Keep your own side inside the activities it knows well, and draw the opponent into ones it does not.
Rules two and three of Rules for Radicals, paraphrased and taken together because each mirrors the other. Alinsky observed that people asked to act outside their experience become confused and withdraw, while institutions confronted outside their routines respond slowly and badly.
In practice
- A parents' group meets the school board on the board's ground, procedural motions, and loses; it wins the next round by filling the hall for a public meeting run in its own style.
- A barrister who is formidable in court performs poorly in a live radio debate, where the format belongs to someone else.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that familiar routines lower the cost of acting and raise confidence. Another is organisational routine: institutions handle expected challenges well and novel ones poorly, because their procedures were written for the expected.
- In its favour
- Consistent with research on organisational routines and on the way unfamiliar situations degrade expert performance. Widely used in campaigning and negotiation.
- Against it
- Staying inside one's expertise limits growth and makes tactics predictable, and opponents learn. Drawing an institution outside its routines can provoke an unpredictable response.
- Standing
- Compare the competency trap and trained incapacity.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Rules for running organisations, and for pressing them