In August 2025, Polish researchers tested something nobody had thought to check: what happens to doctors' skills after they rely on AI assistance? The AI worked perfectly—catching problems during colonoscopies, flagging abnormalities faster than human eyes could. But when researchers pulled the AI away, the doctors' detection rates had dropped. They'd become less skilled at spotting problems on their own.

We're all making decisions like this right now. A solution fixes the immediate problem—but creates a second-order consequence that's harder to see and often more damaging than what we started with.
Research from Gartner shows that poor operational decisions cost companies upward of 3% of their annual profits. A company with $5 billion in revenue loses $150 million every year because managers solved first-order problems and created second-order disasters.
You see this pattern everywhere. A retail chain closes underperforming stores to cut costs—and ends up losing more money when loyal customers abandon the brand entirely. A daycare introduces a late pickup fee to discourage tardiness—and late pickups skyrocket because parents now feel they've paid for the privilege.
The skill that separates wise decision-makers from everyone else isn't speed. It's the ability to ask one simple question repeatedly: “And then what?”
What Second-Order Thinking Actually Means
First-order thinking asks: “What happens if I do this?”
Second-order thinking asks: “And then what? And then what after that?”
Most people stop at the first question. They see the immediate consequence and act. But every action creates a cascade of effects, and the second and third-order consequences are often the opposite of what we intended.
Think about social media platforms. First-order? They connect people across distances. Second-order? They fragment attention spans and fuel polarization.
The difference isn't about being cautious—it's about being thorough. In a world where business decisions come faster and with higher stakes than ever before, the ability to trace consequences forward through multiple levels isn't optional anymore.
Let me show you how.
How To Think in Consequences
Before we get into the specific strategies, here's what you need to understand: Second-order thinking isn't about predicting the future with certainty. It's about systematically considering possibilities that most people ignore.
The reason most people fail at this isn't lack of intelligence—it's that our brains evolved to focus on immediate threats and rewards. First-order thinking kept our ancestors alive. But in complex modern systems—businesses, markets, organizations—first-order thinking gets you killed.
The good news? This is a learnable skill. You don't need special training or advanced degrees. You need two things: a framework for mapping consequences, and a method for forcing yourself to actually use it.
Two strategies will stop your solutions from creating bigger problems:
Map How People Will Actually Respond – trace your decision through stakeholders, understand what you're actually incentivizing, and predict how the system adapts.
Run the “And Then What?” Drill – force yourself to see three moves ahead before you act, using a simple three-round questioning method.
Let's break down each one.
Strategy 1: Map How People Will Actually Respond
Here's the fundamental insight that separates good decision-makers from everyone else: People respond to what you reward, not what you intend.