The Bus to Abilene

A couple years ago I read Colin Powell’s It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership. The book is essentially an elaboration of 13 rules pertaining to life and leadership. A bare bones version originally appeared in Parade magazine. It’s a very good book and I’ve now read it twice.

One of the stories he tells had to do with an expression called “the Bus to Abilene.” It’s about how groups can sometimes go down a wrong path when individuals in the group think everyone else wants to go that way and they fail to speak up because they don’t want to be out of step or the one to be a naysayer.

It’s an intriguing problem and I’ve recognized how this can sometimes happen. But how do you stop it? Colin Powell says that in the army it’s possible to simply stop and ask, “Are we on the bus to Abilene?” Everyone would know what this meant. Good leaders who sense this is happening will dare to take the same gamble and ask.

The book I am currently reading is called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. It’s another really good book that I would recommend to everyone, introvert and extrovert alike, especially leaders. Interestingly the author Susan Cain while talking about group dynamics brings up the bus to Abilene story as well. So I thought I might be useful to share it here.

From Wikipedia: In an Abilene Paradox a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many (or all) of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group’s and, therefore, does not raise objections. A common phrase relating to the Abilene Paradox is a desire not to “rock the boat.” This differs from groupthink in that the Abilene Paradox is characterized by an inability to manage agreement.

The term was introduced by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his 1974 article The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement. The name of the phenomenon comes from an anecdote in the article which Harvey uses to elucidate the paradox:

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]…