Reading the waves
when not to paddle
One of the things surfing has taught me is that the sea rewards observation more than action.
When most people imagine surfing, they picture the moment of movement. The paddle. The pop-up. The ride. The visible part.
What they don’t see is the waiting.
Before I ever get into the water, I’ll check the forecast. Tide, wind direction, swell period, wave height. Over time, you learn that these numbers tell a story. A two-foot wave can be brilliant. A four-foot wave can be terrible. The difference is rarely obvious until you learn how to read the conditions.
Then you paddle out and sit beyond the break, the point in the water where waves start to form.
At first, that waiting feels frustrating. You want to be moving. You want to catch waves. You want something to happen. Most days your getting cold whilst you’re not moving.
But eventually you begin to notice things.
You notice that waves arrive in sets. You notice that there is often a rhythm to them. Three waves. Then a pause. Four waves. Then a pause. You start counting the time between sets. Looking at the horizon. Watching how the water moves beneath you.
Most importantly, you learn that the first wave you see is not always the wave you want.
For a beginner, every wave looks like an opportunity. The instinct is to turn and paddle as soon as something appears on the horizon. More often than not, that means missing the better wave behind it and being too tired to get the ones you really wanted.
Experience teaches a different lesson.
Sometimes the first wave is small. Sometimes it breaks badly. Sometimes it simply obscures the larger, cleaner wave approaching behind it. The surfer who catches the best wave is often not the one who paddles first. It’s the one who has spent enough time observing to recognise what is coming next.
Most workplaces celebrate action. We reward responsiveness, urgency and momentum. When a new opportunity appears, a new piece of technology emerges, a stakeholder raises a concern, or funding becomes available, the instinct is often the same as that beginner surfer.
Paddle like crazy assuming that the first wave, or that this set is the only possible one today.
Many of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen in organisations come from reacting too quickly to the first wave that appears.
The first solution is rarely the best one. The first interpretation of a problem is often incomplete. The first opportunity to create change is not always the moment when change becomes possible.
Sometimes what looks like an opportunity is actually information.
A signal that conditions are changing, and or a sign that something larger is approaching.
The most effective leaders I have worked with understand this instinctively. They spend time reading the environment around them. They understand where decisions are made, who influences them, what pressures exist within the system and how those pressures are shifting over time.
From the outside, this can look like inaction, but observation is an integral part of design.
There is a particular calmness that comes from sitting beyond the break and watching the horizon. For a while, you stop thinking about the last wave you missed or the next wave you hope will come. You become completely present. The sea demands it. The only thing that matters is what is happening right now.
Organisations rarely encourage that kind of attention. A moment to sit in, to listen and to feel the water as it moves around us.
Constantly pulled towards the next deliverable, the next deadline, the next initiative, we become so focused on looking at the shoreline that we forget to look back and understand the conditions behind us, or feel the tide pulling below us.
Not every opportunity deserves your energy.
Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is tread water, lift your head, and look a little further, reading the horizon.