Walkshops and other facilitated sessions

You managed to get the balance just right between facilitating and letting the conversations flow.
Michael Finlay Allen, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur

Over the years, through trial and error, I have found my thinking ‘space’ and continue to find inspiration outside, with the absolute appreciation that my desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. This is why I invite entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders and executive teams to ditch the boardroom and join me on adventures that might just change their thinking.

Together we explore wild places, undertake shared challenges and use tried and tested techniques to develop clear-sighted entrepreneurial thinking.

It is time to do business differently. Take your thinking outdoors and start Outside Thinking.

Realise To be innovative or entrepreneurial is to be creative.

Understand Creativity is generated best through abstraction & distraction

Practice Walking outdoors is a sure-fire way to generate creative thinking

Innovate Outside Thinking can be truly transformational for you and your business

Sample walks, talks and activities – as always, these are endlessly tweakable to create something bespoke for you and your team.

Title	Description	Price from	Approx duration	Location
TASTER TALK & WALK	Introduction to outside thinking & walkshops	£1500	1-3 hours	Your venue
NEVER BORED MEETING	Facilitated outside executive or board meetings	£2500	1/2 – 1 day	Your venue
OUTSIDE STRATEGY DAY	Team strategic walkshop	£3000	1 day	Various – or your venue
DE-CONFERENCE Woods	2 day outside walkshop and creative thinking journey with off-grid woodland retreat overnight	£6000	2 days	Somerset
DE-CONFERENCE Mountains	2 day outside walkshop and creative thinking journey with hotel or glamping overnight	£6000	2 days	Brecon Beacons
DE-CONFERENCE Coast	2 day outside walkshop and creative thinking journey with hotel overnight	£6000	2 days	South West coast path
RETREAT & RETHINK Mallorca	Team walking adventure in the Tramontana, Mallorca, to explore creative thinking, innovation and imagined futures	£8000	3-4 days	Mallorca	More info (one pager)
RETREAT & RETHINK Greece	Team walking adventure in the Zagori, N Greece, to explore creative thinking, innovation and imagined futures	£8000	3-4 days	Greece
RETREAT & RETHINK Morocco	Team walking adventure in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco, to explore creative thinking, innovation and imagined futures	£8000	4-5 days	Morocco

Interested? Start a conversation

Gaining perspective is a key part of developing creativity and is more likely to develop when you take a break from the ordinary. You won’t find your competitive edge at the bottom of an Excel spreadsheet, however large you project it.

Trips range from the ambitious (a week with your team in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa perhaps), the luxurious (exploring the Tramuntana and eating Michelin-starred food in Mallorca) to the more manageable (a half-day one-to-one in the hills of the UK or as part of your conference) and are all tailored to suit your needs. First step is for us to chat, me to listen and figure out what might work for you.

I look forward to discussing what would suit you best.

Garry guided myself and a group of our business on a short 2-day tour where we explored the best that Wales had to offer. Whilst it never felt like a ‘work day’ Garry carefully navigated our team over the course of two days using the natural landscape to either ‘broaden our horizons’ on the tops of Pen y Fan where there literally were no boundaries, or he helped us focus on mindfulness techniques when we were enclosed by the Black Mountain Forrest. Pure genius and genuinely transformational.

We often talk about ‘return of investment’ when it comes to business. Putting a price on having a more motivated and aligned self-aware team who have learnt some new life skills and since our walk come up with some amazing ideas resultant from the discussions and process that will stand the test of time is truly priceless.
Ed Van Rooyen, CEO

Sit as little as possible. Give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while moving about freely

— Nietzsche

This quote embodies the two vital elements that we can all easily use to make Outside Thinking part of our everyday, working lives.

Firstly, don’t sit at your desk too much, don’t believe that inspiration will somehow radiate from your screen, appear from surfing another website, sitting on another group Zoom call, tweaking another spreadsheet or through arriving early, or staying late, at the office.

This ingrained mindset needs to be shifted to allow us all to bunk off, slow down, have different conversations and go outside.

Secondly, we need ways to question and critique any idea that is born of or comes from our traditional working ways. Even if we do eventually bear them some credence, at least give them some air first. Ponder them. Interrogate them. Talk them through with friends and colleagues. But, most importantly, take them outside.

The novelist John le Carré knew this too, famously saying, ‘a desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world’, a quote I’ve pretty much commandeered for my own marketing purposes.

Over the years, through trial and error, I definitely found my thinking ‘space’ and continue to find inspiration outside, walking in the hills, mountains and coastal paths of the UK, Europe and North Africa – with the absolute appreciation that my desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. And I call on anyone who aspires to be an entrepreneur, leader, fresh air thinker, idea explorer, tech innovator, creative or business activist to do the same.