​The Abilene Paradox - Jerry B. Harvey

On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" The mother-in-law says that, “Actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic.” The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.

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This parable is often used in management training for many corporations. I find this to be truly amazing and can’t help but wonder if there were four people sitting around a table pondering how to get one person elected President of the United States, when someone said that we ought to come up with a plan for Universal Health Care. It seemed to be a great idea even though one of them thought that it should be a simple plan that would just sound cool on the campaign trail, one of the them thought that it would be more effective if they used the term “crisis” when describing the situation, one thought it would be a great “social experiment” and the other one was actually the one running for President. How could his trusted advisors be wrong, so he went along with it.

Be careful of the unintended consequences of a Great Idea.

We haven’t even arrived in Abilene yet and no one seems to be very happy about the outcome and wished that they had just kept quiet. Duke Marquisss,