The British ruled India as a colony from 1858 to 1947. Though sparsely documented, an often repeated parable from that period in popular culture, business, and politics is known as The Cobra Effect. Or, the law of unintended consequences.

As the story goes, the British rulers set out to reduce the venomous snake population in Delhi by offering bounties for each dead snake turned in to the government. So what did clever locals do? They started breeding Cobras they could then kill and turn in for cash. Not a bad way to make a living at the time apparently.

The point is, incentives are weird. And they have unintended consequences that can make people do seemingly crazy things!

What Cobra Effects are slithering through your team or organization?

• Sales reps bringing in unqualified customers because they’re compensated on new logos signed?
• Engineers writing hundreds of lines of code each week but not advancing roadmap items to completion on time?
• Customer support reps closing out tickets or ending calls as fast as possible because of turnaround time?
• Recruiters setting up a ton of phone screens without any good candidates coming onsite?
• Marketers releasing blog posts weekly that don’t line up with the product release schedule?

The list goes on and on and the examples themselves could fill a library. The next time a colleague does the inexplicable, perhaps stop and wonder what are the incentives driving their unintended behavior? Understanding is the first step to bringing a little more order to your universe.