What Are The Consequences?ByRaymond D. Matkowsky
The other night I was watching a TV show that featured a doctor and a patient as the main characters. It seems this patient was a body builder exploring ways to extend life. In the process he developed a non-treatable cancer that replicated through the body very rapidly. It spread much more rapidly than doctors could react. His efforts to extend life led to this outcome.
Over the years, as a scientist, this plot troubled me. For some, it is a very real possibility. There are consequences for trying to modify nature.
Every action that we take has consequences. Not all consequences are bad, but the bad ones do exist. Some can’t be anticipated. Other consequences can. Scientists and business leaders need to take these possibilities into account. Sadly, most of the time, we do not. We do so at our own peril.
Shrinking Menu-Value Portions
As a cost savings measure, a well-known family restaurant catering to the young, started reducing serving size. Patrons saw the reduced value and quickly departed. Once a business loses a customer, chances are that they will never regain that customer. Clearly, a consequence management did not anticipate. The consequence of price (value) changes was well known. Management, simply, did not do their homework prior to implementing the plan.
The connection between value and customer retention has been known for years. In the mid-1800s, a certain brand of coffee was considered the premier brand and in high demand. As a cost cutting effort the manufacturer substituted a cheaper Robusta beans replacing a portion of their standard high quality Arabica beans. They felt no one would notice. Robusta is stronger and bitter, so some people did notice. The brand is still on the market. However, it is no longer in as high demand.
Misquotes, Lizards, and Cats
There is a Caribbean resort that I have visited on numerous occasions. In order to rid the resort of misquotes a large number of small lizards that hunt misquotes were brought in. When the lizards got to be the pest, cats were brought in to hunt the lizards. I do not know what will be the outcome of this but I did see one cat trying to get into a garbage can to get discarded food. You may want to be environmentally friendly, but wouldn’t it be better to spray for misquotes in the first place and avoid the consequences?
This kind of scenario has played out many times in many places. It is nothing new. Do your homework!
President Ronald Reagan
President Reagan started his career as a liberal Democrat. Like many people, he became more conservative as he aged. By the time he entered the Presidency he was an ultra-conservative.
In 1981 The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called for a strike. The strike was plainly illegal. Reagan reacted like most bosses of the era would and fired over 11,000 controllers. However, if his aides were doing their “due diligence” properly, they might have gone back to the President and said “maybe we have to find another way….”. Reagan firing the air traffic controllers has had severe consequences that exist into today.
Air Traffic Controllers must be younger than 31 when hired. They must retire at 56. They only have a twenty-five year working period. Few controllers are hired before the age of thirty. Former military controllers are the exception.
Firing all the controllers at once and hiring new ones came with a shortage already existing. Also, all of the new hires were forced to retire at the same time. The government had to hire replacements and fill shortages in the each period. They couldn’t fill the shortage before they fired the strikers. How did they expect to do it afterwards? In 2025, the shortage is still 2,000 and we are once again coming to a turnaround.
Forty-four years later we are still living with the consequences. I see no way out of this unless the government changes its hiring criteria. Reducing the training period will not be the solution.
Some people will feel that this is a minor problem only affecting a few people. Wrong! This is a major problem affecting almost everyone and every business large or small. Businesses depend on getting their supplies promptly. Customers depend on getting their orders promptly. When airports are backed up because of a shortage of controllers, cargo planes are the first to be limited.
Both the airlines and businesses depend on business travel. In the 1980s, when I was a low level employee, there were periods of months that I would fly two or three times a week. More senior employees would travel much more. Limiting flights is a severe consequence for business.
Some people feel that Reagan was a great President. However, Reagan was human. All humans make mistakes. I believe that this was President Reagan greatest mistake.
The Challenge
It is always a challenge to predict the future. Luckily, most of the problems we face have been faced before. Before you act, research the previous results. You will know the negative and the positive. More importantly you know why something is negative and something is positive. You will learn the consequences that were unknown at the time.
You may not be able to predict the future but by not researching the past, you will be prone to make the same mistakes. The last thing you want to do is to create future problems for yourself.
If you have any comments, let us know. Email me at rdm@datastats.com. We will try to print it in our next newsletter.
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