To Ponder: Unintended Consequences

I’m an avid Dropbox user. I was a (fairly) early adopter of the service, and I’ve never converted away. However, as part of the recent rebrand, I updated the short-name of my top level Dropbox folder. Dropbox handled the change quite easily.

But, it all wasn’t daisies.

I run a couple pieces of software directly out of my Dropbox folders. Unlike Dropbox itself – these did not like the upline name change one bit. (In fact, I’m still resolving those issues as I write this).

It’s the classic story of unintended consequences.

Plan for one thing, and another unintended thing happens.

This is normal and to be expected – especially when changing things.

Your question to ponder this week is:

How do you prepare your teams for unintended consequences?

My humble suggestion – forge upfront clarity in the right things, build in contingency, and normalise reflection and learning.