Anyone in a leadership role for any length of time has experienced a situation where we have reviewed a set of circumstances and put together a plan of attack designed to improve the situation and guide the potential outcomes to the benefit of the organization. Most of us know going in that it is possible that these interventions won’t produce exactly the desired results were looking for. We also know that if we fall short, we can just adjust along the way.

But sometimes, even our most well-intentioned plans and interventions don’t produce results that make the situation even slightly better. Often a little revision can put things back on track, but other times, our best and most well-intentioned plans produce results that make the situation far worse. (Sometimes, well-intentioned plans produce results that make the situation worse)

The consequences of aggressively pursuing a bad strategy from the leadership standpoint can be catastrophic. As in many things, history has important lessons to teach us here. One of our primary goals in leadership should be to avoid something known as “The Cobra Effect.” The term “cobra effect” comes from an unfortunate leadership decision during the time of British rule in colonial India. The British government was appalled by the number of venomous cobra snakes slithering around Delhi. Some enterprising young military leaders took note of the benefit of the large Indian population and decided a good leadership solution (They paid a bounty to catch the cobras) would be to pay a bounty to the people of India to catch all of the cobras for the income.

Initially, this was a very successful strategy… thousands of snakes were killed for the reward. But as it became harder and harder to find the wild snakes and collect the bounty, some enterprising Indians started breeding hundreds of snakes and turning  them loose for the reward. When the British government discovered this, they immediately discontinued the bounty paid for the cobras, making all of the snakes raised in captivity virtually worthless. So, the Indians released all of the now worthless cobras, and the population of cobras around Delhi was soon greater than before the program was even instituted. It’s a classic example of a well-intentioned leadership intervention that produced exactly the opposite result from what was expected.

As leaders, we are generally keenly aware of the important role that ethics and good intentions play in the quest to lead efficiently. Even so, we would do well to take a lesson from the medical community and think about the possible paths forward or other interventions we might engage in from a leadership perspective. One of the primary tenets of the medical community’s Hippocratic oath is “First Do No Harm.” This simple concept could save many of us a lot of grief, embarrassment, and extra work over the long run when it comes to leadership. Take a minute before you choose your course of action, think it through, and don’t let the cobra effect bite you in the… well, you know what!