Book Launch News!

Welcome!

I’m delighted to let you know about my first book:

“Out of Office: Can Time in Nature Build Better Leaders?

It is released on Monday 24th February at the same time as I give my keynote at the Outdoor Education Conference in Exeter.

Exclusively for subscribers, I’ve included some extracts and video from my keynote presentation.

Thank you for all the messages of encouragement and support that have got me to this point.

Let’s dive in

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Out of Office: “On My Way” Promo

The perfect way to promote a book about the outdoors…

See if you can spot where I get a bootful of water…

Extract: The Importance of Being Outside

All the most important things in my life have happened outside in nature.

It’s a bold statement.
It’s a statement that conjures images.
It’s a statement that provokes opinions.

So, before you get ahead of yourselves, here’s what it doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean that I got married in a sacred grove or that our children were born on a bed of ferns or that my wife got better from serious illness by chewing on bark in a flower meadow.

(And if that floats your boat, by all means, set sail.)

And although I have never, ever regretted a walk (another bold statement), it also doesn’t mean that anything that happened to me inside has no meaning.

Here’s what it does mean.

Something happened outside in nature that meant that the thinking I did and the decisions I made led to the best decisions available.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not just better decisions, but the best ones.

Personal decisions.
Creative decisions.
Relational decisions.
Parental decisions.
Professional decisions.

And you know the best thing about making the best decisions available?

Very few regrets.

Be honest—did that answer surprise you? Did you expect me to start talking about “optimising productivity,” “harnessing potential,” or “six-figure months”?

This is not a book about those outcomes, although they may feature along the way.

It is a book about honest starting points, setting out, calibrating along the way, and legacy.

All under the influence of being outside in nature.

All “out of office.”

Extract: Dry Red Tape

Leadership existed long before there was an indoors.

At first, it served simple purposes for simple groups: ensuring the survival of family units. Over time, purposes and social hierarchies grew more complex. But the need for designated indoor spaces to lead administratively—rather than politically—is a relatively modern development.

It took 300,000 years after the appearance of Homo sapiens for the first indoor administrative spaces to emerge—the officium—as distinct from political or judicial spaces. Before that, leadership was concentrated in a single place: the court of a king or high-status official.

And yet, today, the divide between leadership and the outdoors is so deeply ingrained that we’re convinced all the important leadership work happens inside.

But officium wasn’t built to elevate leadership—it was built for administrative complexity and status.

Leading indoors was never about sophistication.

We moved leadership inside so we could keep all the red tape dry.^[i] [ii]

But at a cost.

Our attention would never be the same

^[i] Mumford, L. (1961) The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. London: Harcourt, Brace & World.

^[ii] Graeber, D. (2015) The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House

Check out the book here

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Some exciting developments coming.

A new partnership for the next few issues.

YMCA Exeter’s Lighthouse Team x fwd

Watch. This. Space

That’s all for this week.

Until next week, let’s keep moving fwd…