Linear Thinking vs System thinking.
In 19th century colonial India, there was a snake (cobra) infestation in Delhi, yes a cobra infestation. Apparently, this did not please the ruling British colonial government who decided to do something about it.They came up with the brilliant idea to incentivise the locals to kill these vile creatures.How? By giving financial reward (money) to anyone who brought a dead cobra skin to the authorities.
The hunt began and after a while they saw a significant drop in the snake population. But then something interesting began to happen. Instead of the cobra population going down to near zero, the cobra population still persisted, while people still brought in dead snakes to claim their prize on a daily basis.
Something was not right.
They did some digging and found out that the locals had been breeding these snakes at home only to kill and present them to the authorities whenever they wanted cash!
In a bid to foster the elimination of the snakes, they had unwittingly created a Cobra Economy!
So what is the cobra effect?
If it is not already obvious by now, the Cobra Effect describes a situation where the unintended consequence of an idea or policy is to worsen the problem it was trying to solve.
History is actually replete with stories of similar occurrences. From the Chinese Mao Zedong and his many policies that backfired, including the Four Pests Campaign, to The French policy of rat extermination in Hanoi, the evidence is clear that humans by their very nature will always seek out ways to ‘game’ the system consciously or unconsciously.
Bringing it Home
“Because men have learnt to shoot without missing, Eneke the bird has learnt to fly without perching.” — Igbo proverb (Things fall apart — Chinua Achebe).
Since the inter-state lock-down and banning of non-essential travel in Nigeria, desperate Nigerians have been looking for ways and means to conduct their businesses and see loved ones in other states. The idea to ban all non-essential interstate travel seemed well informed by the Federal Government at first. We were battling a disease like we have never seen before and we needed to restrict the efflux of persons from major cities in order to curtail its spread.
But what the policy probably failed to take into consideration was the people who were supposed to enforce this lockdown. You see, for those lucky souls who are still yet to find out, you need to know that the Nigerian Police force is probably the most corrupt institution on the surface of the earth. Satan and all his minions sometimes go to take classes at the Nigerian Police academy. It is that bad.
Now when you tell those guys to enforce a lock-down many of them do not even agree with, you have a situation where police officers became overnight drivers of unmarked vehicles conveying passengers across state borders for a VERY high premium.
Those who did not want to be burdened with the rigors of long drives spent their afternoons standing at checkpoints, collecting bribes from deperado civilian drivers who were brave enough to flout the law.
A LOCKDOWN ECONOMY had been born.
The above situations bring to mind a certain error in thinking that should not exist at the level of policy formulation. The error of linear thinking.
Linear thinking thinks cause and effect, namely; if I lock borders, nobody will be able to travel and the virus will not leave Lagos. If I place a bounty on snakes, all the snakes will die. But what I advocate and even champion, is System thinking which doesn’t just consider the effect of actions, but also studies and attempts to predict the effect of the effect, and heck, if possible, the effect of the effect of the effect of policies.
At the level of policy there should be think-tanks run by people who, being steeped in the daily reality of the local situation, will be able to predict to a large degree the effects of certain actions and proffer solutions to meet these challenges even before they arise. I imagine this to be the primary job of ‘special advisers’ and ‘aides’ and not what they currently are; an opportunity for politicians to reward their loyal cronies with well paying, high sounding ‘government jobs’.
Linear thinking will be the death of us as a people.
If someone had sat back to analyse the impact of the lockdown in the first place, maybe a lot of the anguish Nigerians currently face would not have even happened.
Linear Thinking in healthcare. (and everywhere else…)
Skeptics might argue that system thinking is nothing but speculation and that several unpredictable variables determine the response of people to policies. However, I believe that human nature IS fundamentally predictable, and that when you understand the peculiar environment in which you find yourself, you are greatly equipped to navigate through seemingly uncharted waters. For instance, if I wanted to improve the health-seeking behavior of pregnant women in a typical locale in southern Nigeria, linear thinking will say: create free antenatal services, slash the price of deliveries and Caesarian sections to less than 30% of its current price, and since affordability is arguably the most important social determinant of health in Nigeria ( which in itself is a function of income), more women will choose to deliver in Government hospitals, right? Right.
But then what?
As the demand for healthcare soars, if you do not expand existing manpower, equipment and facilities, an already overburdened health system will be swamped in work it cannot handle, further overworking and de-motivating staff, straining available ultrasound scan and other equipment, and producing disgruntled patients. These patients will have a bad impression of government hospitals and pray to have enough resources to patronize good private facilities or simply go back to delivering at home, and thus your hospitals will end up overall, worse off than when you first started.
Thus, system thinking may advise a different approach of upgrading existing facilities and employing more healthcare workers, BEFORE reducing price, and if the government budget is not projected to be able to maintain this sustainably in the long term, then reducing price may not be the most prudent strategy afterall!
The whole point of this treatise if you like, is to bring to the fore the importance of System thinking. Away with lazy cause and effect linear thinking, lets roll up our mental sleeves and get to work!
