On Dying Breed, We’re a book club where we are reading Lonely pigeon.
If you haven’t read lonely pigeon, The basic plot is that two former Texas Rangers – Woodrow Call and Augustus McCray – lead a cattle drive up the Rio Grande to Montana. In fact, the call itself leads. Gus mostly drinks whiskey and hangs out with Lori, a young prostitute with a heart of gold.
Call got the idea of cattle herding when another former ranger companion came to his ranch and mentioned that the grass in Montana was great for cattle, and a man could become rich by settling there. Bored with life on the frontier, Call decided to assemble a crew and drive the cattle thousands of miles north.
But when the cattle start being moved, you get the sense that Call really doesn’t want to go, or at least he doesn’t know why he’s taking on such a big venture. His compatriots are equally indifferent. Gus doesn’t want to go, but he goes with his old friend because he has nothing better to do. Newt, the orphan boy who lives with Gus and Call, goes away because he is a child and no one asks him what he wants. Cowboys who join sign on because it’s a job.
Personally, it doesn’t seem like there’s much shopping going on, but everyone goes on the trip anyway.
You might have experienced something like this. Your family decides to take a big vacation because everyone assumes it’s what everyone wants, and later finds out that no one really wanted to go. Your church starts some new program, and at the meeting, everyone acts like they’re on board, but when you talk to people one-on-one in the parking lot later, every single one of them thinks it’s a bad idea. Someone at work greenlights a project that goes on for months, and it eventually turns out that no one working on it previously thought it made any sense.
This mismatch between individual preference and group action is so extreme that there is a name for it. It’s called the “Abilene Paradox,” and today I want to talk about what it is, why it happens, and how to keep yourself from getting caught in its power.
Why don’t we go to Abilene?
The idea of the Abilene Paradox comes from a management professor named Jerry Harvey, who introduced it in a 1974 article. He named it after a trip his family took one summer. Here’s the story:
Harvey was visiting his in-laws in Coleman, Texas. It was a Sunday afternoon in July, the temperature was 104 degrees, and he was playing dominoes and drinking lemonade in front of a fan on the back porch. It was a nice way to spend the day. Then his father-in-law said, “Let’s go to Abilene and eat in the cafeteria.” Abilene was 53 miles away. The car was a 1958 Buick with no air conditioning. Harvey didn’t want to go at all, but before he could open his mouth, his wife said it felt great. So Harvey figured he was the only one who didn’t want to go, and he didn’t want to be a party-pooper, so he said that sounded fine to him too. Her mother-in-law said she was also inside.
So they walked 53 miles in the heat and dust, ate extremely expensive average food, and walked 53 miles back in the heat and dust. By the time they reached home, they were hot, tired, and covered in dirt. He sat in the verandah for some time and did not say much. Harvey’s mother-in-law then said that she would have stayed home and only went because it seemed like everyone else wanted to do it. Harvey admitted that he did not want to go, and his wife said that she had only agreed to keep everyone happy. And then the father-in-law – the guy who first suggested the trip – said he didn’t really want to go. He only brought it up because he thought everyone was bored and he felt he should do something for them.
Nobody wanted to travel. Not even the person who suggested it.
Still, even though everyone in the family thought the trip was a bad idea, they all went along with it because each assumed he was the only one who felt the same way.
Because of their collective reluctance to speak, they made a fool’s errand.
This is the Abilene Paradox: A group collectively decides to take a course of action that goes against the true preferences of each individual member.
Why does the Abilene paradox occur?
When we think about what goes wrong in groups, we usually think about conflict – people butting heads and no one being able to agree. Harvey thought a bigger problem was compromise. A group can talk itself into doing something that no one really wants to do, and no one says a word against it.
There are some reasons for this happening.
For one, we want to belong, and we don’t want to be the one who comes across as difficult or negative or not a team player. We don’t want to make waves. So when an idea comes up that we don’t like, we hold on to our opinion and tell ourselves, “Everyone else agrees, so I guess I’ll go along with it, so I’m not a disagreeing wet blanket.”
We’re also not very good at reading other people in the room. When an idea comes up that seems stupid to you and you see that no one is objecting, you assume that everyone is all for it, so you continue to keep your mouth shut. But sometimes other people also remain silent for the same reason that we remain silent. He also has the same doubts in his mind, but he does not want to speak because he does not see anyone else objecting. They assume everyone agrees, so they remain silent, lest they rock the boat.
That’s how you end up on a silly trip to Abilene or a cattle drive to Montana or executing a work project that was doomed to failure.
And once you start the silly trip to Abilene, the act of actually going on the trip seems like proof that everyone wanted it, which reinforces the idea that it must be a good idea because if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be doing it. The sunk cost fallacy begins. Everyone starts thinking, “Okay, we’ve gone this far, it would be a waste if we turned back. Might as well keep going to Abilene.”
How to Survive Trips to Abilene
So, how do you stop a group – whether a team at work or your own family – from going on those silly figurative trips to Abilene?
First of all, if you are a leader in a group, No First say what you want. As soon as you say, “I’m thinking we should build a lake again this year,” you’ve tipped the scale, and everyone else is reacting to your idea instead of coming up with their own. Leaders initiate Abilene trips because people in groups are often afraid to disagree with the leader. Instead, ask everyone what they think before throwing your ideas out there.
Second, explicitly make disagreement part of the group decision-making process. Before you do anything, go around the room and ask everyone for a reason No work out and why the group should not take this action.
If you are not a leader in a group and do not have control over shaping the group discussion, if you think something is a bad idea, say so in the meeting. There’s a good chance you’re not alone in feeling this way, and once you say it out loud, you make it possible for everyone else to object. It is possible to do this tactfully and gracefully. You don’t have to say, “This is a really stupid idea.” Rather you could say something like, “I’m wondering if _____ might be an issue. What am I missing that could help resolve that concern?” There may be a valid answer to your doubt, but more importantly, the question opens the door for other people to raise their concerns as well.
just say it before you leave
You’re going to make a lot of trips to Abilene in your life. You’ll go along with things you don’t want to do, because you assume everyone else is in on it. And because you don’t want to be the person who makes things awkward, you keep your mouth shut. But very often, no one else is sold either. The whole group is just sitting there and waiting for someone to say, “Hey, this might not be a good idea.”
So whoever it is. The next time your group starts moving toward something that doesn’t suit you, say so. You’d be surprised how many times the rest of the room was hoping someone would do just that, so they could avoid that trip to Abilene.
And of course, no offense in all this to our readers in Abilene. I’ve never been there, but I’m sure it’s a great city, and its food options have improved a lot.
