The Abilene Paradox

What We Can Learn About Decisions in Groups from an Ill-Fated Road Trip

EDIT: An earlier version of this post featured a short dramatic reenactment of Dr. Harvey’s Abilene Paradox, but it has been recently set to “private”, meaning that it’s no longer available for viewing. I’ve substituted the above which features a younger Dr. Harvey explaining the paradox with quite a bit of ad-libbed humour. Enjoy!

THE AIM for this post is to take you on a virtual trip to a small town about two hours west of Fort Worth, Texas called Abilene. It’s the real-world MacGuffin for a famous management parable about the psychology of group dynamics that occur when we go along with plans or decisions that we disagree with because we fear upsetting the status quo as a lone outlier — without any supporting evidence or communication.

The paradox itself is based on the true story of a family who agree to take an ill-fated road trip to Abilene for dinner in spite of their own unstated wishes to just stay put. It was born from the recollections of Dr. Jerry B. Harvey (1935-2015) who years after the original events would apply them to understanding the psychology of organizations and how and why they make similarly paradoxical decisions that contradict their aim, even at the expense of the organization’s or group’s own interests.

Along the way we’ll consider this paradox through one of the lenses of Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, ie. psychology, and how we can use this to our advantage in understanding how our organizations can malfunction and perhaps fall into the traps that the prevailing style of management sets for us.

If you are interested in learning more about the paradox, the 1996 reprint of the 1988 edition of Harvey’s book, The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management, is still available in paperback and on Kindle via amazon.

The Backstory…

Our trip begins some time in the early 1960s in the small town of Coleman, TX (pop. 5,607) on the porch of Dr. Harvey’s in-laws. It was a custom for he and his wife to spend their vacation visiting with them, and on this occasion they are gathered in the heat of a 104F (40C) July afternoon for refreshments and a game of dominoes. Harvey thought this was an agreeable way to spend a Sunday in Coleman, despite the fine West Texas topsoil that blew through and around the house whenever the wind did blow.

As the afternoon and game wore on, Harvey’s father-in-law made the sudden suggestion to get in the car (an un-air conditioned 1958 Buick) and head to Abilene, some fifty-three miles (85km) north up the I84, for dinner at the local cafeteria. This seemed like an insane idea to Harvey who was just about to voice his opposition when his wife chimed-in with her support and asked him if he’d like to go. Ah, checkmate!

Harvey supposed that he would be the lone opponent to this unfolding plan, and so agreed but only if it was agreeable to his mother-in-law. Despite having reservations of her own, she voiced her support saying that she hadn’t been to Abilene in a long time. And so, with everyone apparently agreed, the ill-fated trip was on: they piled into the Buick and drove off in the heat and dust.

If you have ever driven in a car that lacks air conditioning on a hot summer day, you can probably appreciate what happened next. Our Party of Four arrived at their destination hot, sweaty, and caked in West Texas topsoil. The meal was by all accounts terrible with its only redeeming feature being the interlude it provided (possibly air-conditioned) before having to drive back to Coleman in the same unrelenting heat and dust, making for a 106 mile (170km) round trip.

On their return, the party sat in silence for a long while on the porch in front of an old electric fan. Unable to contain himself much longer, Harvey finally cracked and said, “It was a great trip, wasn’t it?”. And then all hell broke loose.

First, his mother-in-law snapped that she’d rather have stayed put and only went along because everyone else was so enthusiastic. Incredulous, Harvey pushed back saying he never wanted to go, either, but did so just to appease everyone else, pointing out that they were the real culprits to the caper. Of course, this triggered his wife who claimed to have never wanted to go out in the heat and dust and went along just to keep everyone else happy. Then her father entered the chat, and depending on which retelling you read or hear either said “Hell!” or “Sheeit!” and explained that he never wanted to go to Abilene, either, but made the suggestion thinking everyone else was bored of playing dominoes. He would have been just as content to stay put and have leftovers.

The party fell into a confused silence: how did this happen? Why would they all agree to do something “publicly” when privately they would have rather stayed home?

The Abilene Paradox

Some years later as a management consultant Harvey would encounter many organizations caught in the same predicament as he was in Coleman with his wife and in-laws, taking metaphorical road trips to their own private Abilene when they’d rather be going anywhere else, or just staying put. He condensed his observations on the tendencies for groups to agree on taking unwanted excursions into what he called the Abilene Paradox:

Stated simply, when organizations blunder into the Abilene Paradox, they take actions in contradiction to what they really want to do and therefore defeat the very purposes they are trying to achieve. Business theorists typically believe that managing conflict is one of the greatest challenges faced by any organization, but a corollary of the Abilene Paradox states that the inability to manage agreement may be the major source of organization dysfunction.

Harvey, Jerry B. The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988. (p. 15)

On the Road to Abilene

Harvey provides six symptoms that define when you’re all about to head off for a trip to Abilene:

1. You and your peers individually and privately agree about a situation or problem you are facing. In the original story, this was the status quo of sitting on the porch with refreshments playing dominoes.

2. You and your peers individually and privately agree on what action to take to cope with the situation or problem. Again, in the case of the original story, this would be to maintain the status quo of relaxing on the porch by the fan.

3. You and your peers fail to communicate your true desires with each other, contributing to the creation of a false shared reality. This was demonstrated in the story by the chain reaction the father-in-law started by floating the trial balloon of going to Abilene for dinner.

4. You and your peers use the false shared reality you’ve just created to make collective decisions against what you really want to do, resulting in consequences that upset everyone by running afoul of your original intent and purposes. This is the commitment to get into the 1958 Buick and head to Abilene.

5. Consequently, after committing to the decision based on a false shared reality that you created, you and your peers are angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied. In reaction, you may splinter into smaller subgroups to set up “us vs. them” camps to cast blame and aspersions on others, or perhaps higher-ups. In the original story, this was manifested in the blamestorming that erupted after the party returned to the porch from their journey to Abilene.

6. If the paradox isn’t recognized for what it is, the cycle repeats anew but this time with increased intensity due to the baggage from the last iteration. Deeper divides emerge as camps retrench their position. In the original story, the party never reached this stage as they became aware of their actions on the porch after the trip by openly communicating their disbelief and frustrations.

The Five Enabling Mechanisms of The Abilene Paradox

In Harvey’s book, The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management, he describes five linked mechanisms that set the paradox in motion as a chain reaction, with each presenting an opportunity to take the nearest exit off the road to Abilene (pp. 20-25):

1. Action Anxiety - the reluctance to act in accordance with one’s beliefs because it induces anxiety to even contemplate the action. This condition sets the stage for the paradox.

2. Negative Fantasies - the imagined repercussions of what could happen if action was taken in accordance with one’s beliefs. This involves envisioning the worst possible outcomes, serving two purposes: it increases action anxiety and provides a psychological pressure release valve. This allows individuals to avoid taking responsibility for solving underlying problems by offering a ready justification for inaction to themselves and others.

3. Real Risk - the real repercussions to acting in accordance with one’s beliefs, as all actions will carry some risk of a negative outcome, which can include being fired, sued, smeared, etc.

4. Fear of Separation - this is what Harvey calls the core of the paradox because it underlies why we avoid taking risks when acting in accordance with our beliefs: because it could result in our alienation from others in our group or community. Consequently, this fear reinforces our shared false reality, causing us to make poor decisions.

5. The Psychological Reversal of Risk and Certainty - this is the nesting of a paradox within a paradox where our unwillingness to take risks and act virtually guarantees the separation from others that we fear and so in our minds substitutes real risk with negative fantasies. Result? We create a certainty from what was at best an unknown probability.

Read these through a couple times - I’m sure you can think of examples where you have seen these mechanisms at work in your organization, school, or community. And of course, I’ve cursed you with this sight as it will be difficult to un-see once “seen”.

Taking the Nearest Exit

As readers of this newsletter, you’re probably attuned to the advice Harvey gives on how to break the Abilene Paradox as we’ve covered some of the remedies in other posts as they are very Deming-aligned:

• Encourage open communication without fear of judgment or reprisals;

• Foster a culture of dissent to encourage speaking up especially for those presenting minority positions;

• Challenge “groupthink” by encouraging the questioning of the status quo and “going along to get along”.

In other words, drive out fear.

A Deming Analysis

What would Dr. Deming make of the Abilene Paradox? Despite travelling in the same timeline for their respective popularity in management circles, there’s no evidence to suggest Deming knew of Harvey or vice-versa. However, as I intimate in my introduction, the paradox fits very well within the boundaries of Deming’s philosophy, first as an example of the corrosive effects of fear, and second as demonstration for why he included psychology as one of the four domains of his System of Profound Knowledge that managers and leaders need to develop competency in to successfully manage with a systems view.

As I wrote in my July 16/21 newsletter, Dr. Deming saw fear as a significant contributor to many dysfunctions in organizations:

No one can put in his best performance unless he feels secure. Se comes from the Latin, meaning without, cure means fear or care. Secure means without fear, not afraid to express ideas, not afraid to ask questions. Fear takes on many faces. A common denominator of fear in any form, anywhere, is loss from impaired performance and padded figures…

"Fear takes a terrible toll. Where are the comptroller’s figures on the losses from fear? They are enormous. Nobody knows their magnitude. Getting people to express their ideas without fear of retribution requires fundamental change, starting with the abolishment of the annual rating system and, in its place, major emphasis on teamwork."

The Abilene Paradox is Dr. Harvey’s theory on how fear causes individuals to make contradictory decisions when they feel insecure about the consequences for taking the correct action. In The New Economics, Deming observes how fear can blind leadership from the true state of affairs: “Fear invites wrong figures. Bearers of bad news fare badly. To keep his job, anyone may present to his boss only good news.” This follows on his 8th obligation for management in his famous 14 Points in Out of the Crisis: Drive out fear.

Accordingly, I think Dr. Deming would see the Abilene Paradox as a useful model for understanding the phenomena of team and group dynamics in organizations through the lens of psychology that reinforces the utility of studying the System of Profound Knowledge for transforming management. Similarly, I think Dr. Harvey would see similar overlaps of their respective theories, perhaps with an appreciation for how the prevailing practices of management contribute toward creating the conditions for many road trips to Abilene.

How to Use the Paradox

First step is to ensure you understand the theory of the Abilene Paradox and to share what you have learned with others. Discuss the parable and evaluate scenarios in your organization where you believe you were making similar road trips from Coleman to Abilene. Next, begin to design changes to your system to manage apparent agreement as open and transparent PDSAs. Your aim here is to improve the quality of your decisions as an organization by increasing the security of individuals to voice concerns without repercussions, which means a lot more than saying, “just trust me”. Trust of this sort needs to be demonstrated and earned.

You will gain a lot of credibility for this exercise when leadership goes first and demonstrates how they are learning the lessons of Abilene and taking positive steps to de-risk speaking up and a willingness to hear minority opinions as a matter of course, free from judgment or fear. Design systems for sharing and rapidly communicating what teams are learning as they work with their managers, directors, and VPs to make higher quality decisions. Incorporate routine reviews of critical decisions for how well agreement was managed. Follow-up with anonymous surveys to poll for data. Plot on a Process Behaviour Chart and analyze. Study, Adjust, repeat.

Reflection Questions

Consider the Abilene Paradox as described above, and perhaps as you may learn from watching the included video. In your experience, how many trips to Abilene have you and your colleagues taken? What were the circumstances? Did anyone privately realize what was happening and share their concerns with others? Were you able to safely exit? If so, how? If not, what were the consequences?

How would knowledge of Deming’s management philosophy help managers to create systems free from fear? Where would this work need to begin? How would it be done? Are you currently undertaking steps to do this? Why or why not?

Miro Board Notes

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The notes can be accessed via the link below: