The Law of Unintended Consequences - LUC

My previous post was about decision making and the gulf between those who make decisions and those who are impacted by the decisions. One of the main reasons that decisions can have unexpected results is that LUC is ignored. LUC is The Law of Unintended Consequences and almost always affects decisions, usually for the worse.

Here are some examples:

• I live in The New Forest, which is famous for the ponies that roam free in the forest. There are many horse owners who live in the forest and who keep their animals in pony paddocks or stable yards, usually 2 or 3 fields. The forest recently became a National Park and new rules were proposed which were not well thought through. One of these was that ‘every horse must have at least one hectare (2.4 acres) of land to graze’. This was to prevent over crowding. So pony owners would have to have at least 4.8 acres to keep two ponies. Any horse owner will tell you that the amount of grass which would grow in one hectare during the summer would far exceed what the horse could eat - in fact, given that amount of grass, the horse would almost certainly go down with laminitis and possibly die. So the National Park’s decision to avoid overcrowding in pony paddocks would have had the (LUC) effect of killing off the very horses that were trying to encourage. Thanks to a local ‘uprising’ the policy was never implemented.
• Aid is given to developing countries from western governments. This may or may not be effective. An example might be the provision of fishing nets for local people to allow them to catch fish. Very worthwhile, you may think. But this action puts the local supplier of fishing nets out of business and perhaps he moves away. What happens when the new fishing nets need to be mended or replaced? There is nobody to do it. LUC has played it’s part and the locals have gone from having some old fishing nets, to plenty of new fishing nets, to no fishing nets at all.
• The welfare state was introduced to help people out of poverty. The founders little realised that LUC would ensure that millions of people now take welfare as an alternative to work.

These are all negative examples. There are positive examples too.

• The Chilean miners that were trapped underground for nearly two months were rescued by drilling a rescue shaft. Whilst drilling this shaft, LUC came into play and previously unknown deposits of gold and silver were discovered. These may even cover the cost of the rescue, which was funded by the Chilean government.

So when you make decisions, don’t ignore LUC. It’s impossible to second guess every angle but don’t assume that things will work out the way that you always expect them to!

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Decision Making

In every situation, people fall into one of two categories – the person making the decision or the person that is affected by the decision.
In every case, we hope that the person making the decision understands the implications and the consequences of that decision.
Sadly, in many instances, the person (or people) making the decision(s) doesn’t understand the situation properly and those affected suffer.
We see this at the macro level – decisions made by western governments to ‘aid’ people in developing countries or decisions made by our government which affect us directly. How often do we hear people saying ‘Why have they done this, they have no idea how ordinary people live?’
Too often this is true. Decisions are made by people in power whose lives are a million miles away from the day to day lives of all the people that the decision affects. They have very little idea how the consequences will pan out – they know what they think will happen, based on the advice that they receive from their advisors (many of whom are equally out of touch). The reality is often very different.
Those of us who are affected by these decisions are also, of course, making decisions of our own which affect other people. What about our decisions? Do we always know how the consequences will play out? How our decisions will affect our partners, our friends, our colleagues or our customers?
We can never be 100% sure of the consequences of our decisions (and neither should we – nothing would ever get done!) But perhaps we should pause sometimes and think more deeply about who will be affected and how they will be affected. Having a better understanding of this at the outset guarantees better results (for everyone) in the long term.
Next time – LUC, the Law of Unintended Consequences.

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here