Expertise can make or break your cause

Two valuable lessons from Saul Alinsky

The basic requirement for the understanding of the politics of change is to recognize the world as it is. We must work with it on its terms if we are to change it to the kind of world we would like it to be. We must first see the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. We must see the world as all political realists have, in terms of "what men do and not what they ought to do," as Machiavelli and others have put it.

—Saul Alinsky

Machiavelli wrote The Prince to teach the Haves how to hold power. Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals to teach the Have-Nots how to take power away from the Haves. Before too long, I’ll write Rules for Radical Urbanists to teach those that Have-Not-Good-Urbanism how to Have-Good-Urbanism.

Alinsky remains a polarizing figure in the history of activism. He was an outspoken socialist, but much of Alinsky’s work can and should be appreciated by change-makers of any political persuasion. If you want help deliver better neighborhood design (you do, right?), then advocacy is a requirement. And if you’re going to be an advocate, you might as well see what tactics are stealable for other change-makers.

Pick up Rules for Radicals from your library or Amazon or the internet archive. You won’t be disappointed. This post isn’t a book report, but I want to share two of the 13 Rules with you. I realized I use these all the time but rarely talk about them. They’re extremely effective for email campaigns, public presentations, and social media posts.

Rule #2 - Never go outside the expertise of your people. 

Rule #3 - Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. 

Here’s one way I’ve seen activists embarrass themselves by debating things they aren’t familiar with.

Drifting outside of expertise

When a public agency contracts with vendors to provide trash collection, signs, software, and other “non-professional” services, they typically pay a monthly fee or a unit price. It doesn’t matter which janitors clean the office, for example, as long as the work is performed. Maybe one person cleans the entire office or maybe three split up the work. The contract is based on outcomes.

It’s also common for public agencies to hire consulting firms for all sorts of professional services tasks: civil engineering, construction management, urban planning, etc. But the contracts are structured based on time and materials. Anyone working on a project charges their time by the hour, along with any material they need (e.g. poster boards for a public meeting). 

But those hourly rates aren’t just calculated from a person’s salary, because the employer is paying more than just salary. They’ve got insurance, benefits, computers, office space…tons of indirect expenses that go along with hiring staff. All that is wrapped into the hourly rate of each employee and called a fully loaded rate, generally about 3X the salary. So if an office admin is earning $20 per hour ($40,000 per year), the fully loaded rate charged to a public agency might be $60 per hour. (That hourly rate doesn’t even include profit for the consulting firm—that’s just covering their costs as an employer.)

Over the years I’ve seen letters to the editor, comments on project surveys, and monologues at public meetings where people who know nothing about contracting attack the budget of a project as if it’s a gotcha. It comes out like this:

“You paid this person $60 per hour to print reports and schedule meetings! You expect us to believe a secretary makes $120,000 per year?! The whole agency is corrupt!”

I’ve been on the receiving end of those accusations and it’s hard to keep a straight face. Maybe the project is junk infrastructure. Maybe it’s a pointless waste of resources intended to speed up already dangerous traffic. But when an activist goes outside their area of expertise, they embarrass and discredit themselves. 

From a change-maker point of view, Saul Alinsky would advise drawing your enemy into areas where they make a fool of themselves. Focus intently on the stuff you know inside and out at the same time that you’re looking for angles they know little or nothing about. 

For instance, angry NIMBYs are not familiar with the ways in which abundant housing and mixed-use neighborhoods lower the costs of housing. The perfect intellectual battlegrounds are areas where you are strong and they are weak. 

An infamous real life example 

Not so long ago, McDonald's, in their quest to increase their dominance to unfathomable levels, decided to expand the menu beyond burgers and fries. Focus groups said pizza was a great option. Chains like Domino's and Pizza Hut were growing in popularity, and corporate organizations can’t stand the thought of leaving revenue on the table.

McDonald’s had done an excellent job of turning their restaurants into little factories, churning out products with incredible efficiency. They poured millions of dollars into research and development to create a pizza that could be made quickly, with the same level of consistency as their burgers. They even built special ovens and hired additional staff to handle the new menu item.

The McPizza took forever to prepare and cook. Nobody wants to wait around more than a few minutes in McDonald’s. We’re in a hurry to suffer from indigestion. Pizza delays were a major problem for a fast food chain that was known for its speed and convenience. The funny thing is, McDonald’s treated their R&D project like something the dedicated pizza chains hadn’t thought of. What an ego blow. 

Customers were constantly complaining about the quality, but management realized the problem was the employees making mistakes, not the ingredients. It was the kind of problem that might be overcome with a dollar menu product, but the McPizza was not cheap. McDonald’s was trying to make up for its huge up-front investment in new equipment and employee training. The McPizza was the most expensive menu item to produce and the least profitable for the franchisees.

On top of it all, customers didn’t associate the McDonald’s brand with pizza. Being budget-minded wasn’t enough to take market share away from the growing “fast pizza” chains. The McPizza was eventually phased out as a colossal failure.

McDonald's had gone into a business line they didn’t fully understand. They were experts in making fast burgers and fries, not pizza. 

In urbanism advocacy and activism, stay within your areas of expertise. And whenever possible, force your opponents outside their areas of expertise.