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Abilene paradox
The Abilene Paradox
On my birthday a couple of years back, I wanted to take my family out for dinner. I asked my wife where we can go. Knowing that I like Gujarati food, she immediately said: “Let’s go to Agashiye – The Terrace Restaurant.”
My son and daughter both nodded in agreement. On return my son said: “I wish Pappa had taken us to Mainland China – he loves Chinese food.” “Or at least to Shere-E-Punjab for the wonderful tandoori chicken” added my daughter. “Yes, I too would have loved to go Mainland China”, I said.
My wife looked surprised: “But didn’t we all unanimously agree to go to Agashiye” she asked.
I said sheepishly “I didn’t want you to feel bad.” And both my children nodded in agreement. Here were four people who of their own volition would not have gone to ‘Agashiye – The Terrace Restaurant, but collectively agreed to go there.
This also happens in the corporate world. This is the Abilene Paradox. Prof. Jerry Harvey calls it “The Inability to Manage Agreement”.
Abilene Paradox occurs when a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is contrary to the preferences of many of the individuals in the group.
Prof. Harvey states in his paper ‘The Abilene Paradox’: “Organizations frequently take actions in contradiction to what they really want to do and therefore defeat the very purpose they are trying to achieve”. This is the inability to manage agreement.
He adds: “The inability to manage agreement, not the inability to manage conflict, is the essential symptom that defines organizations caught in the web of the Abilene Paradox.”
In the corporate world, when the top boss throws an idea, the group immediately agrees. This is because everyone in the group thinks he would look stupid if he disagrees. Standing out as a lone voice is very embarrassing. This leads the group to decide on ‘yes’ when ‘no’ would have been the personal (and the correct) response of the majority.
I love this from Ayn Rand: “If we have an endless number of individual minds who are weak, meek, submissive and impotent – who renounce their creative supremacy for the sake of the “whole” and accept humbly the ‘whole’s verdict’ – we don’t get a collective super-brain. We get only the weak, meek, submissive and impotent collective mind.”
https://www.desidime.com/discussions/abilene-paradox?page=3#post_4144119
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https://www.desidime.com/discussions/abilene-paradox?page=3#post_4146060
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https://www.desidime.com/discussions/abilene-paradox?page=3#post_4181821
GOLDWYNISMS
Sam Goldwyn, the Hollywood colossus, was so well-known for his artistic butchery of the English language that he lent his name to a whole class of verbal carnage. A VERY small sample, appears below:
1) God makes stars. I just produce them.
2) Color television? Bah! I won’t believe it until I see it in black and white.
3) Too caustic? To hell with the costs, we’ll make the picture anyway.
4) AT A STUDIO MEETING: All those who agree with me, say ‘Aye!’. All those who don’t agree with me, say ‘I resign!’
5) Give me a couple of years and I’ll make that actress an overnight success!
6) From success you get a lot of things, but not that great inside thing that love brings you.
7) Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
8) A bachelor’s life is no life for a single man.
9) I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job.
10) For your information, I would like to ask a question.
11) If I look confused it is because I am thinking.
12) Let’s have some new clichés.
13) I hate a man who always says ‘yes’ to me. When I say ‘no’ I like a man who also says ‘no.’
14) If people don’t want to go to the picture, nobody can stop them.
15) A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.
16) It’s more than magnificent – it’s mediocre.
17) I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
18) Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
19) Television has raised writing to a new low.
20) We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.
21) Spare no expense to save money on this one.
22) The scene is dull. Tell him to put more life into his dying.
23) Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
24) Upon being told that a book he had purchased for filming couldn’t be filmed because it was about lesbians, he reportedly replied: “That’s all right, we’ll make them Hungarians.”
25) I never liked you, and I always will.
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