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The Law of Unexpected Consequences –
Download our guide to spotting knock-on effects

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Th The law of unexpected consequences

Government actions to combat the coronavirus keep having unexpected consequences: students returning to University spread the virus, an examination algorithm leads to school children from disadvantaged backgrounds having their grades downgraded, and closing bars at 10 pm leads to people not socially distancing in the streets.  

We should not be surprised about these unexpected consequences because it is a well-recognized systems phenomenon. When you make a change in one part of a system it has knock-on effects elsewhere and some of them may be disadvantageous to what you are trying to achieve. And in all the examples we are now seeing, changes are being made that impact wider systems whether it is the existing educational system or the night-time leisure social ‘systems’ of our towns and cities.

Why do we not identify these consequences when we are planning a change? They always seem so obvious after the event. Part of the answer is that when we are planning a change we are usually focused on the change itself and we are probably under time and resource pressure to deliver it. There may not be much time to lift the blinkers and look for wider implications. And it is possible we don’t want to know: we may have enough trouble planning the change without looking for things that may or may not happen.

But this is a shortsighted and potentially disastrous strategy: it might jeopardise the whole venture. Spotting potential problems early means there is an opportunity to find ways of avoiding them.

This is a systems analysis problem and there are ways of spotting potential implications before anything is implemented. In one of our current projects, (the WORKTECC project lead by the CORU, the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London), we have developed a framework for the systematic search for implications of a change programme which is based on sociotechnical systems theory. It is designed to search for implications in a work system. The framework is here as a free resource:

Download our guide here

We have often helped project teams work through this process but this framework is designed for people to use for themselves. If you are concerned about the implications of a change you are engaged with, please try it. And please provide us with some feedback so that we can go on refining it.  

Professor Ken Eason

Keeping your concentration when working from home

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Weapons of mass distraction

When you travel to work there are things that shape the day and help you focus on getting the job done: the daily timetable (arrive, go home, lunch breaks etc), the enclosed work spaces, the meetings and appointments, the deadlines to meet and so on. When we are working from home many of these ways of organising the day disappear and it is easy to get distracted and lose our concentration. We are thrown back on our own resources to create a discipline that will sustain good working practice.  

 Using psychological theory Will Bedingfield gives some excellent advice on how to sustain concentration when working at home 

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-to-concentrate-pomodoro-wfh 

 A major conclusion from psychological research is that we are ‘single channel information processors’. That is, we can only focus on one thing at a time. We may celebrate multitasking but the evidence says we do it by rapid switching of our focus and it is stressful and inefficient. So working well depends on cutting out distractions. At home there can be plenty of them so how can we sustain our work focus? 

  1. Cut yourself off from temptation   Try to create a workspace that is free of all other homely features. Not just the rest of the family but all the other temptations of your home – magazines, food, music, evidence of your hobbies or whatever.  
  2. Use the normal structure of your working life. No doubt there will be deadlines, zoom meetings, telephone appointments etc that will shape parts of the day but make sure there are chunks of time to do the things you have to schedule yourself and don’t leave them until you are tired at the end of the day. Try not to get over committed to video meetings because they need extra concentration. There is growing evidence that people suffering from ‘zoom fatigue’. This seems to be most pronounced when people go straight from one meeting to another throughout the day.   
  3. Limit engagement with on-line ‘distractions’. Your PC or tablet is full of possible distractions – Facebook to check and Google to search etc. Many of the distractions may come from work itself: all those emails most of which you can bin. Many people adopt a policy of only checking emails once an hour for example so that they can keep their focus on the task in hand.  
  4. Give yourself breaks.   Don’t expect too much of yourself. We work best if we take regular breaks whether that is to get some exercise away from the fixed posture in front of the screen or to give our brain a chance to relax.  

All this advice amounts to: give yourself a chance of a decent run at each major task you undertake. 

Professor Ken Eason