Last time I mentioned the Law of Unintended Consequences. Let me give you an example as it happened to us. When we lost our lease and had to move, we decided to drop our Post Office box and have mail delivered to our street address. This would save time and money. We filled out the change-of-address forms and changed our forms to reflect the new address. Since we were in the same zip code, we did not expect any delays in our mail. Wrong!

It seems that when the mail got to our Brighton post office, the new address stickers were applied -- and then the mail was sent back to Detroit for re-sorting before coming back to Brighton! How foolish to think that the mail could get put on the right truck at the local post office without too much delay. The unintended consequence, of course, was that our cash flow was interrupted for about two weeks when we didn't receive any mail. Try getting your creditors to believe that one!

For several reasons, we get to move again after the holidays. What a pain, but it should help us out in the long run. The challenge is to avoid a repeat of the mail problem we had last time. We will be on the same road, so maybe the delivery person will be the same and apply a little common sense during the transition.

Not all unintended consequences are bad. Several years ago, we located a local vendor to do some work for us. As usual, we took a sample of our product to show what it is we build. We left the sample and it caught the eye of the plant manager who came out to our plant to purchase one of our products and to see the operation. He was impressed with the product and he likes us personally. As a consequence, he made us a business loan that came at a critical time in our growth (actually, they are all critical times). He has turned into a trusted business advisor and a source of used equipment.

Thorough planning, analysis and asking a lot of questions will help to avoid unintended consequences. Sometimes, though, the results of what you think is a benign action will surprise you.