Over the last four years, I’ve had the privilege of supporting the delivery of the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) program through my work at The Voice Inc. under the Local Leadership for Collective Action Program.

PDIA is a bit of a mouthful, and when I mention it, people often ask, “What exactly is that?”

At its core, PDIA is an approach to solving complex problems. Developed by the Building State Capability (BSC) program at Harvard Kennedy School, it focuses on starting with real problems, testing ideas, learning from what happens, and adapting along the way. Rather than assuming we know the answer upfront, PDIA encourages us to stay curious and responsive.

When I was first introduced to it, the approach resonated deeply with me. I’ve always placed importance on making power visible, enabling meaningful participation, and valuing process as much as outcome. PDIA offered a framework that connected strongly with my own participatory practice toolbox.

One of its most important lessons is simple but powerful: begin with the problem, not the solution.

In contexts like PNG, where challenges are deeply rooted, shaped by history, and continuously evolving, pre-packaged solutions rarely work. Research and lived experience both show that a problem-driven and politically informed approach is necessary when navigating such complexity.

There is no single pathway to reform here. Every province, district, and community operates within its own political, social, and institutional realities. What works in one place may not translate into another.

In practice, this means slowing down long enough to understand what is really going on. It means listening carefully, paying attention to relationships, tracing how decisions are actually made, and noticing whose voices are missing. PDIA keeps bringing you back to this grounding reality: context shapes both the problem and the way forward.

A few years ago, I worked with the government on an important reform initiative. On paper, everything looked strong, yet it wasn’t translating into practice. I remember feeling stuck. A mentor said something that stayed with me: “The only way to fix something is to understand why it isn’t working, and start from there.” That simple shift in perspective changed my approach to the work, and slowly, progress began to show.

Another aspect of PDIA that has stayed with me is its emphasis on multiple perspectives. What I’ve seen through this work is not perfect solutions, but something deeper: people coming together from different angles to tackle a shared problem. Government, civil society, communities, and institutions all bring different lenses. No single actor holds the full picture, but together, we begin to see more of it.

This reflects the reality of complexity. Systems don’t behave in linear or predictable ways. Even when we understand the parts, we can’t always foresee what they will produce. This calls for humility and a willingness to pay attention to relationships, not just technical fixes.

PDIA has also helped me recognise that progress does not always arrive in big shifts. Many of the problems we work on are deeply embedded, slow-moving systems, policies that don’t translate into practice, long-standing institutional constraints. It can feel like change must be significant to matter.

But it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes progress looks like:

• a district team improving a GBV referral pathway
• a committee becoming a little more accountable
• a group of leaders beginning to trust each other enough to work differently

( Read some of the PDIA in PNG Blogs here.)

These may seem small, but they create movement where there was none before. Over time, those small steps accumulate into something meaningful.

More recently, I’ve been reflecting on what it means for us in PNG to come together around our problems. We are not short of ideas. We are not short of policies. And we are certainly not short of capable committed people. Yet our work can often feel fragmented, not because we don’t know what needs to be done, but because we aren’t always working in ways that allow ideas to take shape collectively.

Someone recently commented that the CSO space on certain issues feels “crowded.” I found myself questioning that. Perhaps it feels crowded not because too many people are working, but because the work is not always connected.

PDIA creates a different kind of space, one that brings people together around a shared problem. Not to agree on everything, but to stay engaged, test ideas, and learn together. It asks something of us: patience, humility, and the willingness to stay in the work even when the path is unclear (which is often the hardest part).

And when that happens, even in small ways, something begins to shift. PDIA has shown me that change is not always dramatic. Sometimes it looks like a small win, a better question, a stronger coalition, or a team choosing to work together differently.

Perhaps that is what our country needs most right now, not just more people talking about problems, but more people willing to come together to solve them. One step at a time. Together.