How Do We Know When We Are Headed for Abilene? Harvey points to six characteristics emblematic of a group failing to manage agreement effectively:
1. Members individually, but privately, agree about their current situation. The group in Coleman knew individually that they were satisfied with just sitting on the porch.
2. Members agree, again in private, about what it would take to deal with the situation. In this case, the members privately agreed that staying on the porch was a good way to spend a hot and dusty day.
3. Members fail to communicate their desires and/or beliefs to one another, and, most importantly, sometimes even communicate the very opposite of their wishes based on what they assume are the desires and opinions of others. People make incorrect assumptions about consensus. In the Abilene case, one suggestion (offered on the assumption that the people wanted to do something besides sit on the porch) began a domino-like sequence of individual agreement with the concept in spite of each person's private misgivings about the desirability and wisdom of making the trip to Abilene.
4. Based on inaccurate perceptions and assumptions, members make a collective decision that leads to action. It is in the action that it becomes apparent that the decision is contrary to individual desires. They thereby arrive at a destination they did not want to go to in the first place. Our protagonists in the parable do not actually discover their unanimous disagreement with the action they took until someone says, "Well, that was a nice trip." Another person is then moved by frustration and exhaustion to blurt out the truth, "It was not a good idea or a nice trip!"
5. Members experience frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction with the organization. Often this leads to the forming of sub-groups that take combative or blaming positions toward each other. The Abilene group begins asking themselves immediately, "Whose crazy idea was this anyway?" and thus starts the blaming cycle.
6. Finally, members are destined to repeat this unsatisfying and dysfunctional behaviour if they do not begin to understand the genesis of mismanaged agreement.
Deiss notes that, "Harvey believes that collusion motivates us to accept decisions and actions with which we fundamentally disagree or question. We submit to becoming victims by our own collusion with thinking that we believe to be wrong-headed or, at the very least, headed in the wrong direction.
Avoiding 'making a trip to Abilene' in our organizations takes the courageous act, by each of us, of both refusing to be victims, and refusing to victimize others.
Hi TT
Thanks ever so much for this most interesting and insightful article.
Grateful.
Leah x
