WW,

Oh. I think you are looking for a scientific equivalent to the following Native American saying:

"He was as far from himself as a hog from the moon."

Cascading sellout and/or rationalization.

I think that what you are talking about it the same thing I saw in all my social change work-- "We are working hard, so we must be getting somewhere. It's taking longer than we though tbut we just need to keep doing what we are doing, longer, better, harder. Let's just encourage each other to be positive... after all we mean well."

This attitude would persist past the point of exhaustion and absurdity-- even tho people had lost any connection to the original motivating goal or vision... and thus had no feedback loop to use for comparing actual, operational results against first hopes.

It was actually pretty easy to get people back on track though. The key was making a setting safe enough for them to have space to think and feel in response to the main question:

"What had you hoped when you first took this on?"

The tears and rants that followed often led to a complete re-evaluation of current methods, and a way of proceeding with complete elegance and effectiveness, at least until the person would get swamped in that morass of effort again. Then they would need that friendly question from someone outside the effort, again.

There were some other powerful mission-restarters I could share with you. E-mail if interested.

~Susan