November 2025 — What Is That?!

A wave is heading toward your business. Impact in 7 seconds.

You squint and ask, “What is that?” Impact in 6 seconds.

Recognition… “That’s a WAVE!” Impact in 5 seconds.

Situational assessment. Impact in 4 seconds.

Response options? Impact in 3 seconds.

...

What you do next speaks volumes about your:

Organization
Leadership
Company
Choices

2 seconds.

…..

1 second.

…..

Resilience and Adaptability

According to Forbes, McKinsey & Co., and other leading consulting firms, the most valuable traits for responding to challenges are resilience (strength to take the initial hit and agility to recover quickly) and adaptability (adjust to changing demands).

That makes sense. Right?

The Boy and Girl Scout companies—those “be prepared” teams—proactively build resilient sea walls. Train rapid-response teams with wave drills. Have contingency plans. Use sensors to confirm water-tightness. When the wave hits, they trust their preparation. After the wave passes, they adapt as needed and resume normal activities.

On the flip side are the companies caught off guard by the oncoming wave. They may take longer to recover, but they’ll get back in the game. Post-wave assessments confirm that their reactions track back to their team’s resilience—absorb the blow, bail water, and stay afloat—and to their adaptability as they navigate toward safety.

The Subtle Message That’s Killing You

Resilience and adaptability are noble traits.

No doubt you see them in yourself and your company. Strong processes, responsive systems, and flexible teams. Prepared or not, you find a way to survive.

Shake it off. Pick up the pieces. Keep moving. Reorganize. Downsize. Right size.

Whatever it takes … You survive.

Survive?

Is that where we are now? Survival?

Even in this optimistic era fueled by AI…

There are still prevailing winds hinting at survival.

Maybe whispers. Maybe shouts.

If you don’t learn how to use AI, it will use you.
Get on board or you’ll miss out.
You can’t afford to fall behind.
The sky is falling.
Look! A WAVE!

Imagine “Survival” listed as a tenet of your company’s culture, vision, or mission statement…

It doesn’t really inspire enthusiasm, let alone confidence.

Choice. Experience. Learn. Act.

..... Impact in 7 seconds .....

What you do, how you act, or react was formed in the past.

What you do is a product of what you’ve learned. (doing from learning)

Your lessons are often products of your experiences. (learning from experiencing)

Your experiences—for most of us—are by choice. (experience from choice)

So… how do you choose the experiences to learn from and act upon?

Hold that thought… Surf’s up, and we need to experience this together.

A Peripheral Beach Trip

Growing up around beach communities, you learn to distinguish between tourists and locals by the way they enter the ocean.

Inchers

They enter slowly. Getting used to the water and how the sand shifts beneath their feet. As they inch forward, they shift their gaze, starting at their feet, then their swimsuit, and 10 feet ahead. Then, white water, wave, horizon, left, right, and back to the feet. The step-gaze pattern repeats.

Eventually, the water reaches their knees, then their thighs. About this time, the small waves are followed by a larger one. The water hits above the waist with more force and a much colder temperature than expected, and…

“That was too many inches!”

Catch their breath. About face. And with a dignified, but noticeably quicker exit from the water, they return to the safety of the beach towel and the sun’s warming effects.

Tough Guys

I know… It’s hard to watch. But it’s better than watching what the wave does to him.

It begins with a purposeful walk directly into the surf. He (yes, it’s almost always a ‘he’) is determined to keep his stride constant while exerting more energy as more of his body works against the water.

The first real wave hits mid-waist. “I will not be moved!” A few more steps. He meets the next wave chest high with a grunt like an offensive lineman refusing to budge. With each sizeable wave, Tough Guy searches for a stronger position. The shoulder push. The leaning bench press. The reverse lunge.

He progresses further. And deeper.

Recognizing the next wave will go over his head, he jumps upward above the cresting wave. Progress is lost as the wave effortlessly floats Tough Guy back toward the beach. It is the wave’s polite suggestion that Tough Guy reconsider his approach.

Sometime later, Tough Guy is tired. He proudly, but less energetically, returns to dry sand.

Yee Haws!

You sense Yee Haws! coming before they hit the sand. Something about the big blue ocean ignites a wildness deep inside. They may or may not scream out loud, but their dash toward the water feels like the seismic vibrations of a child, sugar-fueled, seeing their favorite cartoon character in real life.

They run into the water like every movie scene of a lifeguard rushing into the surf. Run, run, run… They are up to their knees in no time.

The body sends cues to the mind. Splash, splash, splash… The forward momentum slows, and the muscles know what's coming next.

The pivotal moment… the mind and body agree, “It’s time!” The wave crests.

Yee Haw launches. Dive, dive, dive…. through or under the wave.

They surface on the other side of the wave, either:

Coughing up seawater,
Shouting “Expletive! That’s cold!”,
Grasping for their dislodged swimsuit, or
Looking back at the beach, expecting applause.

Then…

The wave AFTER the wave greets Yee Haw with its own “Howdy.” Dunk!

Just like the others, Yee Haws! make their way back to dry sand (with or without a swimsuit).

Guests

They’ve been here many times before. They slowly scan the water, acknowledging its vastness, complexity, patterns, rhythms, and language. Often, the scanning begins before setting foot on the beach and continues throughout their visit.

These are the locals. And while they are intimately familiar with the location, they still spend time greeting the environment like you would a dear friend. How are you? What have you been doing? What’s exciting, concerning, interesting? What do you have planned? What should we do together?

Guests know that they don’t own the ocean. They don’t expect to understand it by splashing about for a few minutes and walking away. Guests don’t try to change it by fighting it. They don’t recklessly dive in without some idea of what happens next.

Guests observe. Acknowledge. Align with the environment. They don’t try to change the bigger picture. Instead, they become the best version of themselves as PART of the bigger picture.

Because Guests approach each encounter as a new experience, they learn what to do in and with the environment. The waves are not obstacles to a destination. Waves are experiences to hone skills. Grow. Advance. Innovate. And enjoy.

🤙🏽

What Peripheral Thinkers “Do”

Peripheral Thinkers are a different breed by choice, experience, lessons, and action.

We proactively choose new and varied experiences. (The Studying Skill) When others are attending the same industry conferences, you choose the uncommon, unique, and occasionally uncomfortable experience. Your unconventional choices lead to the kind of reference-expanding experiences others may never know.

Peripheral Thinkers don’t visit the Grand Canyon, nod for 90 seconds, say “Okay,” and jump back in the station wagon. You really experience the experience. You invest time and energy in squeezing every drop from it. Before, during, and after. (The Deciphering Skill)

That's how we capture lessons. And we don’t stop at one new experience. Because we know that the more varied the experiences, the more varied our lessons will be.

Regardless of age, position, location... you can access a plethora of lessons just by revisiting past experiences… to uncover and combine lessons.

Intentionally choosing new experiences to gather a variety of lessons creates an extensive repository of actionable insights. Like a cabinet filled with ingredients, you put them to use by mixing, matching, testing, and tasting. Who knows… that may lead to another experience. (The Reimagining Skill)

Choices, experiences, lessons, and actions feed into one another. A lesson leads to another choice. An action leads to another experience. They all combine to expand what is achievable.

When you read “A wave is heading toward your business,” did you assume it was a bad or good thing?

How about now?

Resilience and adaptability... Useful? Valuable? Aspirational?

A wave is heading toward your business. What will you do?

Your Takeaway & Next Step

Experts say you need me to spell it out for you.

They say that engaging posts, newsletters, communications, and the like require actionable takeaways. You need something you can use now and see results quickly.

Oh yeah… And I’m supposed to include a strong call to action to drive more comments, DMs, and inbound leads from my ICP.

I get it.

But...

Not gonna do it.

Reading the newsletter and thinking about how it applies to you is the action item. A cognitive exercise. Meant to challenge your thinking and expand your perspectives. To encourage you to see more, think differently, and act innovatively.

Do that!

Still Here?

Look...

If you really need an action item, here it is…

Learn to surf!

Literally and figuratively.

Literally, because, for most of the population, it is a new experience that teaches more than a physical skill. You learn wave types and how they form. How to process the environment and find relevant signals. The physics of board design, water displacement, balance, strength, timing, and flexibility. And a thousand other lessons better experienced than described.

Figuratively, learning to surf represents choosing new experiences. It means finding and learning from the locals. It means using the new lessons during the experience and applying the principles and insights afterward—in life and business. It means seeing “waves” not as obstacles but as lesson-rich experiences.

Surfs Up!

This is the 35th consecutive monthly newsletter. Add 800+ LI posts over the last few years with the last 34 newsletters, and you have lots of takeaways, exercises, and “surfable waves.”

Until next time... I'll be looking for you in the periphery.

Image Credits: Image Creators

Peripheral Thinking™ and Peripheral Thinkers™ are protected trademarks