The Problem Before the Problem
Problems rarely begin where we first notice them. A misunderstanding may begin with what people do or do not share as common ground; a decision, with how the options are framed; a breakdown in trust, with what earlier interactions taught someone to expect.
I don't believe every problem has one neat root cause, and I'm oftentimes interested in knowing what happened before the visible endpoint: what was communicated, what was assumed, what choices seemed available, and which relationship or earlier decision changed what came next.
The point where a problem becomes visible is not necessarily the point where it began.
What happened before that?
A misunderstanding is a simple example. Correcting the final piece of information may be enough to move on. But experiments on common ground found that shared knowledge and assumptions affect how questions are formed and understood. Classic experiments on framing found that preferences can shift when the same decision problem is presented differently. And a 2026 meta-analysis of repeated trust-game studies found that people learn from a partner's earlier trustworthy or untrustworthy behaviour across interactions.
Those findings are a reminder that the moment we can see now is embedded in whatever came before it.
Intersections
Journalism teaches one to reconstruct events, not just report outcomes. Psychology turns the attention to behaviour in context. Communication makes us notice what passed between people, what did not, and what each person thought the other already knew. Practice turns those questions into consequences.
Working backwards gives the outcome a history.
Sometimes the useful intervention may be at the end: correct the information, repair the misunderstanding, change the decision. Sometimes it may sit earlier in the sequence: in how the information was framed, in what experience had already done to trust, or in whether people had enough shared context to understand one another. That distinction matters because changing the visible outcome may require changing something that happened well before it. So if we want a different outcome, where in the sequence is change actually possible?
something to watch and think about
Why Good Systems Keep Failing · Layne Robinson · TEDxKigali · 2026
