leadership dynamic from top-down control-managing to locally-attuning sense-responding. In adult developmental lingo this is described as a shift from parent-child to adult-adult. Rather than the leader needing to know everything, to command, cope and struggle amid change, there’s a networked capacity to embrace change. Just like the forest or human body so too the organization.
And this is where the second aspect of Nature’s Wisdom comes in:
Life is full of tensions – Tensions the crucibles for creativity, the very life-blood that fuels adaptation and emergence. The machine-mind finds tension uncomfortable and seeks to close the tension as quickly as possible, whereas the sense-respond living-systems mindset learns to play with tensions. The phrase I share with my coaching clients is ‘learning to become comfortable with the uncomfortable’. To begin to realize that the conflict, adversity and challenge that the tension provides is the very fuel for emergence.
Emergence is the way life adapts to change. It’s nature’s creative advance. The unfolding flowing of life. For the organization to become future-fit amid rising complexity it needs to become emergent. Hence, emergence is fast becoming the Holy Grail in Leadership & Organizational Development (L&OD) circles these days, as organizational emergence enables future-fitness.
But when applying approaches like agile, lean or self-managing ways of working we often overlook that tensions lie at the heart of emergence. So its important for leaders and their teams across the entire organization to learn to embrace tensions, and become comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Think of emergence as a flowing river. The two opposite banks of the river are divergence and convergence. The tension of divergence (opening up) and convergence (bringing together) is what allows for emergence. Without the two banks in-tension together, the river loses its flow-force and directionality.
This tension of divergence/expansion and convergence/contraction is everywhere in life. The heart-beat expanding-contracting, our breathing in and out, high tide and low tide, the day and night, summer and winter. Everywhere this pulsation spawns life. Close the tension and life becomes lifeless, the organization becomes flaccid and fragile, and the leader passive-aggressive and stuck.
Dee Hock knew this importance as Founder, CEO & Chairman of one of the most successful and profitable organizations the world has ever seen – VISA. Hock credits this success due to the insights he gleaned from nature and this tension of divergence-convergence in what he calls the ‘chaordic zone’ the sweet spot of chaos (divergence) and order (convergence). Cultivating this chaordic zone in our teams and organizations enables future-fitness.
We cultivate divergence in our organizations by encouraging people to work across silos. We might still wish to maintain a hierarchy with functional silos yet encourage people to work across silos with cross-functional agile teams to connect people across the system. We bring in diversity of thought and perspective. Also, we can encourage diversity of age, creed, culture, gender and perceptual horizon by bringing different people from within the organization and also beyond the organization across the stakeholder ecosystem through activities like hackathons, swarms, future-search workshops, world cafes, stakeholder dialogue sessions and so forth. All of this unleashes the power of tensions; enlivening the river-flow of emergence.
Too much divergence and we get chaos, so we need to balance it with convergence – role & responsibility, rituals, values, clear sense of purpose, decision making protocols, tech platforms, defined processes, performance metrics, and such like. Too much convergence (which the machine-mindset just loves with its fetish for control, order and clarity) then we end up with rigidity, and Nassim Taleb’s ‘organizational fragility’ – the inability to cope amid fast-moving change.
When we work with tensions of difference and find the right chaordic sweet-spot of divergence-convergence we cultivate emergence. We get Nassim Taleb’s ‘anti-fragile organizations’, one’s that start to thrive amid change, and where tensions are held with the right level of psychological safety and developmental challenge to unleash organizational learning. This requires regularly moving out of the comfort zone through the fear zone into the learning zone and growth zone.
This brings us to the third aspect: Life is relational and interconnected.
As we start to shift out of the control-manage machine-mentality we start to realise that the organization is not a machine at all but a complex adaptive system that is full of messy unpredictable human relationships, like the chat next to the coffee machine, down the corridor, in the corporate boardroom, the informal power-plays and hidden leader networks, what’s said, what’s not said, all contribute to stifling or enlivening the vitality of the living-organization.
Often the CEOs I coach change their title from Chief Executive Officer to Chief Ecosystem Officer when they begin to realize that their job is one of sensing-responding across the whole system, with its inner-nature (the culture and people) and its outer-nature (the value propositions and stakeholder ecosystem). This sensing-responding requires letting go of the burdensome bureaucratic control-manage tendencies in order to free-up energy to truly sense what’s going on across the business and reawaken entrepreneurial creativity by sensing systemic possibility.
When leaders awaken to the organization-as-living-system and realise its innate relationality, they can start to work with ‘organizational acupuncture’ – small pin-prick interventions that cost nothing yet release stuckness and allow flow right where it matters.
Gone are the days of expensive heavy-handed top-down change management programmes that take too long. Instead, we activate the potential of everyone to sense-respond with continual feedback processes that aid developmental learning while unlocking people’s potential to thrive amid fast-paced change. This inside-out adaptation works with the relational nature of the living-organization rather than imposing and disempowering from up on high. And it liberates the CEO from a constrained constricted control-manage tendency into a sense-respond dynamic enabling the leader, team and organization to flow and thrive amid change rather than struggle and react against change.
Back to the cells in our bodies to illustrate this inherent relationality in life. Each cell with its millions of inner and outer manoeuvres is working in a seething ever-changing bodymind of around 37.2 trillion cells, of which about 70-90% are not even human. One might reflect for a moment that around 10,000 species of life live in us. It’s a real collab, as without the help of these nonhuman species we’d utterly fail at life.
When I take leaders on nature immersions, I often pick up a handful of soil and share how in just this small handful there are more living-beings working together than there are human beings on the entire planet. Its not just our human bodies but all of nature that’s a constant collab. It’s the same for our organizations and business ecosystems.
Being in nature doesn’t just inspire us at the head level, it helps us shift at the head-and-heart level, with simple yet powerful practices throughout the immersion we activate a state of flow inside us, an active-related awareness where the high-beta brain-waves of the machine-mentality’s need to control and compartmentalise start to ease into alpha waves, aligning with the very frequencies of nature and the Earth, our home. With this bodymind alignment, we allow the left and right hemisphere, dorsal and ventral attention networks, and sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to start to cohere together. This aids our natural capacity to sense-respond to life’s relationality and enhances our self-awareness and systemic-awareness while attuning with the way nature works. We bring in a different quality of consciousness to ways of leading beyond the very machine-mindset that created our crisis of crises in the first place.
In these leadership immersions, we can start to sense the presence of what brilliant first-rate scientists like Einstein, Bohr, Bohm, Schrodinger and other Nobel Laureates found decades ago, an all-pervasive Field, which has long been known throughout the world’s wisdom traditions by various names like the Tao, the Way of Nature, Akasha, Source. This Field has a very real and potent presence in our lives and also in our organizations, greatly informing our self-awareness and systemic-awareness, and deepening capacity to thrive amid rising complexity. Simple yet powerful practices like sitting in circle around the campfire with a talking-stick, deep listening, dialogue, giving and receiving feedback, cultivating coaching conversations and moments of silent reflection, work wonders for allowing corporate protection rackets and machine-mindset machinations to ease and our authenticity and presence to emerge. Afterall, let’s not forget that the single biggest inefficiency in our organizations today is – according to Harvard Business School research – the fact that much of the time at work we are doing two jobs. One job we’re being paid to do and the other job we’re not being paid to do yet spending much of our time and energy on: that of managing other’s impressions of ourselves, propping up masks, holding-back on our authenticity, playing small and getting caught up in our own judgements, cynicisms and fears. This is what saps the vitality of the living-organization like nothing else. Sorting this human authenticity out unleashes far more adaptability and creativity than any tech-app or AI tool can ever solve.
With these three aspects of Nature’s Wisdom embodied into our leadership we lead ourselves and our organizational living-systems through the upcoming permacrisis toward future-fitness. With our own conscious shift, the permacrisis morphs into a metacrisis that wakes us up from our machine-machinations, digitized distractions, tic-tok titillations and infatuations with artificial intelligence which would struggle to come anywhere close to replicating the sophistication of just one leaf, blade of grass, or crumb of soil. Its high time we started to remember the awesomeness of how life really is. Then, we begin to live up to our name as Homo Sapiens – beings who work with wisdom – amid this deeply wise, sentient and interconnected world. Bring on the metacrisis and let’s start to thrive by working with nature rather than struggling against Her.
The crisis facing our humanity is fundamentally a crisis of consciousness. Are you ready to unfurl into what it really means to be regenerative/life-affirming?
This is why I have written my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness, to help us embody the wisdom of life amid these challenging times, so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
Book reviews for NATURE WORKS:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
To sign-up for a special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 13th February 2025, see here for more details.
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder – talking CAT consulting
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://gileshutchins.com/springwood/
About Giles Hutchins –Thirty years of professional advisory & leadership experience, formerly Director of Business Transformation & Head of Practice with KPMG, and Global Director of Sustainability Solutions for multinational Atos (150,000 employees across 42 countries), last 12 yrs as Executive Coach, thought leader and advisor on future-fit leadership. Author of six critically acclaimed leadership books and several leadership papers. His coaching work has been called ‘life changing’. Clients include Unilever, P&G, Deloitte, McKinsey, AXA, McCain, Vivobarefoot, Ella’s Kitchen, Pukka Herbs, PwC, Coop, Budgens, Sainsbury, B Lab, Fairtrade, Rabobank, Impact International, World Benchmarking Alliance, Aviva, BBC, BP, Angel Investments, BNP Paribas, Cap Gemini, Cambridge University, EQT, INSEAD, Hult Business School, HEC, IKEA and many more. Find out more about his coaching here https://gileshutchins.com/coaching/
His Leading by Nature podcast can be found at https://gileshutchins.com/podcast/ which interviews a selection of his coaching clients with a couple of coaching feedback provided here:
‘Having been ‘leadership development-ed’ up to my eyeballs in my corporate years, Giles Hutchins brings a unique mix of skills and techniques to coaching for these transformative times.’ Jayn Mayled, CEO, True Story
“Giles is like a lantern: he meets you where you’re at and illuminates the path ahead along side you. He brings an excellent blend of business acumen, emotional intelligence, and spiritual attunement. He works with your whole person, partners with you to help your natural abilities emergence and develop.’ Lisa Dittmar, Strategy Consultant, Deloitte
“Giles has been invaluable on my journey into better leadership and being a CEO who can connect better with himself/life and with others. His intuition and sensitivity to each individual’s unique situation is remarkable and comes with years of experience learning from both business and living-systems/nature. Anyone looking to develop their leadership for these challenging times would benefit from Giles’ wisdom.” Paul Hargreaves, Founder & CEO, Cotswold Fayre & Flourish
‘We moved more in our sessions with Giles than we did in years with others.’ Alastair Sawday, Chairman & Founder, Sawdays Travel
For more on coaching with Giles or to register for the one-day immersion, visit his website here.
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
The Coming Kingdom of Shambala: Are you Readying Your Warrior-Self for what Lies Ahead?
What lies ahead is unprecedented upheaval due to interlocking crises unfolding as we speak. As I have recently written about, this looming ‘permacrisis’ can be perceived as a ‘metacrisis’, a necessary ‘moving beyond’ the dominant yet dying status-quo machine-mentality, into a new way of working, relating, leading and operating in business and beyond. Without this necessary revolution in consciousness humanity as we know it is doomed.
There have been prophecies over the ages to provide prescient hope and insight for these catalytic times. For instance, in one of my earlier books co-authored with Laura Storm, Regenerative Leadership, we share the Hopi Prophecy which speaks of a supreme moment that’s no longer the Eleventh Hour but now IS the Hour, the time of our human reckoning where many will struggle amid a torrent of change and catastrophe, yet also when a new way will be born. Here’s a snippet:
“Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, ‘This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water… All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Another prophecy is of Tibetan tantric origin, handed down through the ages into Buddhist teachings and more recently conveyed by the contemporary Buddhist scholar and deep ecology systems activist Joanna Macey. I first came across this prophecy when readying myself for the challenging work of engaging business leaders in living-systems thinking some fifteen or more years ago. Back then, learning from living systems was an anathema for most in business, and my work felt like pushing water uphill. I’ve been recently reminded of this Tibetan prophecy through the work of the regenerative thinker and Founder of Seva Institute Ernesto van Peborgh, I am indebted to him for this wonderful reminder. Like the Hopi prophecy it fills me with hope and insight amid challenging times. Hence, I share this Tibetan legend – the ‘Shambhala Warrior Prophecy’ – here in the hope it also provides inspiration amid these darkening days.
Before we dive into the narrative – which draws mainly from Joanna Macey’s version coupled with my own edits – I invite you to intentionally prepare yourself, breathe-deep, relax and allow this mythos to speak directly to your soul – what Macey calls ‘your inner Boddhisatva’ – the soul-power within which knows that the times we’re in are asking for our courageous true nature to emerge, individually and collectively. For as the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell knew, “The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”
“There comes a time when all life on Earth is in grave danger. The great Barbarian forces have honed their weapons of war and exploitation that lay waste to the world. As these Barbarian powers reach their zenith, the very fabric of life on Earth will seem in jeopardy due to catastrophic crises looming large. At this Hour, the Kingdom of Shambala shall emerge.
This Kingdom is no physical place, but a place within the hearts and minds of the Shambala warriors who dare enter the citadels and corridors of power of the Barbarians in order to disarm and transmute their powers from the inside-out.
For the Shambala warriors know the Barbarian powers are weapons of the mind – hypnotic programmes that manipulate the minds of the body-politic and socio-economic network of leaders and citizens alike.
The Shambala warriors have two weapons of their own with which to dispel the Barbarian powers:
- The love of life: a deep compassion for everyone and everything that fuels the passion to act in fearless ways amid the immense strife, struggle and suffering unleashed by the Barbarians’ mind-maya.
- The wisdom of interconnectedness: a deep embodied knowing of the interconnectedness of all nature and human-nature, Earth and Cosmos. To see through the false polarisations of divisive judgemental separation, projection and fragmentation rife amid this Hour due to the Barbarians’ mind-maya. The deep knowing that there is immense wisdom in the relational interdependence of how life unfolds comes with a trust-in-life that fuels fearlessness.
The interplay of these two tools of compassion and wisdom are like the sword and shield for the Shambala warrior and are alive within each of those who dare cross the threshold from ego-fear into soul-courage. Through the enlivenment of compassion and wisdom amid these critical times of widespread disorientation, distraction, degeneration and desecration, the Shambala warrior can let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, and learn to dispel the barbaric forces at work in the citadels and corridors of power.”
Because in all truth, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And none but ourselves can free our minds.
‘Only the end of a cycle of manifestation makes possible the recapitulation of the whole cycle, and the creation of a synthesis which then serves as the seed for a new cycle.’ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Know the river has its destination, and the metacrisis has its revelation.
Allow the Regeneration Revolution to unfold through one’s passionate soul-craft by learning to flow as life flows amid these troubled times. As Mother Teresa knew, ‘We cannot do great things, only small things with great love.’ Then, one moment at a time, the ingrained tyranny of control-based mechanistic thinking full of fearful, egoic, polarizing, judgmental tendencies loses its lure over us. Soon enough we witness the arbiter of truth as life itself, full of our own presence and purposefulness with compassion and wisdom. Then the old will die and the new will spring forth: Omega is the archway upon which Alpha is framed.
This is why I have written my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness, to help us embody the wisdom of life amid these challenging times, so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
Book reviews for NATURE WORKS:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
To sign-up for a special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 13th February 2025, see here for more details.
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder – talking CAT consulting
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://gileshutchins.com/springwood/
About Giles Hutchins –Thirty years of professional advisory & leadership experience, formerly Director of Business Transformation & Head of Practice with KPMG, and Global Director of Sustainability Solutions for multinational Atos (150,000 employees across 42 countries), last 12 yrs as Executive Coach, thought leader and advisor on future-fit leadership. Author of six critically acclaimed leadership books and several leadership papers. His coaching work has been called ‘life changing’. Clients include Unilever, P&G, Deloitte, McKinsey, AXA, McCain, Vivobarefoot, Ella’s Kitchen, Pukka Herbs, PwC, Coop, Budgens, Sainsbury, B Lab, Fairtrade, Rabobank, Impact International, World Benchmarking Alliance, Aviva, BBC, BP, Angel Investments, BNP Paribas, Cap Gemini, Cambridge University, EQT, INSEAD, Hult Business School, HEC and many more. Find out more about his coaching here https://gileshutchins.com/coaching/
His Leading by Nature podcast can be found at https://gileshutchins.com/podcast/ which interviews a selection of his coaching clients with a couple of coaching feedback-quotes provided here:
‘Having been ‘leadership development-ed’ up to my eyeballs in my corporate years, Giles Hutchins brings a unique mix of skills and techniques to coaching for these transformative times.’ Jayn Mayled, CEO, True Story
“Giles is like a lantern: he meets you where you’re at and illuminates the path ahead along side you. He brings an excellent blend of business acumen, emotional intelligence, and spiritual attunement. He works with your whole person, partners with you to help your natural abilities emergence and develop.’ Lisa Dittmar, Strategy Consultant, Deloitte
“Giles has been invaluable on my journey into better leadership and being a CEO who can connect better with himself/life and with others. His intuition and sensitivity to each individual’s unique situation is remarkable and comes with years of experience learning from both business and living-systems/nature. Anyone looking to develop their leadership for these challenging times would benefit from Giles’ wisdom.”Paul Hargreaves, Founder & CEO, Cotswold Fayre & Flourish
‘We moved more in our sessions with Giles than we did in years with others.’ Alastair Sawday, Chairman & Founder, Sawdays Travel
For more on coaching with Giles or to register for the one-day immersion, visit his website here.
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
A Supreme Moment – The Time Has Come to Adapt or Die
What a time to be leader, change agent, systems catalyst or practitioner – so much change in the air, so much potential for challenge, risk, danger, stress, tension and opportunity. Change upon change upon change; even the nature of change seems to be changing, all amid rising complexity of epic proportions.
‘A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.’ Valentine, Arcadia
The term ‘polycrisis’ has recently found its way into common business parlance to describe the multifaceted and myriad crises coming together due to interdependent systems within systems all experiencing massive turbulence and potential tipping points. The sheer accumulation of today’s problems at global, regional and local levels is unprecedented.
This has led to another term entering the business lexicon – ‘permacrisis’ – and a world-leading business school recently claimed, ‘The world seems to be trapped in a permacrisis.’ This term conveys the continual lurching from one catastrophic event to the next and foresees ‘a long period of great difficulty, confusion and suffering that seems to have no end’ as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary.
Whatever the future is for this new-norm of interwoven crises, the general view is that this poly/permacrisis is characterised by a long period of instability, insecurity and continual catastrophic events. Forget the odd ‘black swan’ appearing over the horizon, now-a-days it’s a whole flock of them already in our midst unleashing severe and sudden events right here, right now: climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, wars, mass migrations, water scarcity, cyber-attacks, socially corrosive levels of inequality, refugee crises, mental health crises, nitrogen and phosphorus crises, accelerating biodiversity demise, collapse of insect pollination, rampant rainforest destruction, widespread waterway pollution, ocean acidification, only one of nine planetary boundaries deemed at a safe level, explosive human population, geopolitical volatility, personal and national debt crises, loss of trust in institutions, social contract erosion, and the list goes on.
We are waking up to the fact that these crises feed-off each other, with a perfect storm brewing in plain sight. What to do? Panic? Keep calm and carry on? Bury our head in the sand and watch Netflix? Hunker-down and mitigate as best we can before the storm unleashes? Or is something deeper beckoning beyond surface appearances?
While it’s clear that burying our head in the sand is not viable, I’ve begun to notice how alluring it’s becoming for many leaders and practitioners to start to succumb to a doom-laden and defeatist narrative that the poly/permacrisis is a done-deal leading us all the way to humanity’s inevitable demise. All we can hope for is, at best, to cope amid this rising torrent of tumultuous change, wrapping-up humanity’s hope into an ever-shrinking end game. All this mentality can do is mitigate and protect itself through coping mechanisms, and before we know it, we’ve created the very doom-laden reality we feared – a long period of great difficulty, confusion and suffering that seems to have no end.
I believe this narrative is itself a product of what created the poly/permacrisis in the first place.
The hope that our humanity ought breakout of such status quo small-mindedness is ours to play for. Perhaps that’s exactly what this crisis of crises is inviting us to dare do? To overcome control-manage ego-fears and step into something far more significant? To dare call upon a quality of human consciousness quite different from that which created the crises in the first place?
Through my own work of coaching, facilitating and guiding hundreds of business leaders, change agents and practitioners from all corners of the world, I know that far more is possible; that our human ingenuity, creative potential, hopefulness, courageous, passion and love of life does not need confining to mere ‘coping amid complexity’ instead let’s learn to ‘thriving amid complexity’. What lies ahead might just be what’s needed to breakdown the illusions and fallacies our current business mindset and societal worldview has become so inured in, so hopelessly dependent upon.
This supreme moment might just serve-up the revelatory insight for our hearts and minds to see beyond our current limitations and open into the Logic of Life.
Put simply, there is no viable way out of our present predicament other than to shift our leadership consciousness. Even if we limit our horizons to merely coping amid the exponentially rising complexity, a shift in consciousness is necessary in order to truly cope with the massiveness of its unfolding nature. And then, as we dare shift our consciousness, we realise that we no longer need limit ourselves to just coping when thriving amid complexity is well within our true nature.
As in the boiled frog syndrome, the bubbling hot water is cajoling us so much now, becoming so wobbly across so many systems, that the status quo is simply no longer able to hold it together. The boiling water (aka – the worldview of the collective psyche) is readying itself to shift from one state to the next, starting to froth amid the alchemic heat of a death-rebirth phase-change.
This shift in consciousness unfolding on our watch is simultaneously a shift at the individual psyche and collective psyche level. It’s not linear, nor clean-cut, its messy like boiling water, and can scold with blurts of pressured heat bursting up from the unconscious within our own selves (sometimes feeling like depression, anger, frustration, confusion, disorientation and nervous breakdown) and within the collective (fragmentation of incrowd/outcrowd, us versus them, extremism, rising polarisation and projection, mistrust, fear, anxiety, conflict, hatred and social breakdown). Its certainly not a bed of roses this business of shifting consciousness, yet an up-stretch beyond the boiling water, through a death-rebirth threshold and into a new way is not only possible its inherent within how life on Earth evolves through significant bifurcating crises.
The bifurcation ahead can be brutally simplified into the adage ‘adapt or die’: learn to adapt and evolve out of the dominant status quo business mindset or become yesterday’s news. And the inherent capacity to adapt or die is innate in our humanity irrespective of our leadership culture, creed, colour, tribe, sexual orientation, political affiliation, profession, financial wealth, education, personal history or identity label. Its open to all who dare cross the threshold within their own psyche; dependent only upon the determination to overcome our own fears and the acculturated programming of the status quo. Which is no plain sail yet very much an inherent part of each and every leader’s birthright.
Alas we have all, in varying degrees (except for a rare few peoples untainted by today’s dominant worldview) become acculturated, programmed, hypnotized, emasculated, enslaved by a mindset that dreads the death-rebirth threshold-crossing, and so the fear of breaking out of the boiling-pot into a new way is substantial and existential. Yet it can, and must, be done or we might as well kiss humanity goodbye. Quite why more energy is not being focused on shifting our consciousness is a sure sign of how much the current mindset fears such a thing, because it’s a signing of its own death warrant, and there are powerful forces benefitting from keeping the status quo intact for as long as possible. But its cracking already. Its days are numbered.
A Shift in Consciousness – From What into What?
The shift in our individual psyche mirrors a shift in collective worldview with its stories and programmes we habitually live by that inform our socioeconomic constructs, logics and narratives – the very mindset that created our crisis of crises in the first place.
I call this dominant worldview ‘Mechanistic Materialism’, as it’s a combo of mechanistic and materialistic rational-analytic logic. Let’s call it ‘MM’ for short. MM draws upon Newtonian-Hobbesian-Darwinian case-effect reductionism demanding control-manage tendencies in order to control and cope with what it perceives life as – a nihilistic battleground struggle amid dog-eat-dog competition devoid of meaning other than individualistic materialism. It objectifies systems, objects, relationships, transactions as ‘out-there’ in a world of separateness. The individual is perceived as ‘self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with’ each other and the world at large. Human is separate from nature. Mind is separate from matter. Inner is separate from outer. The organization is perceived as ‘organization-as-machine’ managed through top-down hierarchic, silo’ed command-and-control layers of bureaucracy with carrot-stick KPIs leading to soul-sapping workplaces and people are woefully disenfranchised. Arising out of 17th Century Europe, the MM mindset asserts control over life because it fears change, unpredictability and instability.
Here we are today, priding ourselves on being cutting-edge and ultra-innovative with our whizzy gadgetry, yet we’re running our organizations on a 400-year-old operating system which is woefully out-of-date and totally ineffective when dealing with the poly/permacrisis looming large. MM will certainly not thrive amid the years ahead and will not even cope as its designed to manage-control change rather than know how to work with the wisdom of change. It fails to sense the inner-outer systemic nature of life and so struggles against complexity. Essentially, its anti-life. Enter the crises in our midst.
Yet MM logic is what we’re using today to try and control-manage our mitigation of the upcoming poly/permacrisis. So hopelessly dependent upon MM, we fail to see its faults and fallacies as we cling to it ever-tighter. We get caught in our own collective blind-spot. Like a hall of mirrors reflecting back fallacies upon fallacies and believing them to be real. From corporate leadership to government institutions to start-up entrepreneurialism to impact investing to management education to carbon accounting to socioeconomics to evolutionary theory to corporate social responsibility (CSR), MM is dominant, little wonder we have a poly/permacrisis.
‘The greatest voyage of our lifetimes is not in the seeking of new landscapes but in the seeing with new eyes.’ Marcel Proust, philosopher
To be very clear here, what I am not suggesting is that all’s hunky-dory, and if only we shift our worldview out of MM utopia emerges. No. Massive seismic change is unfolding whether we shift out of MM or not. Nor am I suggesting we ought to divert attention and resources away from sensible systemic mitigation and preparedness. It would be naïve foolishness not to prepare, and the activities of mobilisation around local and bioregional preparedness is vital for what’s ahead. What I am suggesting is, if we fail to seize this supreme moment for what it is – a death/rebirth threshold crossing – we are doomed regardless of how prepared we might think we are. Put another way: our preparedness is not just out-there in our objectified fixes, but in-here in our own consciousness.
‘The one who looks outside dreams, the one who looks inside awakens.’ Carl Jung, psychoanalyst
This threshold crossing is a shift out of MM’s Mechanistic Materialism into a quality of consciousness that is more attuned to life; a life-affirming/regenerative worldview I call ‘Quantum Complexity’ – ‘QC’ for short – because it draws from the quantum science and complexity science of the last few decades and brings these insights into leadership, organizational development, socioeconomics and systems change. And as we shift to QC, the way in which we mitigate, prototype and adapt will also be adaptive with the evolutionary-revolutionary impulse that unfolds our expanded meaning-making as we incur the crises ahead. Each storm ahead becoming a learning-ground prototyping for our evolution rather than hunkering-down into habituated control-manage MM tendencies. Then the poly/permacrisis becomes a ‘metacrisis’ – ‘meta’ as in the Greek meaning ‘beyond’. We allow the crisis of crises to work through us both inwardly and outwardly, psychoactively catalysing the up-stretch in our being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology) – an ontological and epistemological threshold crossing – for us to truly realise that the real pearl of wisdom this supreme moment affords us is in our capacity to move beyond our current limited perception of reality as mechanistic-materialistic. We bring in a different quality of consciousness to our solution-fixing than which created the problems in the first place.
‘In times of great winds, some build bunkers, other build windmills.’ Chinese Proverb
Sure, we need to spend time, resources and attention on building bunkers, but even the building of bunkers can be done with a mindset of the windmill-maker who is no longer limited by machine-mentality and instead draws on the Logic of Life. I’m suggesting that everything we do, from coping AND thriving, can become infused with a life-affirming regenerative leadership consciousness that draws from the QC worldview rather than constrained by the narrowed jaundiced MM order of the day. Then, we may see that the ‘poly/permacrisis’ invites in the ‘metacrisis’ which moves us beyond crisis-management and reactivity into a deeper level of adaptability, responsiveness and future-fitness. Then the poly/permacrisis becomes more that a set of external tipping points to fearfully watch unfold ‘out there’; it becomes a turning point deep within ourselves. Much like a rupture in one’s personal life – like a serious accident, illness, relationship breakup, loss of a loved one, shock redundancy – may invoke a life-review and metamorphic reorientation. Let’s not get hopelessly stuck on external events and fixated solely on crisis-management, instead let’s allow a spark of insight from this outer-and-inner rupturing catalyse a radical review of our relationship with reality, calling into question our sense of place and purpose in the world, how and why we create and deliver value, and the meaning and purpose of our value-creating ventures we call ‘organizations’ that can work with, not against, the grain of nature, and enliven our souls rather than strangle and starve them.
MM Mechanistic Materialism QC Quantum Complexity
Linear, binary, cause-effect Relational, rhythmic, nonlinear
Quantized space-time Chronos Qualitative Kairos
Outer fixing Inner-outer developmental inquiry
Outcomes & destinations Embodied experiential journeys
Acquire data for head-certainty Open heart to sense patterns
Rational knowing Rational-intuitive-emotional-somatic knowing
Strive, achieve, seek Surrender, presence, flow & respond
Control over nature Attune with nature
Machine mentality Logic of Life (mythos & logos)
React to external change Responsive to inner-outer emergence
Disparate events Synchronistic systemic interconnectivity
Resist tension Dance with dinergic tension
Conflict resolution Tension transmutation
Cope amid complexity Thrive amid complexity
Left-hemispheric yang dominance Left-right yin-yang coherence
Dog-eat-dog competition Collaboration & competition
Power over Power with
Short-termist Multiple time horizons & intergenerational
Egoic-persona Ego-soul dynamic
Anthropocentric Life-centric
Expert-achiever Regenerator
Control-manage Sense-respond
Parent-child Adult-adult
Self-as-separate Self-as-participatory
Excessive doing Being-doing
Organization-as-machine Organization-as-living-system
This is what is being asked of leaders TODAY – the capacity to lean-in to the looming metacrisis with the open-hearted courage and humility to not just cope but learn to thrive, to not just hunker-down but reorientate by creating conditions for ourselves, teams, organizations and communities to wake up to the Logic of Life by shifting beyond MM into QC. The good news is, life all around and within us is simply waiting for us to wake-up and get with the program of life. MM is exhausting swimming against the stream; QC find flow with nature/life.
‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu, Chinese sage
This perfect storm is the perfect situation for catalysing the death of the old MM and the birthing of the new QC. There are already a growing cohort of leaders worldwide who are crossing this worldview threshold from MM into QC. I have the real pleasure of coaching some of them and my Leading by Nature podcast shares conversations with some of these here, there are many more.
‘Any organization designed for success in the 20th century is doomed for failure in the 21st century.’ David Rose, serial entrepreneur
What lies ahead is a massive reset, a wholesale renewal, a total regeneration. Leadership teams and organizational cultures unable to adapt beyond MM will die out, those able to embrace QC will not just cope but learn to thrive amid the increasingly turbulent times ahead attracting and retaining high quality talent that wish to be a part of life-affirming learning organizations that dare seek wisdom and authenticity in life beyond artifice and fallacy.
This is why I use the term ‘metacrisis’ rather than polycrisis or permacrisis, in concurrence with contemporary philosophers and writers like Jonathan Rowson and Ernesto van Peborgh. ‘Meta’ as in meta-morphic, a death/rebirth movement ‘beyond’ the status quo, a transcend-and-include renewal which is both fresh and ancient, physical and metaphysical, inner emancipating with outer fixing, embracing tensions beyond polarities, emergent and wild yet self-organising and wise. Its simply an invitation into real life beyond the out-dated narrow-mindedness of MM. And so we may begin to see, if we so choose, how the metacrisis is an alchemic combination of all of the myriad crises in a stirring cauldron that’s cooking up a way beyond the individual crises into a root-and-branch reorientation of our modern humanity’s sense of place and purpose in the world, with a reformation of our ways of being (ontology) and ways of knowing (epistemology) into what it truly means to be human, Homo sapien, being-and-knowing with wisdom.
This supreme metacrisis moment provides a portal for our redemptive pathway into regeneration, our becoming who we truly are in waking-up to how life really is. It’s midwifing our future-fitness. Are you ready?
My latest book Nature Works – Activating Regenerative Leadership Consciousness explains the ‘how to’ shift from MM into QC. It provides a guide into the journey of a lifetime amid this supreme moment. Because, the time has come.
“Welcome to the Regeneration Revolution. It’s time for humanity’s upgrade— enhanced creativity, embodied empathy, increased resilience, and improved agility. We have at the ready all we need to shift our mindset to one which is more future-fit for ourselves, for those around us, and for the organizations we serve.” – Giles Hutchins, Nature Works
Book reviews for NATURE WORKS:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
To sign-up for the special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 13th February 2025, see here for more details.
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder – talking CAT consulting
‘Powerful! Simply the best leadership workshop I’ve ever attended.’ Ian Ayling, Director, Soil Association
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
Future-Fitness Amid Rising Complexity
From Coping to Thriving Amid Rising Complexity
Each generation experiences significant change due to innovations, disruptions and shifting perspectives transforming our ways of operating and organizing in business and beyond. Yet, the times in which we live herald paradigmic and metamorphic shifts challenging what we do and the way we do it, calling into question our sense of purpose, and demanding wholly new ways of creating and delivering value. This is in part due to the catalytic effect of digitization and globalization, and in part due to the urgent trilemma of economic, environmental and social challenges now upon us. Amid all this, there are complex shifts affecting each of us at deep and partly unconscious levels, challenging how we perceive ourselves, each other and the world around us. At once it is an immensely exciting, liberating, testing and unpredictable time to be involved in the future of business.
‘Its not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most able to adapt to change.’ Charles Darwin
This capacity to truly adapt to change amid a time of upheaval, stress and dissonance, is what we explore through the embodied learning environment of nature Herself.
Nature works and it does worh for atleast two good reasons:
- There is an immense treasure-trove of insights and techniques we can draw from the natural world around us. Over 3.8bn years-worth of R&D of what works and what doesn’t during change upon change.
- The very act of going into nature is scientifically proven to enhance our future-fit capacities as leaders and change agents. By example, engaging in the various practices I facilitate amid ancient woodlands while exploring next-stage leadership enhances our coherence, resilience, empathy, creativity, ability to truly listen to self and other, and to tune-in to the systemic relationality of the systems we serve. All of these, and many more, are important skills we gain in nature that aid future-fitness.
This short 5min video provides some insights we gain from leadership immersions in nature:
Amid 60 acres of secluded ancient woodland set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, close to London, airports and international train-links, on 13th February, 2025 we shall be diving into next-stage future-fit regenerative leadership.
Through over a decade of working on regenerative leadership and nature-based coaching, I have developed a range of practices, coaching-frames and processes that aid the journey of becoming a next-stage future-fit leader – one that can work with and thrive amid complexity, and journey toward becoming regenerative for self and system. As a CEO I coach, Jayne Mayled, notes:
‘Having been ‘leadership development-ed’ up to my eyeballs in my corporate years, Giles Hutchins brings a unique mix of skills and techniques to coaching for these transformative times.’
13th February 2025 Immersion – Logistics:
9.15/9.30am Arrivals – refreshments upon arrival. Workshop commences at 9.45am
4.15pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ aim to arrive for 9.15-9.30am.
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for 9.15am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £380 –To register for your place either Direct Message me on LinkedIn or contact me via my website https://gileshutchins.com/contact/
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, your place is confirmed, and you will be sent a pre-read, preparatory material and guidance. Other emails will also be sent near the immersion with further information. Other content/material will also be shared post-immersion.
What can you hope to gain from the experience: You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire day. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- An embodied experience of regenerative leadership
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid future-fitness for yourself and organization/project
- Consciousness-raising practices and modalities
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of Leading by Nature book (plus any one other of Giles’s six books)
- Organic lunch and refreshments throughout the day
- A certificate from The Future Fit Leadership Academy for your attendance
- A special 30% discount for regenerative leadership coaching with Giles Hutchins
Some quotes from recent open-day immersion workshops at Springwood with Giles:
‘The nature immersion workshop with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO of Pulse Brands
‘Powerful and provocative – the most useful leadership course I’ve ever attended!’ – Ian Ayling, Director, Soil Association
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://gileshutchins.com/springwood/
About Giles Hutchins – 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), Leading by Nature (2022) and Nature Works (2024). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he anchors his international leadership practice amid 60 acres of ancient woodland at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides transformational coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their professional and personal lives in harmony with life. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business, and blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org and examples of his work can be found at https://gileshutchins.com/
His Leading by Nature podcast can be found at https://gileshutchins.com/podcast/
For more on coaching with Giles or to register for the one-day immersion, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
‘Those who flow as life flows no they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
This is why I have written my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
“Welcome to the Regeneration Revolution. It’s time for humanity’s upgrade— enhanced creativity, embodied empathy, increased resilience, and improved agility. We have at the ready all we need to shift our mindset to one which is more future-fit for ourselves, for those around us, and for the organizations we serve.” – Giles Hutchins, Nature Works
Book reviews for NATURE WORKS:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
To sign-up for the special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 13th February 2025 DM Giles on LinkedIn or contact via https://gileshutchins.com/leadership-immersions/ or https://gileshutchins.com/contact/
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder – talking CAT consulting
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
You can sign up to Giles newsletter here.
These are transformative times. Much is under strain, with many systems on the brink of collapse. This creates significant tension, dissonance and stress across all systems.
Yet these are also times of immense creativity. Tensions can act as crucibles for creativity if we dare be courageous in the face of upheaval and change. As the old Chinese saying goes, ‘In times of great winds, some build bunkers, others build windmills’. We are witnessing such a time where it is becoming ever more apparent those leaders who busy themselves building bunkers, hunkering-down with status-quo thinking, and those leaders adapting (even thriving) amid change by bringing in a new cycle of manifestation: future-fitness = working the way nature works, tuning-in to their own deeper nature, the nature of their organizational systems, and the business ecosystems they relate with.
Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes:
‘Only the end of a cycle of manifestation makes possible the recapitulation of the whole cycle, and the creation of a synthesis which then serves as the seed for a new cycle.’
It’s this synthesis of the old cycle (mechanistic reductive management thinking, that’s been with us for 400 yrs now) and the new cycle (living-systems holistic leadership consciousness birthing across all systems) which the next few years ahead is witnessing.
How do we best synthesis the old with the new being born right now? The ancient alchemists had a wise saying, ‘Omega is the archway where Alpha stands framed.’ There is much we can learn from our own death-rebirth process that informs how our organizations can become future-fit and regenerative in learning to adapt to change.
‘Its not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most able to adapt to change.’ Charles Darwin
This capacity to truly adapt to change amid a time of upheaval, stress and dissonance, is what we explore through the embodied learning environment of nature Herself. Amid 60 acres of secluded ancient woodland set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beaty, close to London, airports and international train-links, on 19th September, 2024 we shall be diving into next-stage future-fit regenerative leadership.
Through over a decade of working on regenerative leadership and nature-based coaching, I have developed a range of practices, coaching-frames and processes that aid the journey of becoming a next-stage future-fit leader – one that can work with and thrive amid complexity, and journey toward becoming regenerative for self and system. As a CEO I coach, Jayne Mayled, notes:
‘Having been ‘leadership development-ed’ up to my eyeballs in my corporate years, Giles Hutchins brings a unique mix of skills and techniques to coaching for these transformative times.’
19th September Immersion – Logistics:
9.15/9.30am Arrivals – refreshments upon arrival. Workshop commences at 9.45am
4.15pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ aim to arrive for 9.15-9.30am.
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for 9.15am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £400 – To register for your place either Direct Message me on LinkedIn or contact me via my website https://gileshutchins.com/contact/
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, your place is confirmed, and you will be sent a pre-read, preparatory material and guidance. Other emails will also be sent near the immersion with further information. Other content/material will also be shared post-immersion.
What can you hope to gain from the experience: You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire day. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- An embodied experience of regenerative leadership
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Consciousness-raising practices and modalities
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of Leading by Nature book (plus any one other of Giles’s six books)
- Organic lunch and refreshments throughout the day
- A certificate from The Future Fit Leadership Academy for your attendance
- A special 35% discount for regenerative leadership coaching with Giles Hutchins
Some quotes from recent open-day immersion workshops at Springwood with Giles:
‘The nature immersion workshop with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO of Pulse Brands
‘Having read Giles’ previous book – Regenerative Leadership, I had high expectations. They were surpassed, magnificently. Giles took us on a journey that saw complete strangers enter into a state of connection, high trust and intimacy – in a matter of hours. We emerged nourished, energised, connected, centred and better equipped to deal with the challenges of life in the early ‘20s. For those seeking answers around their personal and professional development – I can’t recommend Giles and his work highly enough. – Richard Tyre, CEO of Good People
‘Giles’s blends business expertise, deep connection with nature and our living environment and experience in transformation, helping us think differently and progressively about work and organisational intent. He is magical in his ability to generate ‘safe spaces’ for conversations that matter’ – Caroline Gosling, Director, Rubica
‘Powerful and provocative – the most useful leadership course I’ve ever attended!’ – Ian Ayling, Director, Soil Association
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://gileshutchins.com/springwood/
About Giles Hutchins – 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), Leading by Nature (2022) and Nature Works (2024). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he anchors his international leadership practice amid 60 acres of ancient woodland at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides transformational coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their professional and personal lives in harmony with life. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business, and blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org and examples of his work can be found at https://gileshutchins.com/
His Leading by Nature podcast can be found at https://gileshutchins.com/podcast/
For more on coaching with Giles or to register for the one-day immersion, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
‘Those who flow as life flows no they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
This is why I have written my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
“Welcome to the Regeneration Revolution. It’s time for humanity’s upgrade— enhanced creativity, embodied empathy, increased resilience, and improved agility. We have at the ready all we need to shift our mindset to one which is more future-fit for ourselves, for those around us, and for the organizations we serve.” – Giles Hutchins, Nature Works
Book reviews for NATURE WORKS:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
To sign-up for the special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder – talking CAT consulting
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
What’s the most priceless thing you have in the whole world? The one thing that if it were taken away you’d never be the same again?
Please reflect on this question for a moment. Pause. Close your eyes, and ponder.
One might think of a particular relationship with another, or maybe one’s health as the most precious gift. But behind our health and relationships lies our own awareness, our consciousness. This, perhaps, is the most precious gift underpinning all others. As what would great health and loving relationships be worth without the awareness of their presence? We experience, relate, perceive, behold, value and commune with our own selves, others, nature and life through our awareness.
Why is this relevant? Well… recently I’ve been asked the same question by a few different people and so I have taken note, as I sense the Kairotic opportune timeliness of the question: ‘What’s the biggest challenge facing the regenerative movement today?’
The biggest challenge is our own selves, our awareness and our capacity to see with new eyes and hear with fresh ears. But what does this entail exactly? And is it indeed realistic to hope for a sizeable number of people to shift their consciousness amid so much clamour, confusion, polarization, fragmentation and fear these days? This article aims to shed a little light on the matter.
‘The original sin is an inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as the rule but as the exception.’ William James
Today, our mainstream way of attending to life – our collective worldview – is narrow and constricted, so much so that it warps what’s seen and sensed. It corrupts our awareness of self, other and world bringing us out of tune with nature-Earth-cosmos. It’s a carcinogenic consciousness caught up in an overactive ego-mind inured in an illusion of separation.
‘The greatest illusion in this world is the illusion of separation.’ Albert Einstein
Much of the time, when leading in business and beyond, we are engrossed in the voice-in-the-head and its narrowed ‘self-as-separate’ insecure judgement and fear. This has the result of superficializing our experience of life and debasing our relationships with others and the world. Yet this is not our true nature or natural state of awareness.
As I turn 52 years old today (yep – this is a mini-birthday blog : ) and reflect on the meaning-making moments in my life so far, I realize the revelatory out-of-body and near-death experiences, short-lived peak experiences and psychospiritual ruptures I’ve endured over the years, all import the same resounding message which I sense is important for these times we’re in now.
In many ways, the message is what’s been impelling my life-work over the last thirty years through various business leadership and advisory roles. Even if much of the time the message has remained partly unconscious like an archetypal rhizomatic root unfurling as an intuitive urge and urgency that’s brought forth something deep within to influence my normal waking consciousness at various turning points, metamorphic moments, and synchronicities. I sense this informing wisdom as nothing at all to do with ‘me’ (as in my ego-persona, personality, psyche or bodymind) more that my bodymind is like a radio-set, tuning fork or channel which picks up on and sometimes allows this wisdom to come through from a dimension beyond what the ego-mind can fathom. I don’t view the ego-mind as the enemy to dispel but rather a gift to enlighten, a master-key that’s being crafted and chiselled by the intuitive hand rising up from the rhizomatic root deep inside nature-Earth-cosmos. I know that even putting words to this guiding hand is fraught with difficulties and misunderstandings and so I hesitate to share some words here that could be used to gesture toward this invisible hand: Universe, Source, Divine Grace, Tao, Sophia, Akasha or Nature’s Wisdom, but essentially ‘that which cannot be named’. I also know that deep in my psyche and soul, because of my own empirically-proven lived experiences (and from coaching, guiding, walking alongside many others’ own empirically-proven experiences) that this something which cannot be named is a very real and potent presence in our lives. When we open into this presence it enriches our awareness beyond the narrowed self-as-separate ego-mind. Energy and wisdom pours in through a window in the soul. As I’ve aged, I’ve found ways we can allow our selves to be more receptive and responsive to this subtle wisdom within life. Doing so, our worldview can shift from Mechanistic Materialism (self-as-separate/organization-as-machine) to Quantum Complexity (self-as-participatory/organization-as-living-system).
This shift from Mechanistic Materialism into Quantum Complexity is a rebirth, a remembering of an animistic worldview our ancestors lived by, in fact the vast majority of our human history lived with this deep sense of life’s sacred wisdom.
The ego-mind self-as-separate projects on to the organization a view of it as a machine with isolated individual components that can be control-managed through top-down power dynamics for increased efficiency and effectiveness. The deeper awareness of self-as-participatory knows this is an illusion that creates all sorts of confusion and ineffectiveness, that for the organization to truly thrive amid complexity it needs to be recognised as a complex relational emergent system that invites leaders to sense-respond to systemic flows, hidden connections and subtle energy flows, just as our bodyminds’ do. As we go through a shift in our consciousness and worldview, we reconnect back into the rapture of reality which reactivates our individual and collective purposefulness, authenticity, wholeness and sense of meaning. To wake up to what it truly means to become Homo sapiens – ones who work with wisdom. We learn to flow as life flows rather than struggle and fight against it. Rather than our egos pushing up against life in an extractive exploitative transactional manner, we open our awareness – our minds, hearts and wills – into the majesty of reality and in doing so find our sovereign soul-power, our birth-right.
This process of shifting our awareness from self-as-separate/org-as-machine to self-as-participatory/org-as-living-system is not something to achieve, solutionize or fix. It’s a process of becoming. ‘The point of the journey is not to arrive. The point of the journey is the journey itself.’ I often share this phrase with my coaching clients, as it’s easy to seek to ‘achieve’ the destination, impatiently get on with the journey. Which then misses the whole point, and unwittingly invites the ego-mind back into the driving seat. The journey itself is not to be trampled over in search of the destination instead it’s the greatest voyage of our lifetimes, the process of becoming who we truly are and experiencing life as it really is.
‘The greatest voyage of our lifetimes is not in the seeking of new landscapes but in the seeing with new eyes.’ Marcel Proust
In my latest book NATURE WORKS – Activating Regenerative Leadership Consciousness, I explore this journey in detail, mapping out a three-part nine-staged journey of becoming which draws on timeless wisdom traditions across the East, West, North and South, and which I have tried and tested over many years of coaching adults through consciousness-shifting life-changing journeys. I call it the shift from Achiever to Regenerator.
I know one thing from all this journeying, what’s vital is to have an embodied experience of the interconnectedness of life, to feel and experience self-as-participatory and sense the organization-as-living-system rather than solely comprehending it in a head-based ‘systems thinking’ rational-analytic understanding of systems nested within systems.
I have found nature immersions to be a particularly powerful yet psychologically safe way of catalysing a reconnection back into the rapture of reality. Yet even nature immersions won’t help if they are one-off vacation-islands for us to hop-in and out of amid a world full of separateness. The journey is about gradually bringing this shift of awareness into our everyday living and leading which involves a multi-year educational process of becoming that’s undertaken in the center of one’s own being, and yet guides, coaches, teachers, courses, books, friends, immersions, retreats, peer groups and learning experiences can surely aid the journey. Outsource it at your peril. While the ‘altered state economy’ is burgeoning beyond $4trillion a year and includes sophisticated tools and techniques, be wary of commercial and institutional power-interests seeking to manufacture and manipulate mindsets. Only one’s own self truly knows one’s own truth beyond illusion, and finding your own sovereignty, rootedness, and soul-power is a vital part of this journey.
‘Understanding the illusion only comes after the understanding of reality, not before… Until we have the experience of reality, in all its stillness, we are still lost.’ Peter Kingsley
The etymology of the word ‘education’ is ‘educere’ which for the ancient Greeks meant to bring forth what is within you, to allow one’s deeper psyche and soul to open into daily awareness so as to live in to one’s soul-destiny and serve life authentically beyond illusion. How far today’s mainstream mechanistic schooling of our children, youth and adults has departed from this original meaning. Precious little of today’s educational processes honour a bringing forth of what is deep within. Often the exact opposite, a stuffing-in of achiever-orientated bits and bytes that exacerbate the voice-in-the-head ego-mind’s uprooting from soul and source.
‘If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.’ Jesus Christ
We are destroying ourselves and the world around us. The root cause is not carbon but our own awareness. So, what to do?
Its all too easy to go into the ego-mind and formulate, fix and fiddle while applying the very level of consciousness to our well-intended solutions that creates the problems in the first place. Much of today’s CSR initiatives do just this. It requires real courage to move in a different direction, to move out of the status quo mindset and dominant worldview of Mechanistic Materialism, and start to explore what it really means to work the way nature works.
‘The world’s problems stem from the gap between how people think and how nature works.’ Gregory Bateson
Nature works, yes it works, in at least two important ways:
- Nature works because of 3.8bn years of tried-and-tested R&D. Life on Earth has adapted and evolved amid constant change over a very long period for scientific inquiry into what works.
- Nature works because it/She opens our minds, hearts and wills beyond the ego self-as-separate and into the inherent wisdom running through life. Being in nature gives us an embodied remembering of the innate interconnectedness and sacredness of the magnificence of existence. This is both scientific and psychospiritual, with a host of scientific studies proving that being in nature aids our creativity, empathy, ability to embrace complexity, and find deeper meaning and purpose.
“Tumble with the rock which falls from the mountain.
Seek light and rejoice with the rosebud about to open;
Be restless with the dog that barks in the night;
Labor with the parsimonious ant;
Gather honey with the bee;
Expand in space with the ripening fruit;
Run with the greyhound.”
R.A. Schwaller do Lubicz
True life-affirming regenerative education works at all levels of self, team, organization, community, society and civilization. Not in some blanket globalized unitive way that normalizes, rationalizes and constrains the creative emergent potential of the individual, team, organization or community. No – nature doesn’t do blanket unitive control mechanisms for good reason, even if some intelligentsia powers-that-be might like to instil a one-size-fits-all ethical morality upon diverse peoples, all that does is move us closer to the very totalitarianism that the control-manage ego-mind seeks with its innate insecurity of life’s ever-changing wilfulness. Nor is the opposite of totalitarian tendencies any better – revolutionary anarchy – with no rules or limits and a reactivity against any constraining force. Life has plenty of limits and constraints we’d do well to work within. These natural limits (which are both physical and metaphysical in nature) do not constrict our process of becoming, quite the contrary, they act as the very crucibles for our creative potential to unfold. Life without edges, powers and principles would become just as dull as the totalitarian amorphous oneness some thinkers think will save us. The popular ‘me to we’ shift is actually a step before the shift into regenerator, which is full-bodied psychospiritual realisation that life is calling forth our me-and-we self-as-participatory far beyond collectivism, individualism or for that matter any ‘ism’ which is just another doorway for the ego-mind to slip back into the driving seat. As the adult developmental psychologist Clare Graves noticed in his painstaking research on adults going through the awareness shift in to ‘Tier Two’ (Teal) meaning-making (which I am call the Achiever to Regenerator self-as-separate/org-as-machine to self-as-participatory/org-as-living system) the way that the individual ‘me’ and the collective ‘we’ interrelate subtly shifts and the me-we dynamic up-stretches to a whole new level, and even the concepts of ‘me’ and ‘we’ start to permeate and transmute.
‘The [Achiever to Regenerator] shift is not merely a transition to a new level of existence, but the start of a new movement in the symphony of human identity.’ Clare Graves.
As we open our worldview beyond Mechanistic Materialism into Quantum Complexity, the way we perceive the world shifts, and what I call the Three Lenses start to integrate.
The way the ego ‘I’ interrelates with the inner-outer nature of the world subtly shifts. The very categories and principles of knowing start to morph, deepen and transform. What we thought we knew about self, success, value, wealth, happiness, purpose, truth and wisdom lose their moorings as we are taken deeper into life’s oceanic interconnectedness. As our experience of self-and-system moves into a new worldview our moorings find a new anchorage in a deeper dimension, a new centre of gravity which deepens our access to wisdom and our true nature far beyond the surface waves of the ego-mind. This is a whole new way of knowing (epistemology) and of being-and-becoming (ontology). It involves a profound death-rebirth unlearning-relearning disintegrating-reintegrating process.
Today, the majority of leaders across modern capitalist-consumerist society are caught up in a state of ‘arrested development’ inured in the prison of the ego-mind. The all-consuming cacophony of the Lens 1 voice-in-the-head prevents the deeper nature of Lens 2 and the Field/Source of Lens 3 to pervade our daily awareness, and so we show-up with a fragment of who we truly are, suffering from a sclerosis of the soul, starved from our own root in reality.
We seek to fix the world out there, not realising the prison is in here. Our awareness is warped into a dominant left-hemispheric, overly yang, outer-achieving, hyper-masculine self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with-the world. Fear rules in the prison of our own minds. Yet we hold the master-key at the centre of the labyrinth within our own selves, and this offers us a way out of the prison if we so choose. Without this master-key our activities, no matter how well-intended or sustainability-minded, will not be in harmony with life and will likely exacerbate further systemic imbalances.
The task of our time is to reignite our adult developmental self-educatory process by welcoming in the very domains of reality that Mechanistic Materialism has tried to suppress and exclude – the sense of the sacred, soul and spirit. Then we start to undo the original sin and return home, back to our true nature and begin to co-create life-affirming futures for the Regeneration Revolution.
In crossing the threshold from Mechanistic Materialism to Quantum Complexity, we activate our super-nature and our bodymind coherence enhances with significant physiological and psychological benefits.
Physiologically: the three main bodymind centres (head, heart and gut) cohere more readily and work in-synch more often, aiding our capacity to not merely ‘cope amid complexity’ but truly ‘thrive amid complexity’.
Psychologically: the mind, heart and will open, the ego permeates and maturates, and our capacity to become sensitive receptors and systemic enablers up-stretches beyond the achiever control-manager. Our natural human capacity to sense systemic relational flows, hidden ordering forces, constellating patterns, harmonic resonances and archetypal forces all comes on-stream, and with it we are able to hold-space for self-and-system to shift through ‘tension transmutation’ rather than mere ‘conflict resolution’ (see this article here for more on the shift from conflict resolution to tension transmutation).
With this bodymind coherence, our ability to sense the system holistically rather than reductively greatly enhances. This shift is vital for the unfolding Regeneration Revolution. Otherwise Mechanistic Materialism’s ego-mind will keep rearing its head and infiltrating our regenerative endeavours, whether it be regen agriculture, economics, medicine, business, leadership or living. If we are not careful our awareness all-too-easily superficializes into Mechanistic Materialism and vital energy, resources, creativity and investment get siphoned-off into degenerative activities dressed up as regenerative. Today’s CSR and sustainable business initiatives are, alas, all-too-often infiltrated by Mechanistic Materialism slowing down the Regenerative Revolution and taking us further away from life-affirming futures. To be very clear here, I am a supporter of sustainability in business and the significant transformations the sustainability movement and its vast array of initiatives, projects and ventures has achieved. I take my hat off to those making change happen inside the status quo system. I too was Global Sustainability Director for a large global organization for many years and know all-too-well how hard the challenge is in bringing sustainability to the business table. But we are in revolutionary times and we now need more than status quo tweaks of the wheel that leave existing business models largely unchecked and at best just delay the inevitable car-crash ahead, and sometimes unwittingly create further degeneration under the guise of doing good. All I wish to highlight here is the importance of becoming aware of the level of consciousness and worldview from which we are leading and implementing projects that have systemic consequences. Over the last decade I have coached many dozens of senior sustainability leaders whether Sustainability Directors, Impact Investors or Sustainability consultants, and have heard of Impact and CSR investments that sometimes feel like they are caught up in Mechanistic Materialism. Let’s explore an example to help illustrate this point:
Impact investment, along with local and central government incentives and corporate donations, for a ‘green’ renewable energy project that involves clearing acres of natural ecosystems including a native woodland to enable the size needed to justify the infrastructure-scale return-on-investment for a large solar farm. When viewing the project with a narrowed mechanistic awareness much is de-emphasized so the overall project actually turns out to be holistically degenerative while players involved gain financial and brand benefits for the project. Not only will the natural carbon cycle be affected, but also the water and nutrients and subtle energy cycles of nature, along with all the living-systems entwined and interrelated with the bioregion. If the project has a reputable well-thought-through sustainability imperative then it is likely to involve a number of detailed surveys including robust biodiversity studies. (And it’s heartening to note how these studies have become increasingly systemic in their approach over recent years). And yet often even these studies are inured in the worldview of Mechanistic Materialism and so fail to become aware of the full impact such a large-scale project has on the deeper way nature works. Mapping out ecosystem services and biodiversity offsets often applies mainstream rationalistic-reductive science – the very mechanistic science that creates our problems in the first place – rather than a holistic science that applies a deeper awareness of Quantum Complexity. Here I offer insights from a geological scientist trained at Cambridge and Chicago universities, Alick Batholomew, with a holistic-regenerative comprehension (alas still in the minority today, but there are certainly a lot more scientists like Alick these days than there were just fifteen years ago when I was Global Sustainability Director):
‘In areas of natural woodland where a positive temperature gradient normally prevails, about 85% of rainfall is retained, 15% by the vegetation and humus and about 70% sinking to the groundwater aquifer and underground stream recharging to pick up the negative [yin] energy charge of the Earth. In a natural woodland, the mature trees with deep roots bring up this negatively charged water, along with the vital minerals and trace elements from the deeper soils. Trees act as bio-condensers, harmonizing the positive [yang] energy from the Sun with the negative [yin] energy of the Earth. As a result, the evapo-transpiration from the leaves of the trees is a balanced creative energy. The woodland, as a more dynamic living system creates transpiration that carries the subtle energy (non-material) imprint of all the resonances of the complex biosystem, including the subterranean elements. Rainfall generated from the woodland carries this beneficial influence…Without woodland cover, the ground surface overheats, causing a negative temperature gradient in the soil. This means that the cooler rain cannot penetrate into the warmer ground, and fast surface run off in areas of heavy rainfall causes flooding [along with nutrient leaching and soil erosion].’
Add to this the compounded problem of large arrays of black solar-panels creating hot areas in the summer and cold areas in the winter, forming unnaturally concentrated thermals which further disrupt the weather and nutrient cycles. Plus, large-scale blocking of solar yang energy into the yin Earth affecting the creative potential of underground water flows that other life depends upon. Much of what Alick shares here is an important insight into how nature works and yet falls outside what most Mechanistic Materialistic sustainability studies would include as in-scope due to the status quo’s narrowed reductive awareness. Clearing native woodland to erect a large solar farm (or indeed planning a large monocrop of non-native fast-growing trees for carbon credits) while attracting green investment, incentives and follow-on brand enhancement, customer loyalty, advertising, etc. is a systemic blunder that can be overcome once we meaningfully engage in the shift toward Quantum Complexity with its embodied sense of life’s interconnectedness.
Education, inquiry, prototyping and journeying that honour the developmental, emergent and evolutionary nature of life aid the bringing forth of true nature within ourselves, our living-organizations and our wider socioeconomic systems.
This is why I have written my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
NATURE WORKS is a way of leading and living; a way of perceiving and participating within Nature’s Wisdom, so that we can flow as life flows. I wrote this book to help initiate a deeper inquiry into what it means to become more fully human amid this rising technospheric consumerisation and fragmentation of life. These increasingly volatile times actually hold the very alchemic energy that might just wake-up our humanity in time to realize what it truly means to be human in this more-than-human world of ours. NATURE WORKS conveys ways for alchemizing yin-yang tensions within and throughout everyday life so that we may enter the Mystery of this creative regenerative act we call Life.
NATURE WORKS reviews:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
There is a special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder – talking CAT consulting
If you are interested in attending a one-day immersion with Giles near London on 19th September, you can contact him herehttps://gileshutchins.com/contact/
“I now see not with the eyes, but by the operation of spiritual energy in the powers.
I am in heaven, in earth, in water, in the air; I am in living creatures and plants;
I am in the womb, before the womb, after the womb.
I am present everywhere.” – Hermes Trismegistus
“Welcome to the Regeneration Revolution. It’s time for humanity’s upgrade— enhanced creativity, embodied empathy, increased resilience, and improved agility. We have at the ready all we need to shift our mindset to one which is more future-fit for ourselves, for those around us, and for the organizations we serve.” – Giles Hutchins, Nature Works
You can join the LinkedIn Group Leadership Immersions here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
Our way into peace requires an understanding of how life works, rather than a singular solution-fixing of each conflict in isolated separateness. For sure, we need to approach each conflict within its own living context, and yet if we approach it with the same level of consciousness that creates polarisation, antagonism and separation (a narrowed mechanistic perspective that reduces and fragments life) we will ultimately fail to cultivate a wider-and-deeper culture of peace and harmony, whether within the team, organization, community, or wider civilization.
It’s time to get radical. Our rising dis-harmony, dis-ease, dis-connect and stressful conflicts will become the new-norm unless we learn to not merely ‘cope amid complexity’ but ‘thrive amid complexity’. In these challenging times we can learn to work with tensions to reveal transformative insights that bring us forth beyond the conflictual ‘me versus you’, ‘us versus them’ polarity into a deeper dance with life.
To be ‘radical’ does not mean to revolt, push against, or fight fire with fire – which inevitably invokes yet more egoic-assertive war-mentality. No. To be radical, in its true sense, means to address the root of the matter, to attend to the underlying source as well as symptom; to dare swim upstream to the source rather than taken down-stream into symptoms.
All-too-often our attempts to fix conflict prioritise symptom-fixing with a linear cause-effect mentality while largely leaving the underlying cause gapping. In doing so, we busy ourselves with the very up-rooted energy that created the conflict in the first place, distracting ourselves from what truly matters. Rather than a challenging tension aiding our learning and evolution, we get further caught up in the very fragmenting separating consciousness we ought move beyond.
It’s time to start awakening out of our own egoic-absorption, and realise that conflicts and tensions might just be creating the very crucibles for us to see more deeply into our own humanity.
This is the choice we have available to us right now amid rising tension, challenge and conflict.
Put simply: the root cause of our outer wars is an inner war inside our own human minds, bodies, nervous systems, cells and neurons. How rare it is to find the beam of attention being bended inwardly amid outer conflict-fixing, and so the root is further up-rooted. Enter more dis-connect.
Try and fix outer conflict while leaving the root cause unattended and conflict will rear its head soon enough in a different guise, perhaps in even more violent ways as symptom-fixing creates suppression that often further exacerbates violation.
From ‘Conflict Resolution’ to ‘Tension Transmutation’
Often in today’s organizational development (OD) circles I regularly come across the term ‘conflict resolution’. I believe this term needs an upgrade, as seeking to merely ‘resolve’ conflict (usually through some outer fix) fails to bring forth the wisdom revealed through life’s tensions inherent in diversity, difference, creativity and collaboration. In collapsing the tension through an outer achiever-orientated symptom-fixing resolution, the magic the tension contains for revealing creative transformation is lost.
The ego-achiever overly-yang mindset dislikes tension and seeks to fix it using linear cause-effect logic (the only logic the left-hemisphere egoic-mind understands). Yet if we allow the tension to transmute the conflicting aspects, unfolding into an alchemizing of a third-way beyond dualistic opposition, then, we work the way life works, and allow for ‘tension transmutation’. This is the logic found through the heart-mind and the wisdom of life.
From ‘conflict resolution’ to ‘tension transmutation’. This shift in awareness brings us into right-relation with life, allowing Nature’s Wisdom to flow through our everyday tensions.
This is an important realisation upon the regenerative leadership journey: tensions create crucibles for creativity. The very creative adventure of life is fuelled by tensions.
Collapse the tension and we miss the developmental learning, and drain life of its deeper meaning. Hold the tension and we allow life to work its magic – from the alchemy of difference spawns creative emergence. This is the evolutionary potential of our humanity in harmony with life. Make peace with tensions. Learn to play the tensions like musical harmonics, with just the right amount of yin (being) and yang (doing).
But let’s get even more radical, and get behind even the tensions between ourselves and others, and go into our own selves. Let’s explore what drives the discomfort, mild anxiety or outright urgency to fix and resolve tensions and so preventing the birthing/rebirthing of regenerative insights. Let’s get into the very bodymind of our psyche. For many leaders (and adults in general) today, this psyche within is imbalanced, out-of-kilter, dis-eased.
From Brain Incoherence to Bodymind Coherence
The very electrical impulses in the neurons, cells and networks pervading our bodyminds’ are being triggered by an imbalance. The dominance of an overly yang outer-doing, achiever, high-beta, left-hemispheric, mechanistic, self-as-separate mentality is running rampant through mainstream consumer society and business today, infecting us with a carcinogenic consciousness that fragments, polarises, projects, judges, blames, separates. The anxiety this breeds inside means that when tensions arise in us and in our relationality with others, we feel a need to fix, because the tension can often feel to our imbalanced psyches like it is the source of our anxiety. From this tense imbalanced overly-yang state its all-too-easy to buffer up ‘against’ and need to ‘fix’ life’s inevitable tensions, and so seek to outwardly control-manage ‘resolve’ the tension rather than inwardly-and-outwardly sense-respond ‘transmute’ the tension.
The internal imbalanced is like a war inside us, a part of our selves suppressing, dominating and violating another part of our own selves. This war inside creates an overstimulated sympathetic nervous system which then further exacerbates a war/victim mentality. Enter fight-flight-freeze activating panic/aggression/victim mentality. This inner war is rising and spreading; it’s becoming a new-norm. It can take subtle forms like imposter syndrome, background anxiety, easily triggered reactivity, or more outwardly obvious forms like mental health challenges, addictive behaviours or self-abuse. The very wisdom, intuition, creativity, empathy, adaptability and responsiveness we need to flow and thrive amid rising complexity is starved at source.
Little wonder we find increasing tensions, conflict, even wars breaking out in our cultures at work, in our lives, and throughout the world.
Sure, each conflict needs to be addressed within its unique context and most certainly deserves holding with respectful right-relation. Yet there is a global ground pervading the local individual nature of these conflicts, and this ground dares invite us into Nature’s Wisdom, to work and flow the way life works and flows. This requires courage, and trust. It requires our humanity to wake-up into life, and realise that our small selves are in continuous participation within larger systems and the wider holistic nature of Earth and cosmos. And with this waking-up process we find inner harmony, peace, truth and wisdom flowing through our veins and neurons. A natural capacity we had as children comes back on-stream – a spontaneous sense-respond capacity to transmute tensions rather than an imbalanced anxiety to impatiently fix and collapse them into right-wrong, us-them, left-right binaries. This spontaneous sense-respond capacity which sees beyond simplistic binaries is our way into a synchronistic symbiotic way of living in harmony with nature. Enter Regenerative Leadership, which is totally natural and something we have all felt at various times in our lives. And when we do, it feels like coming home. Because it speaks to who we’re born to be: participatory expressions dancing with life, working through tensions, finding flow: self-other-world attuning through each learning-lab of a day.
Brain incoherence –to– Bodymind coherence
Fight-flight-freeze –to– Active-relaxed flow
Overly-yang –to– Yin-yang
Control-manage –to– Sense-respond
Parent-child –to– Adult-adult
Outer-achiever –to– Inner-outer regenerator
Cope amid complexity –to– Thrive amid complexity
Conflict resolution –to– Tension transmutation
Violation –to– Right-relation
Inner psychosomatic harmony aids our right-relation of self-other-world. One’s bodymind becomes attuned to nature and at-one with the entire universe. The splendor of life’s rich learning laboratory is evoked, and self-as-separate permeates into a participatory communion of source-self-system.
Rather than the control-manage fixity and certainty amid a world of separation and fear, we find connectivity, synchronicity and soulfulness amid a world of participatory interdependence. Outer events inter-relate with inner psychic states.
‘As one changes one’s own nature, so does the nature of the world change toward oneself.’ – Gandhi
The underlying source of all life speaks to us and informs our revealing learning journey. This is a radical review of causation (and with it, a radical review of our ‘Theory of Change’), from linearity and outer egoic-assertion, to co-creative inner-outer participation. We are no longer strangers to our own selves, to others and to life itself, projecting our inner-war on to the ‘other’, seeking simplistic control-manage fixing. We no longer seek to fix conflict by asserting our anthropocentric ego-will upon ‘it’. Instead, we befriend self-other-world by deeply trusting in life, and realise life is beyond objectifying ‘it’ but instead is deeply sentient and conscious all-the-way-down. Blind random chance and linear cause-effect evaporate as our perception of how life really is deepens.
Synchronicity becomes our language of life when our bodyminds find coherence and peace amid tension and change. This is an affirmation to life on all levels – mental, emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual – what I call ‘life-affirming living and leading’ or ‘regenerative living and leading’. And it provides for our way out of this meta-crisis; its simultaneously radical and practical, costs nothing, no debt or credit required, only courage, coherence and consciousness. And the more we open into life the more we realise this courage, coherence and consciousness is infinitely available to us.
‘Those who flow as life flows no they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
This is why I have written my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
“Welcome to the Regeneration Revolution. It’s time for humanity’s upgrade— enhanced creativity, embodied empathy, increased resilience, and improved agility. We have at the ready all we need to shift our mindset to one which is more future-fit for ourselves, for those around us, and for the organizations we serve.” – Giles Hutchins, Nature Works
NATURE WORKS is a way of leading and living; a way of perceiving and participating within Nature’s Wisdom, so that we can flow as life flows. I wrote this book to help initiate a deeper inquiry into what it means to become more fully human amid this rising technospheric consumerisation and conflictualization of life. These increasingly volatile times actually hold the very alchemic energy that might just wake-up our humanity in time to realize what it truly means to be human in this more-than-human world of ours. NATURE WORKS conveys ways for alchemizing yin-yang tensions within and throughout everyday life so that we may enter the Mystery of this creative regenerative act we call Life.
NATURE WORKS is a guide for those who want to nurture their soul and deepen their relationship with nature, Earth and cosmos. For in truth, we are Source and Source is us. And now might just be a good time to wake-up and work with Source rather than struggling in conflict against it (and ourselves).
Having been educated and acculturated in an imbalanced outer-yang way for some centuries in the West now, the dominant worldview has become ossified into a conventionalized set of beliefs that warp how we attend to life, which creates the very conflict we now need to reach beyond. From this place of steeped acculturation and collective programming our way back into the Mystery of Life is not necessarily easy, but it is our birthright and costs nothing, yet saves everything.
Amid this meta-crisis our very ways of embracing life are being called into question. The worldview shift we now need starts by recognising the inner-war and then making peace inside our own psyches. Then our attention and intention embrace tension inherent in the symbiotic synchronistic nature of real life. We tune into life rather than struggle against it. We sense-respond rather than control-manage, and flow as life flows.
NATURE WORKS – Book Description
We live in a world of rising disconnect, distraction and destruction, and it’s increasingly apparent that the meta-crisis now facing humanity cannot be solved with the same level of consciousness that created this crisis of crises in the first place. Nature Works is an urgent response to this call for change, illuminating a pathway toward a new dawn where humanity finds harmony with all life on our planet. Giles Hutchins draws upon decades of research and experience in activating regenerative leadership consciousness to address the root problem of our interconnected crises. Blending pioneering neuroscience and cutting-edge findings on consciousness with ancient wisdom, he has catalyzed a way of living and leading that’s more resilient, agile, whole, and wise. In doing so, this book becomes the metaphysical foundation vital for the Regeneration Revolution.
Book reviews:
‘This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper… This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.’
‘This book will open your mind and heart and transform the way you live and lead. Giles is a wonderful writer with an ability to weave scientific, spiritual, natural and practical threads into compelling narratives that illuminate a pathway towards the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that we so urgently need. Underpinned by his decades of real-world experience as a regenerative leadership coach and consultant, this book combines cutting-edge scientific findings with ancient wisdom to show us a path forward that is more integrated, wise and healthy for all the planets creatures and systems. Highly recommended!’
‘The worldview shift described in “Nature Works” invites us all to embark on a profound, personal, and collective transformation, recognising that healing from separateness to interconnectedness is crucial on our pathway. “Nature Works” is not just a book but an experience that will have you thinking, feeling, and most likely challenged. Certainly curious. It is part philosophy, business, and regenerative frameworks and touches the edges of a psycho-spiritual journey. It is a must-read for those committed to leading in harmony with nature.’
‘This is so much more than a book! Its wisdom in text, conveying a richness of life beyond words. Truly profound – in fact, life-changing. Read it!’
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-Works-Activating-Regenerative-Consciousness/dp/1783243112 as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
There is a special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
Feedback from a recent immersion with Giles:
‘The immersion at Springwood with Giles was very powerful, thought-provoking, energising and soul-touching. I’m still strongly feeling the ripples from our time, many days after, and have already started some conversations which could be life-changing as a result. Thank you Giles! Highly recommended!’ Jules O’Donnell, Founder, Talking CAT Consulting
If you are interested in attending a one-day immersion with Giles near London on 19th September, you can contact him here https://gileshutchins.com/contact/
You can join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
For the special one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
This is a precise of Giles Hutchins’ latest book Nature Works, by independent journalist Aidan Williams
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
“We are living through a once-in-a-civilization moment. We are at an inflection point with profound consequences for the future of humanity and the very fabric of life on Earth. Time is not on our side.”
These are the first words of Nature Works, by Giles Hutchins, Coach, Speaker and author of titles such as Leading by Nature and Regenerative Leadership. This book is an urgent text that discloses and activates regenerative leadership consciousness for our future-fitness.
Nature Works looks to expand your mindset and provoke new ways of living and leading while seeking to explore and transform the Western mindset. To challenge the predominant ways of thinking that, without realising, those of us in the West slip into. It isn’t a call to arms, it’s a call for inward reflection, about how we act and think to provoke better action and to consider wider possibilities.
He describes his work as ‘regenerative leadership consciousness’ or: “the developmental cultivation of a quality of awareness that overcomes the root problem at the heart of our myriad crises.”
Giles has no particular issue with the West and nor is this some ‘East versus West’ battle, it is with a problematic worldview which has no borders. It is with an almost complete sense of separation from nature that the Western mindset has brought about. It has brought changes in science and medicine which have benefitted the world, but the book delves into the destructive downsides that can so easily be naively forgotten.
Addressing the issues with this way of thinking, Giles writes: “Yet, due to its built-in sense of separateness, it is a mechanistic mindset with an insidious and malignant quality that undermines our very existence. Its historic tendency has been to colonize new lands and ‘markets’ using methods that are fundamentally destructive to its host. It’s like a cancer, causing a rapid demise of life on Earth, which extends well beyond the hot topic of climate change.
“Take our planet’s biodiversity, for instance. Biodiversity loss is now assumed to be happening at a rate of 100-1000 times faster than normal. I invite you to pause for a moment. Reflect on that. A mass extinction of life on Earth is happening right now. Not in 2050 or 2030, but today.”
This example is an accessible way for Nature Works to start challenging your perceptions. It makes the message hit harder, the consequences that our lifestyles in the West have but which far too many of us tend just to accept. This is just the first bend in thinking that helps guide you to the more personally reflective elements later in the book.
The book is not the presentation of an idea that you either like or hate, rather it’s a mental and psychological exercise – an activating and deepening process – whereby you gradually stretch your mind and deepen your psyche into new ways of thinking and being. This is the first foot in the water that begins your wading into the regenerative river of the more complex concepts the book reveals. The river certainly gets deep in parts yet always remains deeply practical and applied.
The warnings of the dangers of this Western mindset in the opening chapter end with a moment of optimism though, the first of many insights that this book provides.
“We dive into the coming age of regenerative consciousness that enables us to solve these ‘wicked’ systemic challenges amid increased volatility and uncertainty.
“Welcome to the Regeneration Revolution. It’s time for humanity’s upgrade— enhanced creativity, embodied empathy, increased resilience, and improved agility. We have at the ready all we need to shift our mindset to one which is more future-fit for ourselves, for those around us, and for the organizations we serve.”
Given how the world has shifted over the last 10 years, it’s hard to disagree.
You rarely see a cover summarise a book so well while saying so little. This is a fascinating read which will challenge your approach to life and the way you consider every action. I loved reading this because it didn’t just throw out a statement or idea and expect you to merely react. It guides you through each thought, consistently delving deeper. As much as the book will speak about a journey, it is also your guide because an idea will never truly be lost on you. It’s very well researched but also you get a personal sense of the journey the author himself has been on.
This isn’t a light read, but then I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted my perceptions to be challenged and to expand my mind. This delivered on that front and I cannot recommend this enough. It will change how you look at life.”
– Aidan Williams, Independent Journalist
Extracts from Forewords in NATURE WORKS:
“Giles’ philosophy and coaching has been a strong rudder and regular sounding board over the last four years of Vivo’s evolution and for my own development as a leader.”
– Galahad Clark, CEO, Vivobarefoot
“There is an urgency to the regenerative approach that Giles is facilitating, and Nature Works is another vital piece in the jigsaw of how to align heart, mind, gut, and soul with nature’s wisdom, walking with Mother Earth, not against her.”
– Dr. Carolyn Eddleston , Founder, Cycles of Change
“Nature Works and the wisdom of Giles will transform and regenerate our organisations”
– Paul Hargreaves, Founder & CEO, Cotswold Fayre & Flourish
“Journeying with Giles reshapes our leadership paradigms and enriches our daily lives with depth and purpose. His mentorship has not only guided me through the practical aspects of integrating regenerative practices into my work and leadership style but has also strengthened my spiritual connection to the world around me.”
– Veronique Letellier, CEO, Butterfly & Head of Culture & Regenerative Business, AXA Climate
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here
as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
There is a special one-off one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
Transformative Times call for Death-Rebirth (R)evolution
Much is collapsing, and tensions across myriad systems are rising. This much is certain.
Rising stress, tension and dissonance inevitability invoke fear. Yet, such a time of widespread upset can also invite in a new dawn. Rather than merely ‘coping amid complexity’ we might learn to ‘thrive amid complexity’ by finding a new way beyond the old status quo limitations.
As a 400-year-old business mindset that sees ‘organization-as-machine’ crumbles under the pressure of unceasing transformation, a new way of ‘organization-as-living-system’ is on the rise. This new way is based on how NATURE WORKS, and requires an activation of regenerative leadership consciousness. As the ancient alchemic say goes:
‘Omega is an archway where Alpha stands framed.’
The death of the old in-forms the very context for a new way to be born. Let’s not fixate only on the Omega (the death-throes of the old system collapsing) but also find insight in the new dawn struggling to be born (the Alpha). As Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr articulates:
‘Only the end of a cycle of manifestation makes possible the recapitulation of the whole cycle and the creation of a synthesis which then serves as the seed for a new cycle.’
The cycle of industrialized mechanistic thinking of the last 400 years – and its widespread desacralization and exploitation of nature (incl. human nature) – is now coming to an end. The opportunity for the creation of an epochal synthesis that transcends-and-includes what’s gone before, harking back to a reactivation of ancient ways, while bringing forth the new. An unfurling in our consciousness is occurring right now during this epochal hour, if we so choose to evolve.
This is what my latest book NATURE WORKS explores, an activation of this unfurling consciousness, along with ways to bring forth insights deep within our inner-outer nature so that we learn to flow as life flows, to adapt and evolve as leaders and change agents amid these transformative times.
Rather than facing into these times with rising fear, polarizing, out-casting and blame, we can start to bring forth the real insights that deeper-nature affords, the insights that make us truly human in this more-than-human world of ours. As the great mythologist puts it:
“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.” Joseph Campbell
‘Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water… All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” – Hopi Elders’ Prophecy
The time has come for the Regeneration Revolution! Are you ready!
NATURE WORKS – Book Description
We live in a world of rising disconnect, distraction and destruction, and it’s increasingly apparent that the meta-crisis now facing humanity cannot be solved with the same level of consciousness that created this crisis of crises in the first place. Nature Works is an urgent response to this call for change, illuminating a pathway toward a new dawn where humanity finds harmony with all life on our planet. Giles Hutchins draws upon decades of research and experience in activating regenerative leadership consciousness to address the root problem of our interconnected crises. Blending pioneering neuroscience and cutting-edge findings on consciousness with ancient wisdom, he has catalyzed a way of living and leading that’s more resilient, agile, whole, and wise. In doing so, this book becomes the metaphysical foundation vital for the Regeneration Revolution.
Extracts from Forewords in NATURE WORKS:
“Giles’ philosophy and coaching has been a strong rudder and regular sounding board over the last four years of Vivo’s evolution and for my own development as a leader.”
– Galahad Clark, CEO, Vivobarefoot
“There is an urgency to the regenerative approach that Giles is facilitating, and Nature Works is another vital piece in the jigsaw of how to align heart, mind, gut, and soul with nature’s wisdom, walking with Mother Earth, not against her.”
– Dr. Carolyn Eddleston , Founder, Cycles of Change
“Nature Works and the wisdom of Giles will transform and regenerate our organisations”
– Paul Hargreaves, Founder & CEO, Cotswold Fayre & Flourish
“Journeying with Giles reshapes our leadership paradigms and enriches our daily lives with depth and purpose. His mentorship has not only guided me through the practical aspects of integrating regenerative practices into my work and leadership style but has also strengthened my spiritual connection to the world around me.”
– Veronique Letellier, CEO, Butterfly & Head of Culture & Regenerative Business, AXA Climate
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here
as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
There is a special one-off one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
Disconnect, distraction, dissonance and destruction are on the rise. The heat is on. Big time. And the tendency for fight-flight-freeze ego-reactivity increases. Fight – polarize the problems ‘out there’, blame and project on to the ‘other’; Flight – turn a deaf ear, put one’s head in the sand, isolate into a clan/echo-chamber or literally go off-grid; Freeze – stick ever tighter to the status-quo.
Yet, such a time of widespread dis-ease can also beckon a new dawn. Rather than merely ‘coping amid complexity’ we might learn to ‘thrive amid complexity’ by finding flow: less distraction more coherence, less fragmentation more integration, less pollution more regeneration. Is this at all possible with so much tension and strife?
“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.” Joseph Campbell
Might it just be that amid this confusing cacophony and destructive disconnect we find insight, a seed-opening into a way of living and leading that serves rather than severs, that connects and integrates our diversity-in-unity rather than fragments, judges and polarizes our humanity?
Is this perhaps asking too much, or is it naïve wishful thinking?
I don’t believe so.
I think we’re born for this necessary (r)evolution; that a regenerative way is already unfurling – the Way of Nature – that’s not new but as fresh as it’s ancient. No need for (re)invention, it’s found all around and within us if we so choose to see. Like the fish unconscious of the water it swims in, we’re immersed in the very source-wisdom we need to become truly human – Homo sapiens – beings who work with wisdom.
Admittedly, this Way of Nature is a significant metamorphic reorientation of our prevalent way of attending: capitalistic consumeristic anthropocentric egocentric carcinogenic self-as-separate-from-and-in-completion-with-the-world (‘self-as-separate’ for short).
This self-as-separate mode of living and leading is the biproduct of Mechanistic Materialism – a worldview rooted in separateness. Try and find solutions to our myriad crises with the same worldview consciousness that created them is futile, further exacerbating the very separateness and fragmentation it seeks to solve.
Self-as-separate promulgates a carcinogenic way of attending to life. Its inherent dynamic is one of striving for control. This spawns from an existential fear emanating from the illusion of separation. Cut off from the deeper flow of life, uprooted from the Way of Nature, and lacking a soulful trust-in-life, its starved of love, truth and wisdom. So we grasp, achieve, assert one’s will onto the things we seek to fix, projecting on to the ‘other’. In search of surety amid separateness we find false certainty through monocultured normalization and regulation, moralistic ‘thou shalt not’ codes and competing priorities trying to fix things ‘out there’ while leaving the dark-side suppressed within. We blame and project outward while leaving our own shadows unintegrated…the very place we find real insight is ignored in our haste to fix, assert, control. It’s the insight within our own deeper nature that might just save us from our own unanchored egos.
“As long we are not conscious of the fissure within our own nature, and our catastrophic disconnection from our instinctual soul, we will be driven to seek out and attack an object on which to project our darkness.” Anne Baring
When coaching leaders, I might use the metaphor of the bicycle wheel. At the center of the wheel – the hub – is a coherency, a stillness amid the turning world, a centeredness that invokes velocity. The wheel spokes provide ways of living and leading, practices of ‘working’ on ourselves amid the unfolding regenerative journey ahead. The outer rim – the tire – is where the rubber-hits-the-road, the pot-holes and punctures, twists and turns, daily constrictions and acculturations. Over the last fifteen years of coaching diverse leaders, practitioners and change agents from all walks of life and across all continents, amid rising volatility in their communities, teams and organizations, and general rising stress across all systems, I have witnessed that those leaders most able to thrive amid complexity are the ones most able to adapt to change by sensing-responding rather than controlling-managing. The mastery these budding regenerative leaders start to live is the capacity to center amid turmoil, to stay in the stillness while still moving, to know the edge of the wheel while remaining true to its center.
“In all stillness there is movement. In all movement there is stillness.” Martial Art proverb
Just a few days ago one of my coaching clients embarked on a form of pilgrimage walk of his own making, to acknowledge the ending of one significant life-chapter and the beginning of another. Before setting off, he asked if I could provide a quote or phrase for him to ruminate on while he walked for twelve days. I offered this one:
“Stillness is what creates love,
Movement is what creates life,
To be still,
Yet still moving
That’s everything!”
– Do Hyun Choe
Amid this epochal hour one ought not distance oneself from the order of the day and its multitude of challenges. That would be a mere fight-flight-freeze ego-masquerade. Yet one can learn to gain deeper perspective on the fragmenting, projecting, polarizing effect resting on the surface of the wheel creates in ourselves if we forget to remain connected to the center of things.
Learning to be still yet still moving is a vital way into regenerative leadership consciousness. It costs nothing yet is life-changing. This seeing with new eyes is our birthright.
Lao Tzu shared a timeless truth some two thousand five hundred years ago, which can also be found via different words across wisdom traditions and mythic narratives the world over:
“Tao gives birth to One,
One gives birth to Two,
The Two gives birth to Three,
The Three gives birth to the ten thousand things.” Lao Tzu
When we immerse ourselves in the Way of Nature we sense the One-Two-Three birthing in all things, the diversity-in-unity, and wisdom pervades our outer doing. Yet when we immerse ourselves in the ten thousand things at the surface of the wheel and lose our center, we forget the One of the still point, and start to strive for control and soon enough the ten thousand things become a competing cacophony distracting and disillusioning us. We get caught up in ego-maya and feel an urge to ‘save the world’ by fixing things ‘out there’, projecting our own lack of center (and our own unintegrated shadow) on to what we think needs fixing.
We forget what really needs saving – or re-membering – the center, the stillness of the One from which the duality of the Two can be held as a creative tension that brings forth the Three – the Trinity-in-Unity – which gives birth to the richness of diversity-in-unity, finding flow-dance rather than jostling-disconnect.
The urgency of today’s complexity can often take us to the rim of the wheel, and we quickly find ourselves with jostling competing priorities, and soon enough anxiety, fear, anger, passionate fervor, ambitious drive riles us to outwardly fix all manner of urgent challenges. To name just a few and in no particular order (as to prioritize is to polarize, to get stuck on the surface of fragmentation, pulled ever further apart):
Rampant rising biodiversity loss, carbon ppm in the atmosphere, ocean acidification, soil degradation, the fractional reserve banking system and exploitative investment incentives, corporatism and cronyism, transnational trading agreements degrading local entrepreneurialism, white supremacy/imperialism/colonialism, neoliberalism washing away local custom, the rise of hard-right/hard-left political rhetoric, the tendency toward totalitarianism and surveillance capitalism, transhumanism, mass migration, pressure on finite natural resources, renewable technologies and ‘rare earths’, rising armed conflict, supply-chain volatility, political corruption, pedophilia rings, sex trade, child labor, fast fashion, monocultural toxic agroindustry, industrial fishing, debt slavery, reductive scientism, international trade in exotic species, abuse of animal rights, ecocide, rampant waste and pollution, GDP and other jaundice economic metrics, structural racism and misogyny, erosion of civil liberties, widespread disenfranchisement, mental health pandemic, exponential rise in suicide rates, cost of living crisis, desertification, widespread watershed pressures, extreme weather events, sexual discrimination, exceeding planetary boundaries, destruction of the commons, microplastics everywhere, the collapse of insects, the nitrogen challenge… and the list goes on.
The (r)evolution in human consciousness in-part relies on the passionate fervor and gutsy ambition of human agency to rally behind these myriad symptoms, making change happen ‘out there’. Yet when we solely hone-in on fixing things out there, blinkering our view and losing touch with the center of the wheel, we bring yesterday’s Mechanistic Materialism in through the back-door, corrupting our fervent endeavors with the same consciousness that created the problems in the first place.
To reorient our awareness back from the surface of competing crises and the busyness of everyday reality into the center of our own (and our humanity’s) eco-psycho-spiritual ground is what the process of becoming a regenerative leader entails. It entails a psychospiritual journey into the center of one’s very being, and into the center-point of the world, deep into inner-outer nature.
“Look deep, deep, deep into nature and you will understand everything better.” Albert Einstein
Nature does not enforce a rigid order, code, external logic or set of principles on our minds. Instead Nature’s Wisdom invites a yoking, centering, surrendering that brings forth an effortless spontaneity into our way of living and leading.
This requires trust.
Trust in our own natural wholeness and true nature, amid suppressed wounds, trauma and shadow, which calls for self-acceptance, forgiveness, courage and compassion.
Trust in others, in the inherent soulfulness inside the humanity of each and everyone of us, the uniqueness that unfurls fecund unity.
Trust in life, beyond the nihilistic Neo-Darwinist mechanistic view of life drained of meaning and mystery; instead, a felt-sense of the sacred flowing through each ephemeral-eternal moment pregnant with purposefulness.
Our way through separateness does not lie at the surface of the wheel, it lies deep within and all around us amid the everyday epiphanic moment which tears the fabric of space-time duality if only for the briefest of moments to begin with, yet is ever-present in the origin of all things amid every moment, for all with soul-sight to see.
“Learn how to see. Realize everything connects with everything else.” Leonardo Da Vinci
The time has come to learn how to see, and realize that what is within us is within everything. That our consciousness originates and reorientates around the centre of the wheel, where the dance and dancer are at-one.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor toward; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor toward,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. T.S. Eliot
The importance of finding the radical rootedness within the rhizome of regeneration is what impelled me to write my latest book NATURE WORKS which explores – indeed activates – regenerative leadership consciousness so we don’t merely ‘cope’ but ‘thrive’ amid increasing complexity by learning to flow as life flows.
NATURE WORKS – Book Description
We live in a world of rising disconnect, distraction and destruction, and it’s increasingly apparent that the meta-crisis now facing humanity cannot be solved with the same level of consciousness that created this crisis of crises in the first place. Nature Works is an urgent response to this call for change, illuminating a pathway toward a new dawn where humanity finds harmony with all life on our planet. Giles Hutchins draws upon decades of research and experience in activating regenerative leadership consciousness to address the root problem of our interconnected crises. Blending pioneering neuroscience and cutting-edge findings on consciousness with ancient wisdom, he has catalyzed a way of living and leading that’s more resilient, agile, whole, and wise. In doing so, this book becomes the metaphysical foundation vital for the Regeneration Revolution.
Extracts from Forewords in NATURE WORKS:
“Giles’ philosophy and coaching has been a strong rudder and regular sounding board over the last four years of Vivo’s evolution and for my own development as a leader.” – Galahad Clark, CEO, Vivobarefoot
“There is an urgency to the regenerative approach that Giles is facilitating, and Nature Works is another vital piece in the jigsaw of how to align heart, mind, gut, and soul with nature’s wisdom, walking with Mother Earth, not against her.” – Dr. Carolyn Eddleston , Founder, Cycles of Change
“Nature Works and the wisdom of Giles will transform and regenerate our organisations” – Paul Hargreaves, Founder & CEO, Cotswold Fayre & Flourish
“Journeying with Giles reshapes our leadership paradigms and enriches our daily lives with depth and purpose. His mentorship has not only guided me through the practical aspects of integrating regenerative practices into my work and leadership style but has also strengthened my spiritual connection to the world around me.” – Veronique Letellier, CEO, Butterfly & Head of Culture & Regenerative Business, AXA Climate
NATURE WORKS is now available direct from the publisher here https://www.wordzworth.com/sales/authorbooks?ISBN=9781783243112
And from Amazon here
as well as other book providers and all good book shops.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
There is a special one-off one-day immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 19th September 2024, see here for more details.
The Nature of Business 