From Tiny Ripples To Great Waves

What organisations and teams can learn from the waves of Nazare’ and the surfers who ride them

One hour north of Lisbon, Portugal, lies the seaside town of Nazaré. Once a small fishing hamlet, it’s now renowned as home to the biggest surfable waves on the planet.

The Nazaré coast produces skyscraper-sized waves that measure over 100ft and attracts big wave surfers from around the globe who fantasize about them, chase them, and mythologize the skilled and brave who successfully ride them.

But where do these epic waves come from? And perhaps more importantly, what can organisations learn from them? By tracing a waves epic journey, we unlock the powerful message of how by harnessing energy and momentum, teams can turn tiny ripples into great waves - ready to be surfed!

Great waves start with a storm

Every great wave begins its life as a surface wave. Surface waves are born when the wind blows over the ocean. These surface waves don’t move themselves very far – they travel forward and back in a circle a few meters across and end up back at their starting point.

The largest waves, like the ones at Nazaré, are only created when the surface waves are fuelled by storms that blow for a sustained period over a large area. These storms produce so much continual wind disturbance that it produces the continuous energy needed to radiate the waves outwards on a trajectory across the ocean.

The waves created within a storm are usually messy and chaotic, but they grow more organized as they propagate away from the storm and approach land. When waves move into shallower water close to shore, they start to “feel” the ocean’s bottom. When the bottom pulls and drags on the waves, they slow down, get closer together and grow taller until they spill over towards the shore.

Ok, so how does this relate to organisations and teams?

Great teams are just like great waves: they are created by the “storms” of continual momentum that is generated through the conversations, feedback and ideas that are being fuelled in their teams. These conversations need to generate enough continual pulses of energy to not only travel backwards and forward in small circles but to push outwards and begin bringing people together in their organisation and “growing taller” until success is achieved - just like great waves.

The greatest waves comes down to what’s at the bottom of the ocean

So now that we understand how waves form, what makes the waves of Nazaré larger than others? It’s a result of the shape of the seafloor. Nazaré is home to a vast undersea canyon that runs from 140 miles out to sea right up to it’s shoreline – and then abruptly stops. At points, it is at least three miles deep – three times the depth of the Grand Canyon. This has a remarkable effect on the size breaking waves. Rather than slowing down as they approach the shallow shoreline the waves hit the canyon and are propelled to the shoreline at a much greater speed - arriving with virtually no dissipation of energy

Organisations need a Nazaré canyon of their own to ensure they're harnessing every teams engagement. By ensuring these teams are aligning and focusing their energy on common strategic goals – they can turn each team's "waves" into the skyscraper sized monsters surfed at Nazaré.

It takes innovation, strategy and teamwork to ride the waves

Monster waves have crashed down on Nazaré for centuries. And for 30 years, Portugal has been a surfing destination – but until recently nobody went to Nazaré.

One of the reasons was that no one could reach the waves. You couldn’t paddle out to them, they were too big. This changed with the advent of tow-in surfing, which was pioneered in the mid-1990s, and used jet skis or helicopters to drop surfers exactly where they needed to be to catch the wave. But this means you can’t surf the waves in Nazaré alone - you need a highly coordinated team. Tow surfers need a skilled driver on the jet ski, armed with a radio to communicate with a cliffside spotter to help determine where and when the next monster might rise, and where they need to be to catch it.

Organisations can look at how surfers have managed to combine innovation with strategy and teamwork to successfully harness the waves and apply this to their business. By working together in teams they can effectively turn the waves of feedback and ideas into data that can be analysed, dissected, and successfully inform the decisions and strategies that make the biggest impact across their business.

Every wave breaks

Every wave eventually forms a crest and the wave “breaks” and the mystique of Nazaré comes almost as much from its spectacular wipe-outs. Even the most skilled big wave surfers have been prone to “smash down”. The Brazilian big-wave surfer Maya Gabeira nearly drowned in 2013 after being pounded by a wave at Nazaré. The wipe-out resulted in a snapped fibula and herniated a disk in her lower back. But her story didn't end there and neither does our story of a wave end with a single break.

Once waves crash towards the shore, they break into smaller molecules of water and flow back into the ocean. They’re then reborn as tiny ripples, waiting for the right combination of energy and momentum to become a wave once again.

Maya Gabeira returned to Nazaré fulltime in 2015. By being close to the waves she was looking to conquer, she gradually rebuilt her comfort levels - until she felt at home. She dedicated herself to honing her craft through continuous training, this included not only returning to her board and the waves, but weights, running, swimming and free dives. These actions resulted in incremental improvements, until in 2018 she went on to ride a different wave at Nazaré, this one measuring 68ft, and in the process set the world record for the biggest wave ever surfed by a woman.

Teams shouldn’t settle for attempting to ride just one wave. And it’s ok to wipe-out from time to time. It takes a cycle of continuous improvement to successfully ride the giant waves - just like Maya Gabeira did!

The more teams work together, know each other, and strategize, the more chances they have for successfully riding their “epic waves” - or delivering a successful transformation project, or achieving strategic goals!

Teamgage can help you to create and harness great waves

Our Teamgage Huddle is a great example of the software companies can introduce to help fuel the continual energy needed at team level to create and harness these waves.

To begin turning the small ripples in your organisation into giant waves just reach out.

Surfs Up!! ????