Training surfer leaders

Everyone knows Biarritz, the capital of surfing, two hours from Europe's major cities. Few know that it is also the capital of the Special Forces, thanks to ARXIBALD. Biarritz is where the methods of the Special Forces meet the corporate world. Two worlds that the ocean connects more than we imagine: in both, you do not stop the wave, you learn to read it, to position yourself and to ride it. That, we believe, is where the future of leadership is decided.

From the gardener to the surfer

Ten years ago, General Stanley McChrystal, former head of US special operations, upended our vision of command. The leader, he explained, should no longer be the chess player moving pieces from the top, but the gardener who cultivates the ecosystem. The one who creates the conditions for success, keeps information flowing, distributes decision-making and sustains trust. The 'gardener leader' caught on, and rightly so.

But the gardener assumes there are seasons. He works in an environment that, despite its hazards, remains relatively predictable. Yet that is no longer where we are. Crises follow one another, each unlike the last. They are health-related, technological, geopolitical, informational... the waves keep coming, bigger and bigger, leaving us no time to replant. Faced with this succession of crises, the gardener is no longer enough. We need surfer leaders: those able to tame the swell of the times.

The wave or the board

When a breaker hits, the leader has two possible postures. The first is to cling to the board with all one's strength and hope to survive. This leader holds on to yesterday's certainties, to fixed plans, to dashboards that describe a world already gone. You are tossed about, you lose control, you sink, but you hope to be rescued. This leader is always 'prepared for yesterday's weather'; they react to the waves only once submerged, or at the foot of them.

The second is to surf. The surfer leader does not claim to stop the wave; they know it is impossible. They read the ocean, pick up scattered signals, position themselves, keep their balance and take a calculated risk at the right moment. Where the castaway endures change, the surfer draws energy from it. They are always one step ahead, not because they avoid risk, but because they have learned to ride it, without ever mastering it.

What a surfer leader does

In practice, a surfer leader combines four reflexes:

• They read the environment before others: they see the set coming, interpret weak signals and anticipate instead of reacting.
• They keep their composure in chaos: balance is won when everything is moving, not when the sea is flat.
• They decide fast with incomplete information: waiting for certainty already means missing the wave.
• They turn uncertainty into collective momentum: they make it an energy for their teams instead of letting them freeze.

This is not improvisation, but extreme preparation put to the service of adaptation. Exactly what the Special Forces have always done: acting well, under pressure, with partial data, without ever losing the course.

When the wave carries you off

It must be said with humility: sometimes a wave bigger than the rest rises and sweeps away everything in its path, including the best, despite every effort and all the preparation. In that moment, what matters is not having wanted to be the best. It is managing to climb back onto the board, to catch your breath, to reposition yourself, to paddle back out past the break and to regain control. Resilience is not the absence of falling: it is the art of getting back up faster than the next wave arrives.

You never surf alone

On the legendary Belharra wave, the jewel of the Basque coast, a surfer is never alone. On this big-wave break, which can reach some twenty metres, an entire system supports them: forecasters tracking the swell thousands of kilometres away, spotters on the cliff, a jet-ski pilot who launches and retrieves them, eyes scanning the horizon. Their performance rests not on an isolated brain, but on a shared intelligence, a trust that needs no words.

The surfer leader builds this within their organization: a shared awareness of the situation, a trust that lets everyone act at their own level, a decentralized execution. They do not try to control everything: they carry others toward success.

How do you learn?

Just as no one is born a surfer, no one is born a leader: it takes years. You do not become a surfer leader by chance, you become one through training. One thing is certain: the earlier you start learning, the faster you reach a good level, and the better you become. This is precisely ARXIBALD's mission: to transpose to the corporate world the methods of those who operate in permanent uncertainty, the Special Forces, augmented by artificial intelligence, to train leaders who surf crises with their teams instead of enduring them.

Work on your take-off

The next crisis will not give warning. The question is not whether it will come, but whether your leaders will know how to read it, position themselves in relation to it and surf it. In Biarritz as at sea, the best way not to be swept away and sink is to learn to surf.