Planning | INSYNC Management Solutions

Abilene Paradox

The Abilene Paradox, was first penned by Professor Jerry B. Harvey in 1974 in an article entitled “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement”. Much later, in 1988 Prof Harvey published a book on the topic entitled “The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management”.

The Abilene Paradox describes a group of people who collectively decide to take a trip from their home in Coleman, Texas to Abilene, some 53 miles away, to partake in a meal at a quaint local diner The premise of the paradox is that in agreeing to act on the idea and take the trip, put them on a course of action that was counter to the preferences of many or all of the individuals in the group.

The following passage is taken from Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1988, pp. 17–43. © 1988 by the American Management Association, New York – All rights reserved; and was reprinted with permission, by the Aspin Institute.

“The July afternoon in Coleman, Texas (population 5,607) was particularly hot— 104 degrees as measured by the Walgreen’s Rexall Ex-Lax temperature gauge. In addition, the wind was blowing fine-grained West Texas topsoil through the house. But the afternoon was still tolerable—even potentially enjoyable. There was a fan going on the back porch; there was cold lemonade; and finally, there was entertainment. Dominoes. Perfect for the conditions. The game required little more physical exertion than an occasional mumbled comment, “Shuffle ‘em,” and an unhurried movement of the arm to place the spots in the appropriate perspective on the table.
All in all, it had the makings of an agreeable Sunday afternoon in Coleman—this is, it was until my father-in-law suddenly said, “Let’s get in the car and go to Abilene and have dinner at the cafeteria.” I thought, “What, go to Abilene? Fifty-three miles? In this dust storm and heat? And in an unairconditioned 1958 Buick?” But my wife chimed in with, “Sounds like a great idea. I’d like to go. How about you, Jerry?” Since my own preferences were obviously out of step with the rest I replied, “Sounds good to me,” and added, “I just hope your mother wants to go.” “Of course I want to go,” said my mother-in-law. “I haven’t been to Abilene in a long time.”
So into the car and off to Abilene we went. My predictions were fulfilled. The heat was brutal. We were coated with a fine layer of dust that was cemented with perspiration by the time we arrived. The food at the cafeteria provided first-rate testimonial material for antacid commercials.
Some four hours and 106 miles later we returned to Coleman, hot and exhausted. We sat in front of the fan for a long time in silence. Then, both to be sociable and to break the silence, I said, “It was a great trip, wasn’t it?” No one spoke. Finally my mother-in-law said, with some irritation, “Well, to tell the truth, I really didn’t enjoy it much and would rather have stayed here. I just went along because the three of you were so enthusiastic about going. I wouldn’t have gone if you all hadn’t pressured me into it.”
I couldn’t believe it. “What do you mean ‘you all’?” I said. “Don’t put me in the ‘you all’ group. I was delighted to be doing what we were doing. I didn’t want to go. I only went to satisfy the rest of you. You’re the culprits.” My wife looked shocked. “Don’t call me a culprit. You and Daddy and Mama were the ones who wanted to go. I just went along to be sociable and to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in heat like that.”
Her father entered the conversation abruptly. “Hell!” he said. He proceeded to expand on what was already absolutely clear. “Listen, I never wanted to go to Abilene. I just thought you might be bored. You visit so seldom I wanted to be sure you enjoyed it. I would have preferred to play another game of dominoes and eat the leftovers in the icebox.”

What the Abilene Paradox highlights is an almost universal feeling of needing to propose ideas thought to be desired by others, which are then agreed with, to “not rock the boat”.

This Abilene Paradox seems to play out regularly today by a libertarian society laser focussed on innovation and change, encouraged by a mainstream who desire harmony and are opposed to confrontation. The result is bad ideas supported by people who oppose them but do not feel empowered to speak up for fear of being at odds with the group and needing to back their conviction, possibly through confrontation and debate.

The Abilene Paradox highlights what can happen in business when there is an inability to manage agreement rather than conflict. Couple this with a lack of psychological safety to speak your mind and today’s regression of freedom of speech and this is once again the single most pressing issue facing modern organisations.

Knowing about the Abilene Paradox and that it is prevalent in many group discussions ranging from the example above to the board room and even social and political reform, will hopefully allow you to empathise with others and feel what they feel. While you can never truly know another’s mind, you should always feel empowered to authentically express how you feel without fear of offending others or of their potential ridicule, knowing they are possibly more in agreement with your view than you think.

Critical Thinking

What is Critical Thinking?

The term critical comes from the Greek word kritikos meaning “able to judge or discern”. Critical thinking is the ability to consistently apply sound judgment based on reliable information for the purpose of making good decisions. The best way to think about critical thinking is that it’s the type of thinking that should be applied to solving complex, complicated, and ‘wicked’ problems where finding the best solution is critical to success.

Before deep-diving into Critical Thinking, it’s useful to understand that there are other forms of thinking, the application of which are often more appropriate than critical thinking. This is because critical thinking is more difficult than non-critical thinking, can require significant research and time, and is often not warranted as the problems being solved are simple and their solutions are of little consequence. For example, you wouldn’t normally use critical thinking to help you decide whether you should choose coffee or tea for your morning beverage. The effort-to-reward ratio doesn’t stack up.

Some other forms of thinking include automatic thinking, which is often based on heuristics and applied to simple, everyday decision-making tasks such as coffee vs tea. Automatic thinking is sometimes referred to as ‘system one thinking’ thanks to the success of Daniel Kahneman’s best-selling book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’. Other forms of thinking include analytical, design, systems, creative, abstract, and convergent and divergent thinking. These are all valid forms of thinking that when applied in the right circumstance help to inform decisions.

Critical thinking is a process-oriented approach to thinking that can help almost anyone be better at solving problems, rendering judgments, and making good decisions.

In simple terms, Critical thinking is a three-step process involving clarity, conclusion, and decision.

Critical thinking cannot, however, make you smarter as your innate Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is relatively fixed. Critical thinking can, however, help you to form better conclusions and make better decisions, maximising your mental capability and capacity which results in far better outcomes attributed to you. Consistently applying critical thinking to solve complex problems can be your superpower that allows you to surpass those with higher IQs who do not apply the critical thinking process, resulting in less consistent outcomes.

Before we delve into finding clarity, drawing conclusions, and making sound decisions, it’s important to understand logical reasoning.

Two kinds of logical reasoning are often distinguished in addition to formal deduction: induction and abduction. Given a precondition or premise, a conclusion or logical consequence, and a rule or material condition that implies the conclusion given the precondition, one can explain the following.

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning determines whether the truth of a conclusion can be determined for that rule, based solely on the truth of the premises. For example: “When it rains, things outside get wet. The grass is outside, therefore; when it rains, the grass gets wet.” Mathematical logic and philosophical logic are commonly associated with this type of reasoning.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning attempts to support a determination of the rule. It hypothesizes a rule after numerous examples are taken to be a conclusion that follows from a precondition in terms of such a rule. For example: “The grass got wet numerous times when it rained, therefore: the grass always gets wet when it rains.” This type of reasoning is commonly associated with generalization from empirical evidence. While they may be persuasive, these arguments are not deductively valid.

Abductive Reasoning

Abductive reasoning sometimes called inference to the best explanation, selects a cogent set of preconditions. Given a true conclusion and a rule, it attempts to select some possible premises that, if true also, can support the conclusion, though not uniquely. For example: “When it rains, the grass gets wet. The grass is wet. Therefore, it might have rained.” This kind of reasoning can be used to develop a hypothesis, which in turn can be tested by additional reasoning or data. Diagnosticians, detectives, and scientists often use this type of reasoning.

Within the context of a mathematical model, these three kinds of reasoning can be described as follows. The construction/creation of the structure of the model is abduction. Assigning values (or probability distributions) to the parameters of the model is induction. Executing/running the model is deduction.

There are numerous other forms of reasoning, however, for the purposes of getting started with critical thinking deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning are the most widely used forms of reasoning and work to solve most problems. The image below details the basic steps involved in applying deductive and inductive reasoning to either validate a premise based on a sound conclusion or vice versa.

Almost all problems have some form of argument or premise that either validates the conclusion or is validated by the conclusion. We apply reasoning to validate the conclusion and/or premise. To help do this we can use a tool that can be remembered by the acronym FOEBA. FOEBA stands for Facts, Observations, Experiences, Beliefs, and Assumptions. We use FOEBA to perform research to help clarify the argument and ensure we have defined the problem correctly.

Facts

The facts of an argument contribute significantly to supporting or not supporting the premise and/or conclusion. It is important to perform sufficient research from a wide variety of sources to ensure you have all the relevant facts. You also need to ensure you understand the facts and how they apply in the context of the argument. Sometimes, facts can be difficult to find or prove for specific situations. This can be true for instances where the facts are unknown, some are missing, or they do not support a strong conclusion such as during an air crash investigation where the ‘black box’ failed.

Observations

Observations are useful in the absence of facts or when there are insufficient, known facts to fully support the argument. Using the crashed aircraft as an example, observing flames coming from one of its engines and flocks of albatross flying in the area might be a powerful observation that could contribute to solving the question of what happened. Equally, investigators’ observations at the crash site could help them establish that the aircraft hit a flock of albatross due to the presence of albatross feathers at the site.

Experience

Your experience and heuristics are very valuable assets as they are your firsthand account of similar situations and contribute to your knowledge, hence, your experience can also help you solve a problem. The closer your experience aligns with the problem you are trying to solve the more likely your experience will help. However, your experience can also lead you to make incorrect determinations as it is based on your past and the problem being solved may exist in the future where the situation is unknown. An example where your experience may be a powerful influence on you would be if you went to a restaurant and ended up with food poisoning. Your experience might cause you to conclude that eating in that same restaurant in the future will result in you getting sick again. You can see how this could be a biased presupposition based on your previous experience. Many changes may have occurred since you last ate at the restaurant, but I’ll bet you would find it hard to disagree with your experience and decide to eat there again in the future. The takeaway here is that your experience can have a positive or negative impact on your decisions so it’s always wise to understand this when using experience to help make decisions.

Beliefs

Like your experience, your beliefs can be a powerful influence on your decision-making. However, unlike your experience, your beliefs are much less likely to evolve over time and are much more likely to cause biases. Beliefs are established during your formative years and play a major role in your view of the world, circumstances, and situations and they can strongly influence your decisions. You only need to look through history to understand how people’s beliefs led to racist, homophobic, religious, and misogynistic policies and decisions that have resulted in mass oppression and wars. Having said that, belief in sound principles such as ‘fair play’, the proper uses of logical reasoning, and the truth of facts will likely be a positive influence on your decisions.

Assumptions

Solving complex and complicated problems is challenging. One of the main challenges is not having sufficient facts, observations or experiences, or beliefs to draw a valid conclusion. This is where assumptions can be used to fill the gaps in your hypotheses. Assumptions are thoughts you have that you presume to be correct. Based on your assumptions you can come to a conclusion. This is where you can fall into the trap of believing your assumptions are correct. When using critical thinking, you must always ask “how do I know my assumptions are correct”? The best approach to assumptions is to not make them without knowing how you arrived at them and if you cannot validate them.

The figure below shows the relationship between a premise, FOEBA, and the conclusion.

We hope this post has provided some valuable insights into the critical thinking process. Good luck incorporating critical thinking into your decision-making at work and in life more generally.

Long-term Planning

Planning is the process of developing courses of action to move from your current state to a desired future state and involves change, and everyone knows, people don’t like change. We hear it all the time and it’s true, people don’t like change! But have you ever stopped to wonder why people don’t like change? In his book Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock takes this notion further and proposes that it’s uncertainty that actually makes us uncomfortable. If we can reduce the uncertainty associated with the change, we can significantly reduce its negative impact and increase engagement and uptake. The way we try to reduce uncertainty and gain control of the future is through planning.

We all like to be in control, but our inability to predict what’s going to happen in the future limits our feeling of control, and the further we look into the future the greater the uncertainty and lesser the control. Hence, our natural inclination is to try to predict the future and develop plans that allow us to prepare for whatever it’s going to throw at us.

We do this through planning and forecasting, but how many times have you been involved in planning and forecasting activities where the degree of uncertainty was so great that you knew in your heart that your plans were little more than an optimistic guess? This is especially true when the plans or forecasts being developed are very long term such as three, five, and ten year plans.

So why do we placed so much importance, emphasis, and time on long-term plans and forecasts when we know that it’s unlikely they’ll hit their targets? Well, the answer may be embedded in our brains and the way we think.

Every time we reduce uncertainty we receive a hit of dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical used by our brains to derive pleasure and just like ticking off a checklist is rewarding and pleasurable. So is fooling ourselves in the belief that our planning and forecasting will somehow create certainty in the future.

There is no real ability to plan long-term or truly forecast based on any single view of the future. But business continues to try and reduce uncertainty and give confidence to senior executives, boards, and shareholders by investing significant time and money in this type of planning.

The perception that planning and forecasting have been performed effectively provides a degree of comfort and is in a way a placebo that lasts a whole financial year or for the period covered by the plan. So, if planning and forecasting are little more than adding 5 or 10% to last year’s results and are not truly representative of the future, why should we bother trying to plan at all?

Well, it’s not all bad news. Whilst the future is uncertain and your plans and forecasts are based on your perception of what the future holds, there are ways that you can plan for an uncertain future and reduce the anxiety associated with uncertainty and your lack of control.

Planning and forecasting should be done for the shortest period possible. Longer-term planning must be broad and allocate low confidence levels and large margins for error and must factor uncertainty into the planning process.

These plans need numerous decision points that take a “what if” and “if then” approach. The best way to do this is to take a multi-varied view of the future. The further into the future that you try to plan, the greater the uncertainty and variability.

Understanding this means that you cannot simply plan for one future, but rather you need to plan for the various possible futures likely to eventuate.

For this reason, scenario planning offers the best approach and uses uncertainty to influence thinking and the planning process. Scenario planning unlike traditional business planning requires the planners to consider different views of the future and develop appropriate courses of action for each view.

As we move along the timeline and the future becomes clearer, we can adjust our courses of action as required or even change to a planned alternate course of action without feeling like a rudderless ship that is out of control and at the mercy of the sea.

For more information on how to develop effective plans, check out our post titled Planning Process.

Planning Process

If you’ve spent time working in middle or upper management in any business, you would have participated in, or possibly led a planning session. I’m also going to bet, most of you have been involved in a planning session where it was crystal clear that the person in charge had absolutely no idea what they were doing and everything seemed made up then and there!

I hear this complaint so often I’m sharing the technique I use, and teach, for how to facilitate a planning session. I’m not talking about the simple, ad hoc ‘who, what, where, when, how, and how much’, planning sessions, although they are also problematic so follow the link to my article on developing Immediate Action Plans. I’m talking about detailed and often complex planning, necessary to effect change, implement a new initiative, or solve a “Wicked Problem“.

Whether the planning needed is very simple or extremely complex you need a process to follow; otherwise, you really don’t know what you are doing! Imagine if you had a simple, repeatable, scalable process to guide you through your planning session anytime you need to be “that person in charge”.

You’d be surprised how many organisations don’t have structured planning processes in place. Some organisations use processes such as the Observe, Orientate, Decide , Act Loop, ( OODA-loop), Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), or even Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).

Being a former member of the Australian Army, I’ve been trained in the use of the Military Appreciation Process (MAP), and in the years since leaving the military, I have used an adaptation of the MAP to help structure my planning. I have also taught this process to clients to help them add structure to their planning sessions.

I have included my version of the MAP based planning process in this article as a model you can use to guide you through your future planning session. This planning model is deliberately basic on the surface to make it easy to interpret and allow you to start using it straight away. With a little training, you can dive into the detail, unpack its power and use it to guide you through the development of very complex plans to address even the most difficult problems.

To employ the model, start in the centre, work your way out, and then work clockwise from blue to red, to orange, and finally green. Like most processes, this model is iterative, so when you get to the end, you may choose to continue to use the model to further refine your plans over time.

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Making the Least Worse Decision

Being a leader means you are going to have to make decisions. You can’t sit on the fence or allow fear or inertia to prevent you from taking action. Your decisions won’t always be correct but you must be willing to make them and you must be prepared to be wrong and accept responsibility for any consequences.

There’s an old saying; “a 90% solution on time is better than a 100% solution too late”. I tend to agree with this statement and have applied it to great effect over many years. There is another interesting fact about decisions. They’re seldom 100% correct and almost never 100% wrong. This means your decisions are likely to be praised by those who agree and ridiculed by those who don’t.

Making a decision and acting on it doesn’t mean you are right, but it does mean you must be willing to be wrong. We don’t always have all the information or time needed to make the perfect decision, so we need to learn how to commit to the ‘least worse decision‘ based on the best information available at the time.

Leaders have to be willing to make a decision and stick to it. My caveat for this is “make the RIGHT decision and stick to it”.

So how do you that?

Good decision making is a critical skill for any leader. It’s well documented that most people are not rational when it comes to making decisions and most decisions are emotionally driven and based on individuals or group biases disguised as ‘experience’. You only have to look at the current geopolitical decisions being made by leaders who are not thinking critically and are being pressured by group bias and emotion, to see how bad this problem can get.

Leaders need to hone their decision-making skills and one of the best ways to do this is through the study and application of critical thinking. I highly recommend to anyone responsible for making decisions, that they read Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I also recommend “Think Smarter” by Michael Kallet as it provides some very practical ways to apply critical thinking to decision making. Leaders need to lead with less emotion and cognitive bias, and more critical thought and logic. This is the foundation of good decision making.

At the same time, leaders need to have the courage to lead and that means they must be prepared to make decisions. Collaboration is important but, in the end, if you are in charge you better be prepared to stand up and make a decision, or get out of the way and let the leader make it for you!

Immediate Action Plans

In our article on the Planning Process, we provided a planning model based on the Military Appreciation Process (MAP). The MAP is a powerful tool that can help leaders develop detailed and complex plans to address new initiatives or solve “Wicked Problems“.

There will be times though when the time needed to properly research and develop a detailed plan is just not available. Your staff or those you work for will expect you to be able to quickly develop a plan of action to address an impending need. You need a systematic, simple, and effective way to quickly develop a robust plan and you need to be able to quickly brief your staff and executives in an effective, professional, and convincing manner.

This article provides a process for developing effective, consistent Immediate Action Plans (IAP) and is based on the military’s Situation, Mission, Execution, Admin & Logistics, and Command & Signals (Communication) or SMEAC for short.

SMEAC can be used in two main ways. It can be used to develop plans that are tested and rehearsed and kept at the ready to be implemented when a certain condition or set of conditions reveal themselves. It can also be used with great effect by leaders who need to quickly formulate a plan and be able to brief that plan up or down the chain of command.

Unpacking S.M.E.A.C.

Situation: Determine the issue or problem that needs to be solved. Gather assumptions. Determine any freedoms of action or constraints. Identify Why the plan needs to be developed and executed.

Mission: This is a mission statement that is written following the format; Who, What, Where, How, and by When. A military mission statement does not include the Why, however, it is important to explain the Why as part of the Situation brief.

Execution: This is where you develop the detail about how the plan will be implemented. In the military, the execution is often rehearsed.

Admin & Logistics: Identify, document, and brief your personnel on any administrative and logistic factors needed to support the execution of the plan.

Command & Communication: Understand the commanders intent 1Up & 2Up. Establish the ‘Chain of Command’ and assign authority. Determine and define who the stakeholders are, what information they need to be provided, who needs to provide it, and in what format, how frequently it needs to be provided, and over what means.

This simple process is used by junior and senior commanders to plan and execute military missions and can be adapted to help new and experienced business leaders by providing a quick, deliberate, robust, repeatable, and memorable method for developing Immediate Action Plans.

Benefits Realisation

We’ve all heard it a million times, “Projects are how organizations effect change”. But are the changes truly aligned with the organisations strategic direction? Is the Business Case solid but focused on delivering the wrong outcomes? Ever heard the saying “the surgery was a great success, but the patient died”?

Maybe there’s a need to focus more on the benefits that the change is supposed to create rather than the outcomes of the project! Stephen Covey would suggest that we ‘start with the end in mind’ allowing us to work back to the start of the planning process so we plan the right project from the outset.

Benefits Realization Management is a multi-staged process for identifying benefits to determine whether projects, programs, and portfolios can produce the intended business result and then executing and sustaining the change.

The effective uses of Benefits Mapping and Benefits Realisation sets professional project organisations apart in the industry. Engagement with clients as early as possible during their strategic planning will help steer their decisions towards implementing the changes, and projects, that will ultimately deliver their vision. Wanna know more?