Barrelling Into The Future

If you spend long enough in and around the ocean, you will come to understand that we have very little control over it. The only control we really have is whether to get in, or not. The sea affects our emotions, our shorelines, our weather, it has an eternal impact on how we live our everyday lives, for many an unseen force, but one felt most profoundly by us all.

I have often wondered, therefore, what it must be like, being in the barrel of a wave somewhere on the North Shore of Hawaii, charging through it before it closes out on you. The chances of success and glory are limited by walls of water on all sides and the forces of gravity, whilst, at the same time, you try with all your skill, judgement and real-time reactions to stay on the board and keep from getting sucked up the back of the wave. This is not the time to realise you haven't chosen the right board.

Surfing 10ft+ waves is not a invitation, a 'do you fancy a go?' offer, a chance to test-drive almost drowning. The best surfers in the world choose to do this. Many get paid handsomely for it but, ultimately, it is just what they do. It is their job and their vocation, the sea as their mistress and hobby. Exhilarating, spiritual and deeply profound, a beautiful battle between man and the most powerful element on Earth, knowing that even if one wins through and pops out the barrel, there will always be another wave, and another, to conquer and ride, to pit their wits against, their chosen foe oft quelled, but never vanquished.

And then we have the tools of the trade. The surfer has a quiver of boards of all lengths and shapes, but not infinite choice, and the selection has to be made before making the leap into the big blue. Too short a board on big waves will never work, and vice versa. How cold is the water determines the thickness of the wetsuit, whether to wear booties or a balaclava. How far apart are the sets, where do I paddle in? How do I safely enter the water and reach the break I want? Have I used the right wax on my board? Detail is everything. Repeating failure here is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

And what of the weather, the swells, the tides and the winds? Our surfer will spend hours watching the trends and predictions, looking at tide tables and weather services, the METEO as his best friend. Year-long surf adventures are planned, re-planned and finalized on this information. Flights are booked, boards are bought, equipment is selected and goals and dreams are made on trying to understand the mysteries of the global weather systems. This research fires up not just trips, but imagination too, exploring new shores based on where the research leads our surfer, not restricted to the past and last year's successes and great waves. The oceans and weather change, and understanding this drives our man's behaviour, becoming an innate part of his being.

As you can see, you don't simply turn up to a beach with a board and a pair of shorts and hope to have a successful surf session. Lack of insight, planning and detail increases the chances that you will turn up with the wrong kit, on the wrong beach, at the wrong time. Worst of all, you may not even be able to risk paddling out, knowing you have a strong chance of drowning due to your lack of foresight. There is nothing worse than turning up and failing before you even get involved.

This new, digital, recession-and-illness-led business world we all inhabit right now is not dissimilar to being inside that barrel and the planning that needs to happen. We have chosen our career paths, jumped into our IT ocean, and we are in the barrel of our own wave, living and dying in our own hands at all times, with the knowledge that we go again, and we go again, wave after wave.

The art of survival would seem to be to understand that we do not live in a world without limits. On the contrary, we IT crew are already in the ocean, paddling out like our surfer, but we don't choose our toolkit with which to do so. We have to act, react and change our perspective, but we can only do so within those parameters of what is in front of us and with the tools we have been given. Our organisations have a finite capability, creating our ocean for us, and sending us out to catch the waves of success or failure.

However, our toolkit does not restrict our minds or imaginations, far from it. This is essential to our survival, and allows us to eek the very most out of our toolkits. We can do the research, trying to predict the 'weather systems' of our industry, selecting our beaches with the most chance of success at all times. With this research, we adjust our toolkit accordingly. We might not have the perfect tool, the exact board we need might be missing from our quiver, but we can look at the macro situation and can see how we can adapt and evolve to position ourselves as best as possible to succeed.

We know each wave is going to come. That is a given, an immutable truth we all live with. We cannot stop the motion of the ocean (as the song once alluded to) and we have to surf. We have to engage our clients, there is no back-out, and we are driven by targets, boxes on a spreadsheet, our chosen career and its inherent industry behaviours, but we should not let those external success factors determine our own surf sessions. If we have done the background research and have unleashed our imaginations, our own strategies and our own goals for success, then we can engage our waves in the best possible way with the highest possible chance of survival, maybe even conquering it temporarily in our own minds, until the next one hits.

Like our surfer, this is where, and how, we succeed. Before we get into the barrel of our wave. He is limited once in it, and can only think inside the barrel, in the same way as we are working for our respective organisations, but understands and adapts accordingly, based on deep research, attention to detail and setting himself up for success. And don't ever underestimate the need for imagination and creativity in this process - facts are facts, but imagination has to be applied to bring it all to life and apply it in the most appropriate way.

And, as time goes by, he gets better and better at determining how best to attack his wave, with fact, learning and imagination all merging into one consciousness. This affords the luxury of designing bespoke surfboards, tailored to weight, height and the size of waves, for speed, balance and improved turning. The surfer has moved from off-the-peg to bespoke at this point, selecting exactly the right arrow for his mission. He moves at the right time, booking flights and hitting beaches in tune with the swells, the success ratio of every trip increasing exponentially with the increase in his knowledge.

We may not be able to aspire to exactly this, but, the more we repeat the detail, do the research and harness the industry predictions, trends and moods, we can start defining and refining a more successful future for ourselves, getting nearer and nearer to the nirvana of knowing we will at least not drown when paddle into the wave. We may wipe out, we may scrape over reefs and hurt our pride, and we may miss our goals and targets, but we survive, adapt, learn and move onto the next wave which is coming towards us.

Imagine. Research. Create. Execute. Repeat.