New Leadership Book Calls for Radical Shift From Control to Connection
Rewilding the Corporate Mind challenges industrial-age leadership and offers a regenerative blueprint for organisations in a world of division and crisis
Senior leaders are under pressure from every direction. Expectations have increased, margins are tighter and scrutiny is constant. At the same time, levels of exhaustion and disengagement continue to rise. Most culture change initiatives start with conviction, yet struggle to take root.
According to leadership expert Thom Dennis, this is not a resilience problem, but a systems issue. His timely new book, Rewilding the Corporate Mind, (launched in March), argues that the real crisis in business today is not a lack of strategy, skill or intelligence. It is a failure of worldview. Modern organisations are still operating on control-based assumptions in a world that no longer responds to control. “Burnout is not a resilience problem,” says Dennis. “It is a systems problem.”
Drawing on more than 30 years working with Fortune 500 companies across the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific and emerging markets, Dennis has witnessed the limits of command-and-control leadership first-hand. The structures that once delivered predictability are now struggling under complexity. In volatile conditions, control narrows thinking, reduces adaptability and silences dissent.
Rewilding the Corporate Mind proposes something different. Rather than offering another management framework, Dennis turns to living systems for guidance. Forests, ecosystems, indigenous communities and natural habitats do not survive through rigid hierarchy. They thrive through diversity, feedback, interdependence and regeneration. Nature, he argues, offers not a metaphor but an operating system built for resilience. This is where “rewilding” begins.
Not rebellion. Not dismantling business. But restoring capacities that have been suppressed: instinct, reflection, courage and long-term thinking. Rewilding is about remembering how to lead in ways that align with how life actually works. Dennis says, “Leadership isn’t about control but about listening, showing compassion and appreciating vulnerability. It's more about stewardship - of people, culture and the wider systems we depend upon, an acknowledgement that we are part of something greater than us, not lords of it.”
What distinguishes the book is not just its argument, but its method. Each chapter closes with what Dennis calls “Seeds for Reflection” – carefully framed questions designed to slow the reader down and bring the work into lived experience. Questions such as:
Where has efficiency overridden humanity in your organisation?
What behaviours are rewarded and which are quietly discouraged?
How might your work serve life more fully?
These are not rhetorical devices, rather prompts for practical change. Throughout his work, Dennis has seen how the quality of questions determines the quality of decisions.
The book emerges from decades of hands-on experience advising executives, facilitating leadership retreats and guiding deep organisational change through his platform, Serenity in Leadership. From boardrooms to off-sites in wild landscapes, Dennis’s work has focused on helping leaders move beyond surface fixes and cultivate cultures rooted in trust, clarity and long-term responsibility.
Why This Book Matters Now
Rewilding the Corporate Mind is not anti-business but a call for business to mature and move beyond extractive thinking towards regenerative leadership. With organisations facing accelerating technological change, employee disengagement, geopolitical volatility and climate risk, this new book speaks directly to CEOs, CHROs, founders, policymakers and executive teams seeking a more evolved path forward. Rather than offering surface-level management tactics, the book invites a deeper shift in worldview.
Dennis writes, “This is not leadership as domination, but leadership as skilled participation. Not the hero at the top, but the community in relationship.” The message is clear: evolve or collapse.
Rewilding the Corporate Mind costs £14.95 (softback) / £24.95 (hardback) / £7.45 (Kindle) and is available on Amazon now. For further insights, leadership programmes, events and resources, visit Serenity in Leadership. Follow on LinkedIn and Substack.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Endorsements from Global Voices
The book has already received strong endorsements from influential leaders across business, academia, and spirituality.
Marianne Williamson, #1 New York Times bestselling author, calls it:
“Not a leadership book in the way we have come to understand that term. It is a healing book - and the distinction matters enormously.”
Dean Carter, former Head of Global People & Culture at Patagonia, writes in the foreword:
“This is a blueprint for what is next: leadership as relationship, organizations as living systems, and work as a space for human and ecological flourishing.”
About the Author
Thom Dennis is a leadership consultant, facilitator and founder of Serenity In Leadership. With over fifty years of international experience across the Royal Marines, corporate, and healing contexts, he has worked with organisations including ConocoPhillips, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Citigroup, Merkle DACH and Roche. His work integrates systems thinking, developmental psychology, and embodied leadership practice.