Ask "Then What?" Three Times
That's the first effect. What happens after that? And after that?
Write the most likely first-order consequence of your decision. Below it, ask "then what?" and write the second-order consequence. Ask once more and write the third. The first answer is obvious — everyone can see it. The second is where advantage lives. The third is where most unintended consequences hide.
You're about to make a decision that affects a system — an organisation, a market, a relationship, a process.
The decision is isolated with no downstream dependencies or systemic effects.
Why it works
Your brain naturally simulates one step ahead but stops there. Most unintended consequences and competitive advantages live at the second and third step, where complexity multiplies and intuition fails.
First-order thinking is easy and crowded — everyone can see the obvious consequence. When a company cuts prices, the first-order effect is more customers. The second-order effect is that competitors respond with their own cuts. The third-order effect is margin compression across the industry. The people who only thought one step ahead are now stuck in a race they didn’t anticipate. Training yourself to ask ‘then what?’ repeatedly doesn’t make you a pessimist or a ditherer. It makes you the person in the room who sees around corners while everyone else is staring at the wall in front of them. Second-order thinking is rare, which is precisely why it’s valuable.