What is a Disbenefit?
A disbenefit is a genuinely negative outcome a program creates for some stakeholder as a consequence of succeeding — not a risk (it's expected) and not a cost (it's an outcome). Honest benefits management puts disbenefits in the register next to the benefits, owned and mitigated, because pretending they don't exist doesn't stop stakeholders from experiencing them.
The credibility payoff is real: a benefits case that names its losers is believed; one that's all upside is discounted by everyone who's seen a program before.
Worked example
A warehouse-automation program's register lists benefits — throughput +40%, error rate −60% — and disbenefits: 120 picker roles eliminated, and peak-season temp employment in the town drops. Mitigation is planned like any workstream: retraining into maintenance roles, attrition-first timing, a hiring pipeline with the local college. The union negotiation goes hard but stays honest, because the program never claimed there were no losers.