As if face-to-face meetings weren't challenging enough, most organizations have moved along to Level Five of the Game of Meetings: virtual meetings. They hope to accomplish much more work in much less time. Often they actually accomplish much less work in much more time. Of the many dangers awaiting them in Level 5 is the Virtual Trip to Abilene, which is the virtual version of a face-to-face danger.
In a Trip to Abilene, which is a group dysfunction first identified by Jerry Harvey, a group commits to something no members favor. Privately, nobody feels that the group is behaving sensibly, but everybody feels that the rest of the group favors the decision. Nobody objects. Everybody expresses support.
Trips to Abilene happen because everyone wants to accommodate everyone else. The same can happen in virtual meetings, but the probabilities are different because virtual meetings are different.
Here are some of the differences. Trips to Abilene in virtual meetings are…
- …more likely because expressing misgivings is more difficult
- Expressing To avoid offending others,
some will go along with
what they see as a
gathering consensusmisgivings is more difficult in virtual meetings. For example, in conference calls, people cannot see others' facial expressions or gestures. Raising objections tactfully is more difficult, which makes some people reluctant to object. Even when someone does raise objections, grasping accurately the sense and intensity of the objections is more difficult. - …both more likely and less likely because people are less connected
- People in virtual meetings typically know each other less well than do people in face-to-face meetings. Some are therefore unsure about where others stand on the question at hand. To avoid offending others, some will go along with what they see as a gathering consensus. On the other hand, because people are less connected, they're sometimes less concerned about offending each other by raising objections, which reduces the likelihood of Trips to Abilene.
- …more likely because of the perception that the mistake won't affect me
- In virtual meetings, if the group undertakes a decision that a member feels is incorrect, a reduced sense of connection makes it easier for members to shrug it off and let the group go ahead with the blunder.
- …more likely because some people aren't paying attention
- Inattentiveness is common in virtual meetings. People who don't pay attention can sometimes miss details of the question at hand. They might have objected if they realized the full import of the decision, but because of inattentiveness, they can mistakenly support something they might otherwise oppose. Because of the mechanisms described above, inattentiveness can kick off a cascade of support for a proposal that would otherwise fail.
In all meetings, education is the best defense against Trips to Abilene. Make sure people know how Trips work, and when in doubt, do an anonymous Abilene Check to be sure you aren't going there. Top Next Issue
Are your virtual meetings plagued by inattentiveness, interruptions, absenteeism, and a seemingly endless need to repeat what somebody just said? Do you have trouble finding a time when everyone can meet? Do people seem disengaged and apathetic? Or do you have violent clashes and a plague of virtual bullying? Read Leading Virtual Meetings for Real Results to learn how to make virtual meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot shorter. Order Now!
Read more in a wonderful book by Jerry B. Harvey, The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988. Order from Amazon.com.
See also "Trips to Abilene," Point Lookout for November 27, 2002, and "Staying in Abilene," Point Lookout for August 14, 2013.
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
- Mastering Meeting Madness
- If you lead an organization, and people are mired in meeting madness, you can end it. Here are a few
tips that can free everyone to finally get some work done.
- Using the Parking Lot
- In meetings, keeping a list we call the "parking lot" is a fairly standard practice. As the
discussion unfolds, we "park" there any items that arise that aren't on the agenda, but which
we believe could be important someday soon. Here are some tips for making your parking lot process more
effective.
- The Perils of Piecemeal Analysis: Content
- A team member proposes a solution to the latest show-stopping near-disaster. After extended discussion,
the team decides whether or not to pursue the idea. It's a costly approach, because too often it leads
us to reject unnecessarily some perfectly sound proposals, and to accept others we shouldn't have.
- When the Chair Is a Bully: III
- When the chair of the meeting is so dominant that attendees withhold comments or slant contributions
to please the chair, meeting output is at risk of corruption. Because chairs usually can retaliate against
attendees who aren't "cooperative," this problem is difficult to address. Here's Part III
of our exploration of the problem of bully chairs.
- Exasperation Generators: Opaque Metaphors
- Most people don't mind going to meetings. They don't even mind coming back from them. It's being
in meetings that can be so exasperating. What can we do about this?
See also Effective Meetings and Virtual and Global Teams for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
- Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
- And on March 27: Allocating Action Items
- From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.
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