Q0 is not just any start-of-the-year team event. It is our launching pad for the coming 12 months.
It is how we choose to begin the year: together, deliberately, and at pace. While many organisations drift back into January half-awake, still shaking off the residue of the previous year, Q0 is where we accelerate. It is where we collapse the gap between ambition and action and create momentum immediately, because momentum, like everything else that matters, compounds.
The theme for each Q0 is often inspired by a book, and this year was no different. We drew heavily on Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, not as something to admire, but as something to use. A framework to stress-test judgment, sharpen decision-making, and force clarity in a year where clarity will matter more than comfort.
Success, I am increasingly convinced, comes down to how well you think and act under uncertainty. It is the interplay between ambition and audacity, skill and luck and the discipline to place the right bets when the stakes are high.
Ambition sets the direction. Audacity gives you permission to aim higher than is comfortable. Skill improves the odds. Luck will always have a bigger say than we would like to admit. Thinking in bets is how you navigate that reality. It is how you decide where to press, where to protect, and how to keep momentum on your side long enough for good decisions to compound.
2026 is the most important year yet for natural capital. We are at a rare point of convergence: accelerating climate chaos, biodiversity collapse, serious capital mobilisation, rapid technological advancement, and regulatory commitments moving in the same direction.
We now have the UK’s only institutional-scale natural capital platform, built precisely for this moment. And this year, we are betting even bigger on nature as critical infrastructure, and on its ability to deliver durable environmental and social impact at scale.
2026 is the year we super-scale conservation.
The Purpose of Q0 – Why We Start the Year at Full Pace
At its core, Q0 exists to do three things. First, to align us around a clear strategic direction for the year ahead. Second, to translate that strategy into ownership at every level of the organisation. Third, to build energy, excitement, and ambition before the real work begins.
We introduced our Green Print for the year, our roadmap for excellence, built on a set of concrete yet ambitious objectives. These objectives keep us aiming for the stars while delivering on what matters now. This is a living framework. Strategy only matters if people can see themselves inside it, and Q0 is where we shine a light on exactly that. The Green Print sets the ambition. Q0 is where that ambition is interrogated, challenged, and turned into something tangible.
We deliberately bring in expert speakers at this point in the year. Not to motivate in the abstract, but to sharpen thinking and provide an external perspective. Their role is not to tell us what to do, but to help our people better understand their own roles in the system. From there, the work shifts decisively inward.
Directors and Heads of Department are responsible for turning the Green Print into reality. This is where strategy either lives or dies. The time together gives us the space to do this properly: to think, question, debate, and refine. Objectives are built, stress-tested, and owned. Ambiguity is removed. Freedom is preserved. A critical discipline in this process is ensuring that the senior team have their objectives set ahead of time. When leadership is clear, teams move faster and with more confidence.
What struck me most was the level of engagement with the Green Print. The detail people went into. The quality of the questions. This was not passive attendance. It was active participation. People cared enough to probe, to challenge, and to want to understand not just the what, but the why and the how.
This is how belief is built. Not through slogans, although we do have some of those too, but through shared thinking and collective problem-solving.
Closing the Gap Between Intent and Action
Vision can easily become abstract. At Q0, we work relentlessly to make it practical. The journey from vision to execution is deliberately structured. We move from high-level ambition into practical seminars, and from there into objective setting for the year and for Q1. Each discussion narrows the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
This year, experiential learning played an even bigger part. People did not just talk about decision-making, risk, and resource allocation. They experienced it.
Because 2026 is not a year for incrementalism. It is a year that demands conviction. Natural capital has moved from the margins to the mainstream. Capital is mobilising. Policy is catching up. Expectations are rising. This feels, unmistakably, like the biggest year yet for our sector. And moments like that require a different way of thinking.
If you believe this is the year when natural capital truly steps into its own, you do not hedge timidly. You place thoughtful, deliberate bets. You manage your downside, but you lean into your edge. You allocate time, energy, and capital with intent.
Thinking in Bets
Thinking in Bets provided a powerful framework for exploring how we make decisions under uncertainty. It is a concept rooted in poker, but its relevance to business, investment, and conservation is profound.
At its heart, Thinking in Bets is about separating decision quality from outcomes. You can make a good decision and still get a bad result. You can make a bad decision and get lucky. The discipline lies in consistently making high-quality decisions over time.
We explored three core ideas: bankroll management, finding an edge, and understanding the balance between skill and luck.
- Bankroll management is about recognising that resources are finite: capital, time, energy, and attention. Spend them all too early, and you are out of the game. Protect them too tightly and you miss the opportunities that create outsized returns. The art is in allocation.
- Finding an edge is about understanding where you genuinely have an advantage and where you do not. It requires honesty and self-awareness. Overestimating your edge is one of the fastest ways to destroy value; underestimating it risks limiting your ability to operate at your highest potential.
- The balance between skill and luck is perhaps the hardest lesson. In complex systems, outcomes are never entirely within our control. The goal is not certainty, but resilience. Staying in the game long enough for skill to compound.
We used poker chips as a metaphor for time and energy across the year. Everyone was given the same amount of chips at the start of the Q0 and everything we did cost – including meals and activities. Each decision costs chips. Alongside, people were able to make bets, like how long a presentation would be. Some bets are small and exploratory. Others are big and consequential. Seeing this play out in real time was instructive and, at times, uncomfortable. Which is exactly the point.
Feeling the Cost of Every Decision
What made the chip experience powerful was its immediacy. Decisions were made in real time. Consequences followed quickly. People could see how early choices shaped later options.
Those chips became the connective tissue of the entire experience. Odds mattered. Consequences were visible. Resources were finite. Every choice reduced optionality elsewhere, but created leverage where it mattered. People felt, quite literally, what it means to allocate scarce resources under pressure and to live with the downstream impact of those decisions.
That thinking culminated in the creation of a high-end casino on the final evening, built inside one of our estate buildings. By that point, participants understood the weight of each chip. They knew when to walk away, when preservation was the smartest play, but they also saw when to double down to seize an emerging advantage.
Crucially, the learning did not stop at the tables. Remaining chips could be used in an auction, a shop, or a library. People could bid on experiences like a stalking day with Charles & Archie or the best seat at team meals for the year, as well as items like water bottles with hand-drawn designs from team members and limited-edition OC gear like beanies.
This reinforced another critical lesson: how to deploy accumulated resources for maximum return. Do you invest in knowledge, experiences, assets, or future optionality? There was no right answer, only trade-offs. By closing the loop this way, we anchored Thinking in Bets not as a concept, but as a lived experience that mirrored exactly how we must think about capital, time, and energy throughout the year ahead.
This kind of immersive learning creates understanding that no slide deck ever could. It gives people a safe environment to test judgment, make mistakes, and learn fast.
We do not read books to admire them. We mine them. Ideas only matter when they are applied and integrated into how we work.
The Human Side of Performance
We leaned hard into the contrast that defines us, and always has. The adventurous version of ourselves in Patagonia fleeces and Oxygen Conservation t-shirts sat comfortably alongside black tie and investment attire. Field and finance. Mud and markets. Purpose and performance in the same room.
This is not a tension to be resolved. It is a duality we actively choose to embrace.
That contrast is not aesthetic; it is cultural. It reflects our values in motion: environment and impact grounded in credibility, adventure paired with discipline, and togetherness forged through shared experience rather than hierarchy. The company restoring peatlands and planting trees are the ones structuring deals, allocating capital, and standing up in front of serious investors.
We even used the moment to update headshots and imagery, because how we show up externally should be an honest reflection of who we are internally: serious and credible, without being sterile. Professional, without losing our humanity.
The Year Has Begun
Q0 did exactly what it was meant to do. And then some.
It did not just align us around a vision; it committed us to it. It did not just translate strategy into objectives; it forced choices. It sharpened how we think about risk, resources, and consequence, and it created momentum when it is most valuable: right at the start.
We leave Q0 with more than clarity and confidence. We leave with intent. The chips are in play. The odds are understood. The bets are deliberate. Now comes the part that separates ambition from achievement.
This is the year to lean in. To back ourselves. To place disciplined, audacious bets on nature as critical infrastructure and on our ability to execute at scale. 2026 will not reward hesitation. It will reward conviction, pace, and quality of decision-making. This year, we are betting on moving decisively toward a £500 million valuation by delivering institutional-scale, impact-driven land management across natural capital, renewable energy, built property, regenerative agriculture, and ecotourism.
We’re going to think in bets. Allocate our time, energy, and capital with intent. Press where we have an edge. Protect what matters. And play the year as if it truly is what we believe it to be: the most important year yet for natural capital, and the year we prove that Scaling Conservation is not just possible, but hugely profitable.
So, the call to action is simple.
Everyone is betting this year, whether they admit it or not. The only difference is whether those bets are deliberate or accidental.
So, ask yourself: in 2026, what are you betting on? And are you allocating your time, energy, attention, and capital as if this year actually matters?
A massive thank you goes to the incredible Louise Docker, Archie Barnes and Laura Hartshorn for making this the absolute best Q0 we have ever had – the attention to detail, creativity and energy was nothing short of magical!
Thanks also go to Chris Winter, Dave Keir, and Elly Steers for their outstanding keynote sessions. Each brought clarity, challenge, and motivation in equal measure, reminding us to think bigger, aim higher, and lead with ambition for the year ahead.
A special thank you to the brilliant Elena Doms, who travelled to join us and delivered one of the most energising and future-facing sessions of Q0. Elena brought the European natural capital landscape to life, sharing not just where the market is today, but where it’s heading, and why the opportunity ahead is so extraordinary. Her perspective was bold, honest, and deeply motivating, reminding us that what we’re building isn’t just relevant, it’s needed, and it’s happening now.
We would also like to thank our special guests, John Haynes from ATASS Sports, for his interactive session on decision-making and probability, and Peter Harker, Partner at Saffery, who played the part of our poker dealer at our casino night – this event would not have been the same without them.
Finally, thank you to our amazing Head of People, Andrew Dewar PhD, who consistently coaches our team to perform at the highest level. You ensured Q0 wasn’t just something we experienced, but something we could apply, translating every lesson into how we think, work, and perform together. That bridge between insight and execution is what made this event matter.