Thread by @Sunil_Sawhney

#WednesdaySharing

I received a fantastic read last evening, from a friend captioned #TheCobraEffect and found it #TooGoodNotToShare

Thanks @Rajesh68058461 for sharing this one ..

Wonder if you’ve heard about it; if not,read on and pass it to your friends if you like it ..

#TheCobraEffect is a term in #economics.It refers to a situation when an attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse.

This name was coined based on an incident in old colonial India.

By some reasons, there were too many venomous cobra snakes in Delhi.

People were dying due to snake bites& it became scary for almost everyone to step out of their houses

The govermnt had to take action to stop this menace & it offered a silver coin for every dead cobra.The results were great,a large number of snakes were killed for the reward.

Eventually, however, it led to some serious unwanted consequences. After a short-term dip in cobra population, it started going up.

This was because few people began to breed cobras for the income.

When the news reached the government, the reward program was scrapped, causing the cobra breeders to set the now-worthless snakes free. As a result, the cobra population further increased. The solution for the problem made the situation even worse.

The unintended consequence for a well-intention-ed idea led to making the problem worst.

Trying a new solution?
OR
Planning to tackle an existing problem with a new idea?

Well,it’s time to pause &think about how people would respond to the new idea that may sound great on paper

Specially the solutions that try to affect how people behave.

Every solution has consequences and those consequences may lead to certain situations where rather than solving a current problem, you may end up with more complex problems.

As they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the similar mistakes are happening around us everyday when the decision -makers fail to take a 360 degree view of all the possible outcomes of an action before implementation.

Few years ago, Philadelphia in USA passed a "soda tax" of US $1 on a typical 2-liter bottle of soft-drink as a "sin tax" in the national war on obesity. But the natives didn’t cut calories as a result of the tax on sweetened drinks, nor was there a shift for any healthier option.

Instead, most of them just drove outside the city to buy the same colas, from stores where they didn’t have to pay the tax while the poorest paid more as they could not afford to drive out of the city to buy their drinks.

In the end at the one end the city suffered loss of revenue due to lower sales whereas the lower section society paid more . At the other end, those who could afford to drive out to buy it cheaper bought larger quantities thus consuming even more ..

The unintended consequence for a well-intentioned idea led to making the problem worst.

It is not that mistakes happen only with the government run programs. Even big and brilliant companies do the same mistake and I can give some examples to those interested some other time.

Moral of the story:

✅Next time if you or your team has some brilliant idea, get your brilliant guys together in a room & think about #TheCobraEffect before implementing that idea.

✅Fine tune the idea to minimize the negative implications before rushing to announce it.

✅Never implement while you’re under the awe of the brilliance of a never -tested, nice-looking solution or idea.

✅Think about #TheCobraEffect first.

Thanks for reading 🙏

Pl share (if you like) with those you care for, as I have done by sharing with you all ..