A five-thousand-dollar problem

A problem costs what it costs today. In six months it costs what it has become.

I have watched the same sequence more than once. Someone sees it early. It gets acknowledged. Then it gets postponed — not urgent, let us not overreact, we will come back to it.

Six months later it is not an issue any more. It is the situation everyone is working inside.

Early, it costs an uncomfortable conversation and a small correction. Late, it costs a rebuild.

There is a reason it is hard to see from inside. A surgeon does not operate on their own family. When you are inside the problem, your assumptions stop looking like assumptions.

So the skill I keep training is not solving. It is catching.