Cult Fiction
The Abilene Paradox and Managing Agreement
“If we are all in agreement on the decision - then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
-Alfred P. Sloan
Raise your hand if you can relate to the following situation:
You are the leader of a group making an important decision. After some dialogue, you suggest a course of action and ask if the group agrees to move forward. No one objects. Perhaps this is a decision at work to make a particular financial investment, or a family decision to go to a particular restaurant.
Either way, the decision fails spectacularly.
Suddenly, the same people who sat around the table start telling everyone that they knew all along that your idea would never succeed.
If you are nodding glumly, you’ve come to the right place.
I hate when people pretend to consent to an important decision, only to claim that they were against it all along when things do not work out. In my eyes, these people are cowards.
Turns out, I’m wrong..sort of. (Either way, I’m wrong a lot; why anyone listens to me or reads anything that I write is a mystery.)
Heuristics are problematic but surprisingly normal. And why people do not speak up when they should is no different.
Abilene Paradox
One day, Jerry Harvey’s family decided to take a trip to Abilene, Texas. The vote was unanimous; the trip was miserable. And then, something surprising happened; every person who took the trip said that they only agreed to go to Abilene because everyone else said that they wanted to go.
Enter the “Abilene Paradox.”
Leaders love to talk about the need for healthy conflict and constructive disagreement, but Harvey makes a convincing case that since leaders do not manage agreement well, there is little reason to assume that they will manage disagreement any better.1 Think back to the perhaps apocryphal quote from Alfred Sloane; it feels great to say that a decision was unanimous, but the wise leader is one who chooses to probe unanimity before taking it at face value.
Yes, leaders say that they want people to disagree with them (a modern “Team of Rivals”!). However, every member of the group also wants to be well-liked by the rest of the group, setting up a mental conflict that can silently destroy the ability of that group to make effective decisions.2 Harvey asserts that while it seems absurd that a group would make a decision that they know will “compound the very problems they are designed to solve,” social anxiety is an equally powerful force that keeps someone from standing up and saying “no!” to a misguided decision in order to stay in the good graces of the crowd. And since all people share similar anxieties about belonging, it becomes easier than we could ever imagine for a bunch of people to share the same private doubts, and yet express public support for a decision until that decision fails.
If you are saying to yourself, “this sounds cultish,” you’re not far off.
The Culting of Brands
How is a person in The Family International, a notorious cult, similar to a person who is obsessed with Apple products? If your immediate reaction is “they’re not similar,” slow your roll. And meet Douglas Atkin, who thinks that iconic brands are more like cults than we would like to believe.
In The Culting of Brands, Atkin argues that “Brands are distinctive markers of human identity,”3 and reflect more about the person who identifies with the brand than the corporation that produces the product. A century ago, buying a product made by General Electric (G.E.) primarily told people something about the quality of General Electric, “the producer of the brand.” Today, “the brand legitimizes the consumer”; someone chooses to wear Airpods or ride a Harley so that others will associate that product with them. If the Abilene Paradox represents the dark side of groupthink, The Culting of Brands is Atkin’s take on how to harness that same force.
I find Atkin’s analysis a particularly helpful way to think about the largely unhelpful conversation about whether or not Jews are becoming “post-denominational.” While there is no question that fewer people identify with the major denominations of Judaism today than they did decades ago, no evidence exists that large numbers of Jews are switching from actively identifying with a denomination to actively participating in Judaism and simultaneously not identifying with a denomination. Generally speaking, when people choose not to identify as Conservative or Reform, they choose not to identify with organized Judaism at all; ultimately, “post-denominational” is nothing more than a sticky category mistake.4
However, Atkin’s book explains why fewer and fewer Jews believe that saying that they are “Modern Orthodox” or “Reconstructionist” provides inherent legitimacy for how they express their Jewish identity; ultimately, denominations are corporate entities like G.E., not cults like the Moonies. However, when a person says that they are a “Ramah Family” and an “Ikar Family,” those brands reveal something about the values that person wants others to know that they care about. The distinction is subtle but critical.
Cult Brand Secrets
I am switching up the approach to recommending one podcast per week.
For those of you who want to read the book recommendation, but do not have the time, I am going to find the best podcast where the book’s author shares their book’s core thesis. Here is an interview with Douglas Atkin:
Weekly Links
Sex Is No Longer A Teen Commodity: Assumptions about teens being “sex-crazed” are longstanding, yet the data suggests a more interesting trend. Read more here.
What Makes You Procrastinate: Greater Good Magazine is my favorite resource for bringing science to mindfulness and social/emotional intelligence. I particularly loved this piece on what’s at the core of procrastination and why that may not be bad.
Seven Types of Rest: I’m not great at many things, but I am great at napping. I loved this article from Sahil Bloom on different kinds of rest, and why we need all of them.
Building Resilient Organizations: Admittedly, I am late to the party on this article, but this is a 6,000-word piece of what it means to build sustainable social change movements. Worth the time.
America’s Workaholism is Finally Breaking: As a general rule, people who work for or volunteer in nonprofits overwork themselves, as it is hard to separate when one is deeply committed to a cause and when that commitment descends into workaholism. This is an interesting take on whether or not the COVID-19 pandemic will mark a sea trend at the end of an obsession with work.
Jerry B. Harvey, “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement,” Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1988, 17-43.
For those of you who know me well, and know my favorite books on leadership, this is very similar to what is captured in immunity to change. I am saving immunity change for later; it’s too precious for me to use until I am ready. I know; I need better obsessions…
Douglas Atkin, The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers, 115.
“Category mistake” is a great term from most philosophy 101 classes. If you say “the Number Three is Green,” you are making a category mistake (i.e. “Three” is a number, but “Green” is a color; they are separate categories).
By extension, if you say that someone who grew up in a Reform temple but now does not belong to a synagogue and does not want to join one is “post-denominational,” you are making a category mistake by lumping that person together with someone who grew up in a modern-Orthodox synagogue and now is the gabbai of a traditional egalitarian minyan and calls themselves “Flexodox.” The person who attends the partnership minyan is “post-denominational,” but the person who no longer wants to join a synagogue is “unaffiliated,” and it makes no sense to lump them together just because both of them used to identify with a denomination.
And bringing this full circle, there are far more people who grew up in synagogues but now have no interest in joining one than people who grew up in synagogues and want to actively invest their time in innovative, category-defying alternatives to the traditional denominational framework. The former category is in the millions, the latter category is likely a few thousand people.
P.S.- This is probably the closest I’ve gotten to a rant in this newsletter.