Doing Nothing: A Key to Effective Public Affairs

I love nature videos. The wild offers so many metaphors for life. One of these videos is staying with me, and I want to share it with you.

The videos show two polar bears hunting beluga whales together in the Arctic. Everything is the same, except their approaches.

One bear is older—he has a quiet confidence. He’s deliberate, unhurried. He climbs onto a rock and waits. All day. He understands that as the tides rise, the belugas move closer to shore. Over time, the environment will shift in his favor. When they do, he chooses his moment, strikes, and wins.

The other bear is younger and stronger. He's more energetic and inpatient. He repeatedly wades into the water, trying to catch a beluga head-on—an impossible task. Later, he climbs onto a rock as well, but when opportunity comes, his impatience gets the best of him. He pounces too early. Again and again. He remains active, and he remains hungry.

Watching it unfold, one lesson became clear: activity is not always progress.

That scene brings me back to an experience earlier in my career in public affairs. I was working with a business unit that kept urging our team to “show more action.” They wanted visible movement—more meetings, more outreach, more pressure—something tangible they could point to every week as evidence of progress.

The challenge was simple and uncomfortable: there was no useful action to take.

The real work had already been done months earlier and was persisting. Relationships were established. Stakeholders were mapped and engaged. The issue was properly positioned. More importantly, we could see the national narrative beginning to rise. Not yet at its peak—but rising. From a public affairs perspective, the right move was to wait.

Our team understood the tides. We knew the issue would crest. And when it did, we'd have the leverage to achieve our objectives. Acting too early would have wasted political capital, tipped our hand, and reduced our effectiveness when timing truly mattered.

But to the business, waiting looked like inactivity.

This is one of the hardest realities to explain to those who haven’t worked in public affairs: effective Public Affairs can look like nothing is happening—right up until it is.

In many organizations, progress requires motion and activity feels productive. Waiting feels passive and risky. Unfortunately, policy doesn’t move on effort alone. It takes timing, alignment, pressure, and narrative. Premature action rarely accelerates outcomes and often weakens them.

The business wanted motion because motion gives the illusion of progress, like the younger bear splashing in the water. But the older bear understood something deeper. He wasn’t being passive. He was being intentional.

Waiting is not the absence of activity; it is the result of prior activity. Waiting allows narratives to develop, giving policymakers space to engage organically and letting external forces do part of the work.

Organizations that fail to understand this often draw the wrong conclusion, assuming the problem is insufficient effort, when the real issue is insufficient patience.

The younger bear never lacked effort. He lacked timing, patience, and understanding of the tides.

The lesson—from the Arctic and from public affairs—is simple but counterintuitive. The goal is to do the work up front and be positioned for the right action because when the tide finally turns, you need precision, not activity. And those who understand the difference are the ones who win.