“If I have a difficulty, I don’t want to seek a solution. . . I know there are innumerable solutions, but I want to find out what the cause of that problem is, and when I have really understood [it], I do not create any other problems. If I really understand one problem completely, wholly, then there are no other problems.”
— J. Krishnamurti
During Colonization, the British administration in India worried about the high number of snakes in Delhi. So, it declared a bounty for every dead snake. In the beginning, the strategy seemed to work as people brought dead snakes in large numbers. Then people started breeding and killing cobras. When the administration realized this, it scrapped the bounty.
By then, cobra farmers had a large population of now-worthless snakes, so they released them in the open, causing an increase in the population of wild cobras. This became known as the “Cobra Effect,” where the solution to a problem leads to unintended consequences that make it worse.
As soon as we face a problem, we want to find a quick solution and ‘fire-fight.’ In doing so, we don’t wait for a moment to consider whether it’s the right step or whether the solution could make bad problems worse.
Firefighting might make you feel busy now. But if you don’t know what caused the fire, you don’t know when it will rise again. And it could be terrible the next time.
To avoid the Cobra Effect, conduct a premortem: assume the solution you’ve designed has failed and speculate over what went wrong. Then take steps to prevent those problems from occurring.
Test your impressions and build solid models that work. Then, maintaining and growing what you built becomes simpler.