When we are leading a team in an environment that is complex and full of uncertainty, it is important to understand that every decision we make will always have unintended and unpredictable consequences.
As leaders, we need to not only expect that but go looking for it to ensure that the unintended consequence is not something that can have a significant negative impact on what we set out to achieve.
In the early years of the last century, Hanoi had a rat problem. The French colonial government wanted to solve this persistent problem. After trying to exterminate the rodent by using their exterminators, and not making any dent, the then governor of Hanoi came up with an ingenious idea and decided to place a one-cent bounty on eradicating the rats. The proof that someone needed to claim the bounty was to produce the tail of a rat, so that the French government didnt have to deal with all the dead rats.
As soon as this bounty was placed, the good folks of Hanoi started producing thousands of tails as proof to collect the bounty. However, there was no significant impact on the rat population. Instead, there was a feeling that the population increased, a lot of whom were roaming in Hanoi without their tails.
To top it all, rat farms were discovered. People started breeding rats, so that their tails could be cut off and deposited to collect the bounty. At this time, the bounty was rescinded and the residents of Hanoi had to learn to live with the rodent.
The moral of the story:
There is always unintended consequences to any complex solution of a complex problem. We are better off looking for such a consequence pro-actively and address it if needed. Some times these consequences end up being good for us and sometimes not so good. In either case, it is our responsibility as leaders to ensure that the same is addressed one way or another.
