Nobody Wanted to Go to Abilene

On the meetings we agree to, the decisions we don't question, and the silence that makes it all possible.

It was a hot afternoon in Coleman, Texas. A family sat comfortably on the porch, playing dominoes and drinking lemonade. Then the father-in-law suggested a trip: why not drive to Abilene for dinner?

Nobody wanted to go. The drive was 53 miles each way, in summer heat, in a car without air conditioning. But one by one, each person said yes. They assumed the others wanted to go. They didn't want to disappoint. They didn't want to be the one who killed the mood.

So they went.

The food was bad. The drive was miserable. On the way back, someone finally said what they actually thought - and discovered, one by one, that nobody had wanted to go. Not even the person who suggested it. He had only meant it as a thought, not a genuine proposal. He assumed the others would push back if they didn't want to.

Nobody pushed back. Nobody asked. And so they all ended up somewhere none of them chose.

The Management of Agreement

Jerry Harvey, the management professor who told this story in his 1974 article in Organizational Dynamics, called it the Abilene Paradox. His definition is precise: a group collectively decides on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of most - or all - of its individual members. Each person believes their own view is the minority view. Each person stays silent to preserve the peace. And the result is a decision that belongs to no one.

Harvey made a counterintuitive observation at the heart of the paradox: organizations don't fail because of unmanaged conflict. They fail because of unmanaged agreement.

We spend enormous energy on conflict resolution - managing disagreement, navigating friction, aligning competing interests. But Harvey identified a different and perhaps more dangerous failure mode: the smooth, unanimous, unquestioned yes. The room where everyone nods. The decision where no voice is raised. The project that launches with full alignment - and that nobody actually believed in.

It's Not Groupthink - and the Difference Matters

The Abilene Paradox is often confused with groupthink - the phenomenon where group members suppress dissent to preserve cohesion. But Harvey drew a sharp distinction.

In groupthink, individuals genuinely shift their views to align with the group. They convince themselves that the majority is right, even when they initially disagreed. The distortion is internal.

In the Abilene Paradox, nobody changes their mind. Each person privately thinks the decision is wrong - and goes along anyway. The distortion is social. It happens in the gap between what people think and what they say.

This distinction matters enormously in practice. Groupthink is a failure of independent thinking. The Abilene Paradox is a failure of honest communication - and specifically, a failure to ask: does everyone here actually want this?

Coleman, Texas to the Boardroom

Harvey didn't stop at family road trips. In the same paper, he described a real organizational case - disguised as the Ozyx Corporation - where a leadership team collectively approved a major R&D project that every single executive privately believed would fail. The president didn't want to kill it because it was his VP's initiative. The VP didn't want to raise doubts because he assumed the president was committed. The research manager stayed quiet because he didn't want to appear obstructive.

The project launched. It failed. And afterward, in Harvey's account, each executive expressed private relief - not because the project had been worth attempting, but because the failure had finally made the conversation possible.

The Curse of Caring Too Much

Harvey named the paradox in 1974. Fifty years later, researchers tested it in a controlled experiment - and confirmed it, with a twist that should give us pause.

Mannahan, Flores and Sohn (2025), publishing in the Southern Economic Journal, ran an online experiment to understand who ends up in Abilene and why. Their finding: the stronger your prosocial orientation - the more you genuinely care about others - the more likely you are to go along with what you think the group wants. It is not indifference or weakness that drives the silence. It is consideration. It is the instinct to protect the room from discomfort.

They also found a position effect: whoever speaks or votes first is most likely to express their actual preference. The second person defers a little. The third defers more. By the time the motion reaches the end of the table, the gap between what people think and what they say has quietly widened into a consensus that belongs to no one.

The most considerate people in the room are often the ones who take everyone to Abilene.

The Question Nobody Asked

What connects Coleman, Texas and the Ozyx boardroom is not malice or incompetence. It's something quieter and more universal: the perceived social cost of raising a contrary voice.

This is where the Abilene Paradox connects to my own research.

In work I conduct with Prof. Yoella Bereby-Meyer at Ben-Gurion University, we study the social and psychological costs that prevent people from asking questions - even when the information is available and the stakes are high. We find two consistent categories of cost: costs to self-image ("what will they think of me if I ask?") and costs to the other person ("I might hurt them, or signal that I don't trust them"). Importantly, when a third-party observer evaluates the same situation - someone with no social skin in the game - they recommend asking at a significantly higher rate than the person directly involved. The costs are real. But they are amplified by proximity.

The family in Coleman didn't ask because nobody wanted to be the one who dampened the mood. The executives at Ozyx didn't ask because nobody wanted to signal disloyalty. The question that could have redirected everything was available to everyone in the room. Nobody reached for it.

What This Looks Like in Practice

The Abilene Paradox doesn't announce itself. Some signals to watch for:

• A decision moves forward with unusual speed and no friction

• People express enthusiasm in the meeting and reservations in the corridor afterward

• Nobody asks the obvious question - not because it has been answered, but because asking it feels risky

• There is a shared sense that someone else must want this, otherwise it wouldn't be on the table

  
  

The Way Out

Harvey's prescription was simple and demanding in equal measure: someone has to ask the question.

Not a devil's advocate playing a role. Not a formal process. A person who is willing to say, out loud, what they actually think - and to create the space for others to do the same. Sometimes this is the leader. Sometimes it's the person with the least to lose. Sometimes it's the one who has been to Abilene before and recognizes the road.

The question doesn't have to be confrontational. It can be as simple as: does everyone here actually want to do this?

That question - asked before the car leaves the driveway - is the difference between a decision and a trip to Abilene.

What was the last time you found yourself on a road nobody chose? And who finally asked the question that turned the car around?

I am an executive coach and social psychologist, researching the avoidance of asking questions as part of my doctoral work at Ben-Gurion University. In my work with leaders, executives, and founders, I often find myself dealing with precisely the questions that are hardest to ask - and with what becomes possible when they finally are.

References

Harvey, J. B. (1974). The Abilene Paradox: The management of agreement. Organizational Dynamics, 3(1), 17–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-2616(74)90005-9

Mannahan, R., Flores, L., & Sohn, J. (2025). The Abilene Paradox: The curse of caring too much. Southern Economic Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.70009

Zahavi, Y., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2025). The cost of asking: Extending the dimensions of willful ignorance. Current Opinion in Psychology, 65, 102105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102105