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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
Picture this: It\u2019s a scorching hot afternoon in Texas. Luckily, you\u2019ve got a shady porch, a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade and a very effective fan. You\u2019re enjoying passing the afternoon playing dominoes with your family when suddenly, out-of-the-blue, your father-in-law comes up with a terrible idea: why not drive to Abilene for dinner, more than 50 miles away?<\/p>\n
Why not? Here\u2019s why not, you think. The car doesn\u2019t have air conditioning. It will be a cramped, sweltering and miserable road trip, hours in each direction. Before you can say anything, your wife says the trip sounds fun. Your mother-in-law says the same. You hate to be disagreeable, so you say the only thing you think is allowed: Sounds great<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The trip is just as bad as you imagined, and, adding insult to injury, your meal is bad, too. After all that, you have to pile back into the car and make the reverse journey home.\u00a0<\/p>\n At long last, you get back to the porch and the fan. Everyone is silent for a long time. Lying through your teeth, you say to the group, \u201cWell, that was fun!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n No one agrees. One by one, every family member confesses they thought it was an awful plan before leaving \u2014 but felt pressured to go by everyone else. Even your father-in-law said he\u2019d have preferred to stay home \u2014 he was just worried everyone else was bored.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was an actual experience lived by the management professor Jerry Harvey, who published the story in 1974, calling it \u201cthe Abilene Paradox<\/a>.\u201d Ultimately, his point wasn\u2019t really about road trips; it was about the perils of phony consensus. Here\u2019s why being too agreeable is a genuine risk that can hurt your team.\u00a0<\/p>\n Everyone loves consensus. We assume that if agreement is unanimous, we must be doing something right.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, agreeableness comes with a cost. I\u2019m reminded of the show Silicon Valley<\/em>, one of the best depictions of startup culture I\u2019ve seen. A beta version of the fictional startup Pied Piper\u2019s platform is released to almost universal adoration \u2014 except for a board member named Monica, who hates it. As the only non-engineer to try it, she assumes she\u2019s in the wrong, so she keeps her feedback quiet. Turns out, she\u2019s spot on \u2014 the product is a huge flop with the general public.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is what false consensus<\/a> looks like in practice. Monica was the odd one out, and it seemed like the failure was with her for not understanding the platform\u2019s value. She felt pressure to fall in step with its many fans, because frankly, it was easier. When you\u2019re the one dissenting voice, all eyes turn to you. Suddenly, you have to justify your thinking and defend your reasoning. That\u2019s a whole lot harder than simply saying, \u201cyep, looks good!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team<\/a><\/em>, the consultant and speaker Patrick Lencioni<\/a> concludes that smart teams make bad decisions thanks to a preference for keeping things pleasant at the expense of keeping them honest. When people don\u2019t feel safe to disagree openly, it\u2019s not that they don\u2019t stop disagreeing; they just move the conversation to the sidelines. \u201cIt\u2019s as simple as this,\u201d Lencioni writes. \u201cWhen people don\u2019t unload their opinions and feel like they\u2019ve been listened to, they won\u2019t really get on board.\u201d<\/p>\n If false consensus is the problem, the obvious fix sounds like this: the leader decides, everyone else falls in line. But that\u2019s not the answer, either.<\/p>\n As leaders, I believe it\u2019s our job to gather information, weigh options, analyze data and yes, hear opinions. Jeff Bezos uses a principle he calls \u201cdisagree and commit<\/a>,\u201d in which teams are encouraged to voice their opinions and argue in favor of what they actually believe. But once a decision has been made, everyone gets on board, including people who voted the other way.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bezos has applied this rule to himself: when he\u2019s deferred to a direct report\u2019s judgment over his own, he\u2019s been explicit about what that means. \u201cI\u2019m not going to be second-guessing it, I\u2019m not going to be sniping at it, I\u2019m not going to be saying \u2018I told you so.\u2019 I\u2019m going to try actively to help make sure it works,\u201d he said<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n When you\u2019re the head of a company, the buck stops with you, but that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re always right. There have been times at Jotform where I\u2019ve learned this the hard way \u2014 I\u2019ve wasted time and energy seeking a consensus that was never going to materialize. Now, I follow a version of Bezos\u2019s principle: I listen, I consult, I gather data. When I make a decision \u2014 even if that decision is at odds with my original thinking \u2014 I own it.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe cost of false alignment<\/h2>\n
The alternative to consensus (hint: it\u2019s not dictatorship)\u00a0<\/h2>\n