A Chinese Leader launched a campaign to get rid of four different types of pests. He thought that these pests would be responsible for epidemics and diseases. These pets were rodents, flies and sparrows. The sparrows also ate fruits and grains. The Chinese officials came up with various competitions to get dead sparrows.
People actively participated and brought down the number of sparrows. These continued for a long time. But as time passed, they noticed that the crop yield had reduced and this way is not solving problems.
Over the period they understood that sparrows were not only eating the grins but also the worms or pests. Over the period China was struck with famine and a lot of people died in that. It was then understood that worms or pests ate more grains than sparrows.
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In the history of mankind, there are many such examples in which the likely outcome was not achieved due to negligence of underlying or overseeing some facts. This effect is called as second-order effect. The first-order effect is due to achieve the primary result.
Whereas the second-order effect is the outcome happening as an ill effect of the first-order effect. Like in this case first order effect is killing sparrows to save crops. But the second-order effect is an increase in several pests that ate more grains and was caused by to reduction in several sparrows.
Many times, we all are guilty of overlooking the second-in-order effect of our main idea. This may happen as we are more focused on our first-order effect. Thus, while solving big problems we often create unintended or unforeseen problems.
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This may also be due to the incentives we get for the winning idea. We do whatever we can to make the idea work even before. We give deep thought to the second in-order effect. Now it is human to make mistakes. It is also human to strive and get the first-order effect without thinking about the second-order effect.
This second-order effect may arise due to human stupidity, self-deception, or maybe some cognitive or emotional biases. Five causes of the second-order effect would be ignorance, errors, immediate interest, basic values and self-defeating prophecy.
We hope that we have shared some important and simple ways to reduce unintended consequences when solving big problems.
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1. Negative Second in Order Effect
In the pandemic, one such example can be unintended in the United States of America. They had their first order result to keep the economy working they never called any lockdown. They oversaw the second-order effect of spreading the diseases through continued work.
Thus, to achieve the first-order effect, a second-order effect of the spread of disease was unforeseen. It is futile to argue whether to concentrate on the first-order effect or to think about the second-order effect.
Thus, it is of utmost necessity to keep in mind both first-order as well as second-order effects. We cannot solve one problem and grow another problem. This would become a vicious cycle of solving problems and creating new problems every time we solve problems.
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Now this can always happen that while solving first-order problems we face a second-order effect. But this second-order effect can be solved if we ask the right questions at the right time and for the right things.
Like in a Business Scenario, one can ask how can increase the sales revenue. But here one needs to keep in mind that while improving sales revenue. We should not end up losing loyal and long-time customers. This kind of approach is necessary so that we do not lose old customers who help maintain the bottom line while in an ambition to increase the top line.
In the unintended pandemic situation too, we have come up with first-order and second-order effects. Our first order problem is to reduce the spread of the pandemic by covering the mouth and nose with a mask which should be discarded every day.
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Now we need to address the first-order problem we have developed a second-order effect that addresses the waste generated by the discarded mask. Maybe we could have addressed this with a solution of making reusable masks which would not create a strain on waste disposal infrastructure.
In these Modern times, there is another issue of potable water. We have moved to sea to get potable water through desalination. But have we thought about the increase in dissolved solids due to outfall? Now to solve the first-order problem of drinking water we have not visited the second-order effect of the increase of solids.
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2. Positive Second in Order effect
Hence every time while address the first-order problem we need to think about the second-order effect. Once we find the solution bout a first-order problem, we should ask questions about how, why, where, when and what to check if it is developing any second-order effect for us.
Now we have been discussing only the negative second-in-order effect but there are times when a positive second-in-order effect is caused. During the Cold War, no man’s land was created between East Europe and East Europe which gave a lot of scope for dwelling of natural habitat. Ships sinking in the sea gave way to artificial corals.
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We all in this business world want to come up with great ideas to credit that incentive to solve first-order problems of our organization. But think about the incentives if we go to the business head with the first-order problems and solutions for the solving problems and consequences arising from it.
This would surely give you an edge in your company. And yes, sometimes the second-order effects can surely be positive which we do not understand at the time of decision. If we revisit the human history of modern times then we can get many such examples of second-order effects caused due to first-order effects and both positive as well as negative effects.
Many effects have been named after some of the people who went to address first-order problems and landed up in opposite second-order effects.
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