Recognising Layered Intentions

Why most investments are layered, and why that matters

Across the last few posts, we’ve been unpacking what lies beneath a transaction: trust, intention, expectation, and motivation. What’s become clear is that investment isn’t just a technical activity. It’s a relational one. People don’t simply commit capital for financial return – they do it because they want to see something happen.

But here’s where things get more complicated:
Most transactions don’t carry a single, clean expectation. They carry multiple, layered ones.

A startup founder might want strategic advice from their investor, not just funding.
A government might offer a low-interest loan hoping to both grow a business and create jobs.
An angel investor might support a venture partly for returns, partly to be involved, and partly because they believe in the mission.
A donor might want no financial return – but still hopes their contribution results in visible, lasting change.

What looks like a simple transfer of value is often a bundle of expectations: financial, personal, symbolic, and social. That doesn’t mean the transaction is flawed. It just means it’s doing more than one thing at once.

Sometimes we don’t name these layers clearly, and that’s where trouble begins. We assume everyone is there for the same reason. But motivations differ. Some are about outcomes. Some are about recognition. Some are about access, alignment, or a particular type of involvement. Others are emotional – like loyalty, curiosity, or belief.

There’s no tidy way to separate these out. But we can learn to recognise and respect them. And that recognition is the foundation for intentional investment.

This isn’t a new idea. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel reminds us that different investors are playing different games, even with the same asset. In behavioural science, Kahneman and Tversky showed that our sense of risk and reward is shaped by framing and feeling as much as by fact.

And in developmental psychology, Patricia Crittenden and Pascal Vrticka offer an even deeper explanation: our internal strategies for engaging others – especially when uncertainty is involved – are formed through lived experience. These strategies shape what we expect from people, what feels safe, and how we interpret trust and risk.

That’s why some investors want full control, while others are comfortable with looser structures. Why some need a quick exit, and others are happy to wait. Why many people get involved even when there’s no direct return – because it lets them support something they care about.

Once we acknowledge this, a few things become clear:

• Transactions are rarely neutral. They express the hopes and strategies of the people behind them.

• Motivations are often layered – not always in conflict, but rarely identical.

• Most investment is hybrid – blending financial and non-financial aims, whether or not it’s named.

• Trust holds these differences – not by eliminating them, but by creating space for each to be seen.

So what does this mean for how we structure capital?

It means we need better ways of surfacing and aligning intentions. Not to force agreement, but to make difference visible. When people understand what others are really hoping for, they can work together more effectively. Misunderstandings shrink. Clarity grows. And the transaction becomes something people can genuinely stand behind.

In the next part of this series, we’ll start exploring how structure supports this clarity – beginning with the role of naming output. What happens when we say plainly what we’re hoping to see? And how does that shift the way we design a transaction?