The Arab let his camel inside bit by bit, and the camel kept the tent

In the fable, an Arab sat in his tent one cold night when his camel asked to hold its head inside to warm it. The request was small and the man agreed. The camel then asked to warm its neck, then to place its forelegs inside, then to stand wholly within — and each time the man consented, moving over a little to make room.

When the camel was finally inside, the tent was too small for both. The camel declared there was no longer room for the man, and pushed him out into the cold. Nothing had been taken by force; the whole tent had been surrendered one small, reasonable request at a time.

The decision error is not that the Arab was generous. It is that he judged each request on its own and never asked what the sequence was building toward. A chain of small, individually defensible approvals reassembles into a large one once the other party needs the whole.

For an organisation, the fable is a warning about creeping scope: a partner, supplier, platform, or project that keeps asking for 'just a little more' can absorb the entire operation unless the cumulative question — not the single request — is the one being answered.