Unintended Consequences

I used to argue with my bosses that they often did things without thinking through the consequences of doing them.  They would change their minds like they changed their underpants and you never knew what plan we were on during any given day.

The problems were that they obviously were sitting in the bath the night before and suffered a Eureka moment and then it was policy the next day.   I like a plan but one that is ill thought through or costed or that has no tangible benefit is not going to wash with me and hence I used to have arguments with my bosses quite frequently.

They could not understand that when they made some sort of ruling that there would be impacts elsewhere.  I don't know why but when they attained these high offices on the business, someone obviously sucked out half their brains, I'm sure of it.  If you expect a certain type of behaviour from your staff to, say, earn a bonus or some such then they, generally, are going to do what is wanted to earn said bonus or whatever is available from the boss.  It meant that quickly things got out of control as staff now motivated and targeted to do certain things to secure their bonus or whatever it was acted differently achieving goals that were not putting money into the company or delivering any value whatsoever.  People disappeared from my teams and projects as the bosses did whatever they were doing and I was left to "discuss" the lack of progress with the customer.  Me, being me, would get my boss in front of the customer to explain where my staff had disappeared to.

These things are missed by politicians and they make some edict and wonder why something else happens they weren't expecting.  The tick the box exercises in Government Departments being a case in point.  The process is the problem in so many projects.  It's a bit like quality assurance versus quality control.  Assurance means that you go through all the various stages to assure the quality of the deliverable.  If it is a piece of cr@p to start with it will still be one at the end but with full traceability.  It doesn't make a better deliverable whereas quality control does (is it fit for purpose?).  

When the Government bring in certain things, albeit for the right reasons, they don't see that the consequence of their actions are diametrically opposite of what they thought.  They aren't business people and so don't "get it" that, for example, Landlords don't rent out the houses and flats for the love of it.  They do so to make money and for profit (the great God).  Legislating that Landlords will have less powers to evict etc will lead them to do something else with their properties and why not?  Trying to protect the tenants using the "Sledgehammer to crack a walnut" doesn't work.  If it goes through it will drive behaviour the wrong way and suddenly there'll be a shortage of rental stock and the politician's, too stupid to work it out, will try and do something else which will worsen the situation further. 

Like my old bosses, they just cannot leave things alone, they have to pick and nanny around the edges and rather than improve things, many times they screw things up.  Tell them this and they shoot the messenger.