Sometimes you meet people for the briefest moment and you just know they have been put on the planet to do something really important. When you read this interview, you will feel overwhelmed; intimated; inferior - the breadth and scope of Jon Berry is almost impossible to contain in one article. And then you will let his work sit with you and you will feel moved; you will feel hopeful; you will feel giddy; you will feel optimistic. I met Jon at the Do Lectures. I accidentally signed up for a morning 5k run (hadn’t ran in years) and was feeling extremely nervous about running - first thing in the morning - with a group of strangers (including one ultra-marathon runner). I don’t know if Jon consciously picked this up but he immediately cracked open a joke about his personal interest in running being strictly croissant-related (“I run for the pastries at the end”) and all the nerves melted away. Over the weekend we crossed paths a few times and Jon is the type of person everyone wants to be around - warm and funny and friendly and self-deprecating and incredibly knowledgeable but extremely humble. He leaves an impact…little did I know the true size and scope of his impact. This is for anyone and everyone who truly believes there is a better way to do business; a better way to live in the world; a better way to be. From the many businesses and projects he is involved in, to his view on work-life balance, culture, play and giving back - here is a blueprint for doing everything a little bit better…
I am co-founder and Managing Director of Tyler Grange. I know it sounds like the name of a retire home, but it’s a made-up name. When the 4 of us founded the business in 2010, we weren’t that bothered what it was called. Once we worked out that we couldn’t make a rude acronym from our initials, we settled on a combination of random words. As it says on our website: Tyler Grange didn’t mean anything. And that was okay. We wanted to create a business that made a name for itself. Over a decade on and we’ve achieved a lot. Now the name does mean something.
Tyler Grange (TG as most people now call it) is an environmental consultancy specialising in arboriculture, ecology, landscape planning and green infrastructure design. Most projects that require planning permission in the UK, will require environmental survey work and solutions to make them acceptable. So, whether that be new housing, renewable energy, rewilding schemes or national infrastructure projects, we’re able to ensure that change can be delivered in a responsible manner.
We’re now a team of 130 people (commonly referred to as our Tribe) across 8 offices, with a further network of supporting sub-consultants, that we call our TG Partners.
It was started out of necessity if I’m totally honest.
On the 4th April 2008, I blacked-out at work. My body said, “no more”. It had been over worked, over stressed and stripped of its purpose. With severe fatigue and crippling anxiety, what followed was 6 months alone, not even able to pass through my own front door. I feared I might lose my career, my home and my sense of worth.
My world got smaller, and my ambitions diminished. However, I sought help, and the people I love slowly rebuilt my resilience, my confidence and my life.
In response, I helped to create Tyler Grange and its mission was clear - to bring the enjoyment back into work, to challenge the established systems of running a business and to put nature, community and wellbeing at the heart of everything we did.
We’re now a certified B, a four-day workweek business with full pay transparency, and a culture that values people being able to be their authentic selves, whilst delivering innovative project outcomes for people and planet. We have a storyteller in residence, mindfulness coaches, clinical psychologist support and, we offer live reporting of our team’s tiredness and happiness levels through our own Alertness App.
In my opinion life isn’t about constant acceleration - it’s about pacing yourself to thrive. And hence the TG Purpose is: To get stuff done and ensure everything thrives. Our people, our planet and our projects.
School - The Streetly School (1988-1994)
University - University of Gloucestershire / Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education (1994-1998)
Got ill, but came back…..
First Job as a Landscape Architect - Countryside Planning & Management (1988-2002)
Got ill, but came back…..
Founded Tyler Grange (2010)
Got ill, but came back…..
Founded the Kindness Forecast (2023)
Founded the Growth Collective (2026)
Became a founding member of Myllium (2026)
Creating a Triple Balance Sheet business
Becoming a B Corp is the ultimate health check for your business. It’s rigorous and requires constant improvement. As a result, I started monitoring the health, environmental and financial performance via our Triple Balance Sheet. It gives us a more rounded picture of where we are as a business.
It’s something we’re undertaking voluntarily, because we feel it’s important to celebrate the good stuff, but not to shy away and mask the not-so-good stuff. It doesn’t have to cost you more to look after your team and the environment, plus we’ve found our operational and financial performance has actually improved as a result.
Transparency is key - some months the team might not be happy, we might be working long hours, and we might have faced problems financially. It’s about honesty. The Triple Balance Sheet is something I would like to publish and make available internally and externally every month. It gives us a chance to learn things we wouldn’t spot otherwise. The hard work has been recognised through awards and we’ve appeared on the Sunday Times ‘Best Places to Work’ list for the last 2 consecutive years.
Offering a 4-day work week
By offering a four-day week at Tyler Grange with no loss of pay, we reduced absenteeism by nearly 70% and boosted our productivity by more than 30%. There has been no change in service and a 2-3% flight risk of employees leaving. Simply put – we’re working smarter and working more efficiently. However, it’s important to emphasise the associated need to innovate at the same time. Using technology to remove the repetitive or dangerous work tasks and focusing on the human skills where they can add most value. Reducing unnecessary work tasks is key, have shorter meetings and don’t continue to follow an outdated process just because that’s the way you have always done it.
Why is this needed? Well, there is clear evidence of burnout in the UK. In 2023, absence in sick leave cost the UK economy £32 billion in lost productivity. This marks the third consecutive yearly increase in lost productivity. If current trends continue, work absences due to long-term sickness will cost the economy £66 bn a year by 2030 in lost productivity. That just isn’t sustainable.
Working mums were the best example for us to realise that something had to change. Real life superhero’s that were looking after babies, households, their own mental health etc, whilst still delivering impressive outputs at work. It was time to ensure everyone was rewarded equally for being efficient and effective.
We’ve been working a 5-day week for about 100 years, but look at our lives today, particularly how our working day has evolved through technology. Our environment is saturated with information and cognitive demands, but we’re still expecting people to work in the same way. We’re obsessed with maintaining things as they’ve always been done in the UK, to hit short-term targets or in response to popularity, rather than trialling progressive ideas and solutions for how we work sustainability in the long-term.
I’m super proud that we’ve created a path for other employers to follow.
Becoming a founding member of Myllium
Tyler Grange has become a founding member of Myllium, a collective of entrepreneur-led companies across Sweden, the UK and the Netherlands, focused on nature, climate and sustainable land use. Together, we want to drive innovation and tackle complex societal projects - doing business in a different way, supporting sustainable growth for people and the planet. We’re absolutely delighted to join Myllium, as a founding member. We’ve been in talks with the network for a while and, along with the other companies, we’ve helped to shape what are now our collective values, vision and direction, which are very closely aligned to those we’ve lived by, for over 15 years, at Tyler Grange.
I was not a sporty child and didn’t really have an interest in football as expected of me as a teenager. However, I ended up leading a Saturday morning 5-a-side football club for children and also a youth play scheme during the school summer holidays.
It taught me that effort, energy and enthusiasm can get you through anything. What I lacked in a ability, I had to uplift with authentic character and humility.
The Kindness Project. On the 6th October 1975 I was born. 11 weeks prematurely. I weighed less than a bag of sugar and was given less than a 20% chance of survival. It resulted from a pre-natal condition where a mother’s blood reacts with a baby’s blood and is often referred to as Rhesus disease. It occurs when an Rh-negative mother carries an Rh-positive baby and her immune system produces antibodies that attack the baby’s red blood cells. I had a blood transfusion whilst still in the womb, but it still triggered an early birth. So, I was born on a Monday at 13:13 on Ward 13. Wasn’t a good omen was it! So, where does kindness come into this I hear you ask?
Well, 42-year-old Richard White, who had just arrived with his family at a hotel in Edinburgh, got straight back in his car and drove 6 hours back to Birmingham to operate the incubator. It wasn’t duty, it wasn’t requested. It was kindness – human to human.
Life is fragile – there is a photo of my father holding me in one hand and I barely fill his palm. It still makes me emotional to see it. But it’s a reminder to me that I owe my life to the skill and care of the medical team at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. That experience instilled an unwavering belief that kindness is not passive – it’s lifesaving.
As a 4-day business, we’ve always encouraged the team to use some of their free time to support family, charities and side-projects. Side projects are so important to take you outside of your business and to look at the world in a different way.
Turning 50 last year and my attendance at Do Wales last summer gave me the nudge I needed to show the Kindness Forecast to the outside world. I actually wrote to David and Claire as follow-up, to explain how I had transitioned from an old life of stress, to create Tyler Grange and then the Kindness Forecast.
The Kindness Forecast started as a self-funded social experiment with a simple mission: to explore and amplify acts of kindness to people and planet. It’s purposely broad, so that I can turn it towards people an things that interest me.
So, from 365 days of free coffee to kindness enforcement notices, through to supporting rewilding projects such as Tir Natur and No Trees No Seas and music festivals, I’m trying to spread some ripples.
Next step, the Kindness Forecast is about to become a Foundation. I’m exploring further collaborations, including the creation of a soundtrack to kindness, with the brilliant producer Jon Kaye.
I once got mistaken for the photocopier engineer in a business that I’d worked in for 3 months!
It taught me the importance of noticing. Giving everyone the ability to be heard, seen and recognised for who they are. Spend time every week with someone that you don’t know enough about.
Community cupboard - the rise of shared resources in communities is really growing momentum. Why are we all buying those ladders for the once-a-year job, or the children’s party kit that gets thrown out and the end of the day. Sharing of resources is both sustainable and a way of increasing interacting with the people that live in your neighbourhood. One brilliant example is the Party Kit Network.
Analogue living - whilst the digital world is still evolving, I’m a little obsessed with the increasing trend of celebrating all things analogue. Tangible, real-world experiences and interactions. Whether that be dropping the needle on a vinyl album and taking time to really listen to the music with your full attention, or festivals such as Helsinki Analog Festival, that are championing handmade practices in photography, moving image and book art.
Paying it forward - this one is close to my heart. It isn’t about ego or recognition but is all about using a simple gesture to send ripples of kindness. In Turkey, this seemingly modern idea of “paying it forward” goes back centuries. It’s called ‘askıda ekmek’, and it relates specifically to paying it forward with bread. Acts of kindness and generosity trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, which is associated with pleasure and reward. This creates a positive feedback loop, reinforcing the behaviour and making people more likely to repeat it.
A 2017 study published in Nature Communications found that people who gave money to others experienced greater happiness than those who spent it on themselves.
This suggests that “paying it forward” may be inherently rewarding at a biological level. You only have to look at initiatives as ‘Drop Dead Generous’ to see that generosity drives connection and creativity.
We desperately need to enter an age of collaboration and not competition. It is no longer time for survival of the fittest – it’s time for collective success. One way we’re looking at that is through training and learning (for all). Engaging, accessible and high-quality training is critical in the continued professional development of our business and wider industry. Through the mapping of academic and professional syllabus competencies, we intend to deliver our own training academy at Tyler Grange, which will be branded separately as ‘The Growth Collective’. It is in our nature to be inspired and inspire others. Through The Growth Collective our aim is to make learning more inclusive and empowering. Our first external reveal is in the form of ‘The Gathering Podcast’. This is a podcast for curious people who want to learn and take inspiration from some of the most fascinating individuals on the planet. You’ll learn from a range of facilitators, practitioners and people with lived experience. We keep the chat practical and human.
Thanks to the support of Luke Doherty of Mindful Peak Performance, I now top and tail my day with mindfulness practice. It has really changed my life. The morning routine connects me to my own body and grounds me for the day. It reminds me to notice the world around me and to embrace physical feelings, thoughts and emotions without judging them. Whilst my evening routine leans towards gratitude, and taking a moment to appreciate what I have and who/what has contributed to my day. When I really connect to that, it’s like a direct communication between my heart and all of life.
More than any gym session, mindfulness has helped me respond to life’s highs and lows with clarity and calm.
Yes - I was trained by the brilliant Lucy Hawthorne at Climate Play. It totally opened my eyes to the power of play in decision making. Metaphorical LEGO models can be built in response to questions, rather than having a regular conversations. People build things they wouldn’t have thought of, or said out loud, but once they’ve built it, then they feel empowered to say it. I am now able to run Lego Serious Play workshops, which is not just playing with Lego bricks, but a facilitated session where participants are guided through a series of challenges, each prompting them to build a hand-made model that represents a thought, idea, or real business problem. These models become the basis for rich storytelling, dialogue, and shared insight.
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Coffee & Careers: Toni Finnimore, The Social Society
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Mar 20
As you know, I’m obsessed with the career before the career. Because careers are not linear. And every so often you meet someone who clearly had the most perfect wibbly wobbly career, because when you meet them in the now, you cannot imagine them doing anything else. And that’s what happened when I met Toni Finnimore at the
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