by Eddy Parham, SPHR OD Consultant

Have you ever noticed that Newton’s Third Law of Motion not only applies to physics but to business as well? Policies are written and processes changed in order to make things more efficient, more effective, or mitigate a problem. New products are developed to meet a need or to enter a particular market. But with these changes unintended consequences usually occur especially when the changes, products, and the like are not well vetted.

Consequences are sometimes good and at other times not so good. Take for instance a government that decides to protect a particular industry, let’s say steel, by placing quotas on imports of steel in order to protect the domestic steel industry and their workers from lower priced imported steel. Naturally, the quotas will help the steel industry but the quotas also make less of the cheaper steel available for use by other domestic industries, such as domestic auto manufacturers, which causes a higher production price that will be passed on to the consumer. So while the consequence of helping the domestic steel industry had its intended effect, it also affected the auto manufacturer and the consumer negatively.

Unfortunately, many policies that are written or changes that are implemented within organizations have the same effect. It might help a few or maybe a lot for a short time but for others the changes can be confusing, cause a drop in productivity because of increased work associated with the change, cause a drop in engagement, or bring about the demise of the organization – think Schlitz Brewing and the results caused by changing ingredients in order to cut costs and speed up the brewing process in the 1970s.

So even if the changes achieve the intended outcome, make sure that there aren’t additional impacts to the organization that cause a negative net impact.