Our education may be the starting point for this mindset.  We seem to be thinking only in terms of problems and not what we specifically. Many questions arise such as "What's wrong?", "How long has it gone on for?",  "When did it start" and "Whose at fault?".

These questions only worsen the specific problem faced.  It is useless to drown yourself in the history of the problem. Problem thinking only makes the problem worse.

A much more usefull avenue of thought is thinking in terms of contribution.  Asking what the one person's contribution was, what your contribution was and how these contributions add up to the problem may lead you in the right direction sooner.

The direction we are going, leads us to two more questions : what do we want instead and what are we going to do about? Enter outcomes. 

Next we will discuss the first step of the nine step in construction in outcome.