56 Consider the Consequence

YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 56 “A few minutes working out the consequences of your decisions can save resources “Results are what you expect. Consequences are what you get.” Unknown Do you consider the consequences of your actions? Imagine you work in the Leisure Department of your local authority. You are told to save cash. One idea you come up with is to leave the park gates unlocked at night, saving as a result £60,000 over two years in lower salary costs. Write down all the potential consequences of this action. Have you identified any? The local newspaper recently announced that our parks would remain open at night to save the cost of paying someone to open and close them. “That’s a great idea,” I said to my wife, “then they’ll pay a lot more to repair the vandalised equipment and clean the graffiti.” Well, I was wrong. It was not vandals and graffiti artists. It was fly tippers. The consequence of leaving the gates open was that people dumped van loads of rubbish in the parks. Was that one of your outcomes? So When I train people in my approach to Creative Solution Finding, I lead them through a stage of analysing where their ideas will meet assistance or resistance. It surprises me how many people find this unusual, as it is a logical way to identify where we might find support or meet obstacles. One technique to use is “Consequences”. We ask “What is one consequence of implementing this idea?”  We can next ask, “What else?” or we can go further and ask “What is one consequence...