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I own an old pontoon boat that I use on the White River. I had never driven a boat until the day the friend who sold it to me pulled up to my dock. I quickly learned the White River can be a challenging teacher when it comes to navigation, so now I know the owner of the local propeller fixit shop well.
One summer evening, I was headed downriver toward home and attempted what I would later describe as an “aggressive maneuver.” My friend Chris lived nearby but on the other side of a sandbar. He’d invited me to stop by and gave me clear instructions on how far past the sandbar I needed to go before turning into the channel and heading back upriver to his dock.
Captain Rookie promptly screwed it up, and I found myself beached on the very sandbar I was trying to avoid.
There was plenty of daylight but no boats around, presenting a problem I had not yet experienced. My first instinct was to jump out and push the boat off the sandbar. Then I wondered what would happen if the boat floated away while I was stuck in the mud. That thought quickly escalated into some nightmare scenarios, including but not limited to my boat ending up over the Broad Ripple dam and me becoming one of the shortesttenured boat owners
in history.
After 90 seconds of panic, a solution appeared in the form of my collapsible boat hook. I extended it to full length and pushed myself off the sandbar. A 10second solution to a selfcreated crisis.
I think about that moment often, but less as a boating story and more as a metaphor. If I had jumped out of the boat, I would have had no control over where it went. None. Maybe I could have grabbed the boat hook and pulled myself back aboard. Maybe someone would have come along and helped. But that’s a lot of maybes.
The right move was to use the tools I had to steer the boat back on course.
I think about this a lot when it comes to “influence,” and I don’t just mean government. I mean any organization where decisions are made and direction is set — your HOA, a nonprofit board or a volunteer group, for instance. Your ability to influence where the boat goes largely depends on whether you’re still on it.
When I see an angrily waved white flag, I wonder if the person waving it considered all the ways they might have influenced the outcome from within. Or if they decided the only option was to abandon ship, hoping the boat would somehow circle back for them. Could they have been humbler? Could they have been more patient?
I’m not dismissing protest. I’m not dismissing resignation on principle. There are moments when getting off the boat is the only choice — when the situation is truly dire, not just inconvenient or annoying. But I do think we often underestimate how much influence we give up when we leave the deck. Steering is hard when you’re treading water.
There’s no silver bullet here, and no universal standard of tolerance. But when we talk about impact, too many people assume they have the definitive playbook for how change should happen. I’m not sure anyone does.
I still haven’t made it to my friend Chris’ house by water, but I haven’t given up trying. I’ve realized that the wiser, more efficient approach is to enlist the help of a friend and, at all costs, stay in the boat.•
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Rateike is founder of BAR Communications and served as director of cabinet communications for President Donald Trump. This is his new headshot. Send comments to [email protected].
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