What we can learn with the Abilene paradox

On this episode, Ricardo talks about a concept that is related to the management of conflicts, the Abilene paradox. Created by Jerry B. Harvey, the paradox is present in certain group decisions and can pose a risk to the project.

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Episode transcript

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five Minutes BM podcast today. We like to talk to you about the Abilene paradox and what we can learn from this paradox in our project environment. The first thing we need to understand, if we go back a couple of weeks, I will stop in about conflict management. And now I want to talk to you about zero conflict. What does the paradox of Ablin when nobody wants to go against what they believe is the group position.

And then they do not position themselves in the proper way. And then the group takes a completely the wrong course of action. The Abilene paradox was developed initially by professor Harvey from George Washington university. And he did this in an extremely nice video, talking about a family that was in a Sunday, sitting outside their home and someone just raise it something.

What about going to do Abilene to have a nice scream? Ablin was a joke close by, and then they send one person said in the group, Oh, this could be a nice idea. Then the other one said, Oh, okay. Yeah, maybe today it's a hot day. And no one of them really wanted to go to Abilene. But at the end, all of them wear on their way to Abilene and why they did that because nobody wanted to go against what they thought was the desire of the group.

So when someone is starting an idea with no money, the motion, no, no, dr. And then it was just raising this and then people started thinking, Oh, I need to go to Atlanta because that person wants to go to Abilene. Then the order set at the same, at the end of all of them wear on their way to Ablin without really the one thing to go to Abilene in our project environment. Why to understand this is so important. It's because most of the time we'll handle with people will handle in the communication process.

And we need to understand that sometimes can be trapped it by Doblin paradox. Let's suppose you're talking about the scope of your next project. And then someone starts saying, what about adding this feature? And then you're a person, Oh, this could be good. And then you are, Oh, it's, it's not bad at the end because they fit that this is the desire of the orders. They just do not position themselves. And then you just, the insured this on the scope.

And then at the end, you go back and say, why are we here doing this feature? A say, Oh, I thought you wanted this. Can I say, no, I didn't want, I was just brainstorming So to understand how complex is the Abilene paradox. We need to go back to understand human behavior because everybody wants to be part of the group. So we need to create an invite in our project, the environment that stimulates people to position themselves to say, okay, I respect your point of view, but I have a different one or two exactly.

To avoid these kind of believe in the Abilene paradox. It's a very similar to the group thing. It's when someone start thinking one point and then everybody just follow it. OK. But on the ambulance, you were much more concerted about being a part of a group. And most of the time, almost everybody, or maybe everybody does not want to take that direction. There is no clear drive towards that direction, but everybody just position on that, the way to avoid the conflict, remember always conflict is as important as the project scope.

You need to understand that the conflict for me is the spice of the project environment like food, food without spice. It's very tasteless project two with zero complete. It's a journey to Abilene. I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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