One of my all-time favorite stories is told by Jerry B. Harvey in his book The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management.   It describes how four family members unknowingly—but willingly—wasted a whole afternoon.   Here’s a summary of the story from Wikipedia:

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 the still had time to enjoy the afternoon. (1)

Abilene for the Holidays?
A quote from Harvey’s book sums the situation up nicely:

“Here we were, four reasonably sensible people who – of our own volition – had just taken a 106-mile trip across a godforsaken desert in furnace-like heat and a dust storm to eat unpalatable food at a hole-in-the-wall cafeteria in Abilene, when none of us really wanted to go.”(2)

So what does this have to do with the holidays?  Plenty!  To paraphrase Harvey above, families might end up in Abilene for the holidays like this:

“Here we were, four reasonably sensible people who – of our own volition – had just spent way too much time in a over crowded mall wasting much too much money on stuff we thought people might like, when what we really wanted to do was to forget the whole stress-inducing present-shopping process and just enjoy spending time with our families and friends.”

Cancel Your Trip
Breaking out of the Abilene Paradox is actually pretty simple.  It usually only takes one person in a group discussion dissenting from the group opinion to get others to voice their real thoughts.

So if you are discussing gift-giving with your family this year, and if you’d really prefer to just spend time with folks instead of spending money on presents, speak up!  My guess is you are not alone, and you’ll save everyone the hassle of a pointless trip to Abilene.

1 “Abilene paradox.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 1 Dec 2008, 13:53 UTC. 16 Dec 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abilene_paradox&oldid=255201862>.

2 Harvey, Jerry B. The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988.