Back in May last year I had the pleasure of hosting the then CEO of the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity, Andy Cook, and Michael-John Albert, a board member of Ernst Young (now EY), on my Gloucestershire farm to discuss AI.

The purpose was to consider how AI would impact and potentially assist the objectives and efficiencies of Helen Arkell, for which Michael-John served as Chair of Trustees. While we had already transformed the charity’s remote therapy provision through a software solution, there was a shared ambition to think beyond. 

It was a surprise tactic, but it was crucial to break free from the constraints of the present and let our thoughts roam. So, I proposed a unique approach: a mini-safari around the fields to draw inspiration. I wished to stimulate innovative thinking by immersing ourselves in the natural world, where countless solutions to complex problems have evolved over millennia.

As a farmer’s son, I’ve always found inspiration in the natural world. I’ve come to see that AI, in many ways, is mirroring the latent wisdom, knowledge, and innate power of natural elements.

With a firm belief in the six distinct AI impacts on businesses, organisations, and individuals, I chose six living elements from my natural surroundings to illustrate each of them.

Agility

So, to their surprise, after a welcome coffee and croissant, I took them to visit a clump of stinging nettles. 

Yes, the common nettle was my first ‘go-to’ inspiration. Nettles colonise places where others cannot. They survive and flourish wherever and whenever weed killers fail. Attempts to eradicate the nettle are a constant battle that is impossible to win.

They are resurgent, patient, resilient, and opportunistic. Deeply hidden strands of dismembered roots wait patiently to break through and reclaim any ground left barren or unattended during a stinging power struggle. 

The nettle exemplifies the power of agility and continuous enterprise, qualities that the AI era requires. Like the nettle, enterprises must be in constant motion, capable of responding quickly to ongoing disruption and thriving amidst it. 

Performance

My second inspiration was grass, yes, plain and simple grass. It’s everywhere, isn’t it? Have you ever wondered why? No? Perhaps because we walk all over it. And yet, it is incredible. It’s perpetual, it endures droughts, it safeguards our souls, and no carnivore could survive without it. It’s vital to our food chain.

Grass is the ultimate performer. In this new era, dominated, threatened, and propelled by AI, only those businesses, organisations, and individuals who achieve dramatic, whole-cycle productivity gains will likely succeed. Grass is one of the most competitive and successful plants. However, unless the brand or organisation stands out, it is merely grass.

Trodden, ignored, and abused and possibly concreted over. AI is a potential equaliser for businesses and demands productivity improvements like never before. Without a unique point of difference, companies, organisations, and even ourselves will be reduced to just a blade of grass among many. 

Difference

I then took Michael-John and Andy to see our pedigree Gloucester cattle. These are an endangered breed – or at least they were – but for my friend Clifford Freeman (who owns the largest herd), proving something quite significant. By emphasising the unique competitive advantage of this breed, he has overturned the long-standing belief that only modern commercial cross-breeds can compete. 

It highlights the opportunity and raises the question for any business or organisation: how can you stand out in your sector or your niche, or can you create a new niche? The difference is increasingly essential. You do not want to end up just grass, do you? You want to be the unique breed that stands out.

Responsive

Look closely, and you’ll see that our hill hosts hundreds of smaller hills – ant hills. Someone asked me if these are artificial mounds for when cows were hand-milked in the field. But they are far more remarkable. Each is an entire ant-built ecosystem.

They do look artificial—quite incredible. They epitomise the values of enterprise architecture and manage their own digital ecosystem..

Organisations need to work seamlessly as one, like ants. Data needs to be fluid, unified, and pooled. 

 I once worked with an American who had just bought out Scotts of Stow, back then the UK’s leading mail order kitchen and lifestyle brand. He told me he was at 26 (I think) the managing director of Hertz in the UK, a car rental company, and how, when he came to the UK, he was astonished by how hierarchical British companies were, reflected in dedicated car parking spaces and separated catering for management. 

His particular genius may have been in recognising the need to break down tilo culture, replacing division (which one could argue was a factor in the industrial disputes that once dogged the country) with a team ethos.

Pull up to today, and while work practices are much different, silos still operate with too much detachment, and data sits in too many different silos. This practice leads to latency, unnecessary costs and unaffordable dysfunction that the AI era will brutally punish.

We need to be ant-like, working seamlessly. Data must become fluid, unstructured, and shared. No longer be disparate. We need to work together, like a colony of ants, to achieve our goals.

Talent
On the farm, we have a problem with foxes. I’ve lost too many hens, ducks and turkeys to the cunning and stealthy nature of Mr Fox. Mr Fox has a nose for chances, a cunning and Intelligence that I simply do not see in other animals.

The Fox had to be my fifth inspiration to share with Andy and Michael John, for the fox is the master of reinvention. And human talent is a prerequisite to direct perpetual change. 

We must all ask… what new skills are necessary for the workforce better to drive reinvention across entire value chains and business processes? How can a business or organisation develop and apply continuous learning programs across all levels of a team? How can the team become more agile, more opportunist… more cunning?

Only once did my former wife ever leave the hen coop door open at night. That is all it took for the opportunist fox to commit slaughter. Let that be a warning to all established businesses. 

Resilience
We all trust the oak tree. Proud, tall, solid and trusted by all. Trees, of course, were my final inspiration to share. We lost one—it was ancient and proud, but it fell during a horrendous storm a few years back. I cried. In fact, its stump features on the front page of this website, and as such, its spirit lives on.

What does the oak tree teach us about AI? Its data is safe and secure. It survives and thrives from roots to trunk to branch to leaf to acorn. When that oak tree fell, it was a wonder to see how, to its dying day, it thrived and hosted thousands of invertebrates, providing nesting spaces for Little Owls and the winter larder for squirrels, yet it was hollow.

Over its 300 years, its trunk was rotten to its core, but who would have known? It still lived on to its dying day through the rising sap from its outer trunk, giving it majesty beyond any trees around it.

The tree inspired the after-lunch session, when the three of us sat to grow a tree for Helen Arkle. How can it grow? How and where can it grow? What is it growing for? How do all the branches connect? How is the fruit harvested? How does it seed?

That oak tree lives on. The Natural World gives us answers that will never change.

____________

©˙Matthew Rymer
All writing and ideas are my own.
AI tools are limited to formatting and proofing.