What is systems change and why do we need it?

Traditional, ‘tried and tested’ solutions proposed by different sectors have allowed for some progress, but failed to truly address the complex challenges humanity is facing. In the search for new approaches, a growing movement spanning practice and academia calls for social innovation or changework focused on systems change. In recent years, systems change has gone from a fairly obscure and unknown concept to something discussed in politics and written on the signs of activists.

Is humanity on track?

It can be hard to benchmark ‘human progress’ but there is one framework voted upon by all Member State of the United Nations. By now, most of you probably have heard about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which all Member States agreed to meet by 2030. They are a series of social, environmental and development targets, grouped into a so-called Agenda 2030, with the slogan #transformingourworld.

Do you also know how your country is doing? Most likely, not well. The sustainable development report, published yearly by SDSN, the Bertelsmann Stiftung and Cambridge University Press, allows you to consult country profiles. If your country’s dashboard looks anything like Switzerland’s, where I’m from, it will mostly be a mix of warm colours, ranging from red for ‘major challenges remain’ to yellow for ‘challenges remain’.

It’s sobering to realise we are not on track to realise the SDGs, which many would say are not even sufficiently ambitious in terms of creating healthy living conditions for all human beings that can be sustained on a finite planet. Despite ever increasing mobilisation, technological progress, and interest in social innovation, we are not on track to stop global warming, biodiversity loss, or the increase of economic inequality.

What we could try instead

Traditional, ‘tried and tested’ solutions proposed by different sectors have allowed for some progress, but failed to truly address the complex challenges humanity is facing. This is not just me saying that, it’s a conclusion research has come to as well (Nicholls and Murdock, 2012). In the search for new approaches, a growing movement spanning practice and academia calls for social innovation or changework focused on large-scale institutional change, i.e., systems change. In recent years, systems change has gone from a fairly obscure and unknown concept to something discussed in politics and written on the signs of activists.

But what does it mean exactly? And why do its proponents think it necessary? There is not one definitive way to answer these questions - based on 8+ years of practice and study I’ll give you mine. 

Defining systems change

One way to understand systems change is by looking at the iceberg model. Basically, above the water line is everything that can readily be observed and naturally draws most of our attention: behaviours, decisions, results, and other types of outcomes. Below the water line lie the structures, processes, rules, and norms that produce these visible results. Further below are the power distribution and relationships that underlie these structures. And at the deepest level, the mindsets, values, beliefs, and paradigms that give rise to all of the above. Or in other words, in which all of the above are anchored.

An example: plastic pollution in oceans is a visible problem, but merely cleaning up plastic (an example of direct service social innovation) won’t solve it. We can keep ourselves busy for another 100 years cleaning, while plastic continues to end up in the oceans. To go beyond symptom fighting, we must examine the laws, structures, and norms that lead to plastic creation and disposal. In other words, work towards structural change. Typically, that level of change is prevented by the investment in the status quo of decision-makers, or those who control the capital. To address this, some changeworkers will focus on the power distribution and dynamics and seek to transform those. Fundamentally ‘solving’ the issue of plastic pollution requires a paradigm shift: away from a linearliner and extractive economy to a circular and regenerative one.

This is pretty easy for most informed people to understand when prompted with the right questions, but it’s a little bit less obvious when talking about social issues. In social issues, already whether or not something is a ‘bad’ outcome is disputed due to certain norms and bigotry that is prevalent in our society. When discussing issues such as poverty, gender inequity or racism, the blame is often placed upon the victims of systemic discrimination, rather than on the system itself. And so people are told to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ or to ‘learn to negotiate their salaries’, and the paradigms that stack the deck against them remain firmly in place.

How systems change guides my work

True paradigm shifts are the level of transformation that changeworkers focusing on systems change envision. They seek to “alter the conditions that generate the characteristics of social problems” (Mair and Seelos, 2021, p.1). However, systems change work remains poorly understood and insufficiently supported. That’s one of the reasons why I co-founded collaboratio helvetica in 2017: an initiative aimed at catalysing systems change towards the SDGs in Switzerland and beyond. It’s why I trained, coached and supported hundreds of (aspiring) systems change leaders, but it’s also why I spent so much of my time on advocacy, delivering countless speeches across sectors, trying to help key stakeholders understand the need for systems change, and how they can foster it. It’s why I worked on supporting funders in adapting their practices to funding systems change. It’s why, when I realised that most changeworkers, but systems change leaders in particular, end up burning out, I created the well in 2023. And it’s why I founded Parayma in 2024, with the intention to scale my advocacy work and offering additional forms of support to systems change leaders, including hands-on support for them to realise their systems change initiatives across SDGs and sectors. Basically, expanding the support and resources available to (aspiring) systems change leaders is my jam.

What does this mean for changework as a field?

I am not proposing that everyone should shift to systems change work, nor that all direct services should be stopped. Whilst we work on creating a system where there is no hunger, we still need to feed people who are hungry today; whilst we work on eradicating single use plastic, we still need to clean out the oceans. The point is rather that we must also invest resources in understanding how a certain problematic result arises, to be able to sustainably address the issue. If we collectively engage in symptom-fighting only, we are effectively accepting that the problem will be maintained in place. And that is unacceptable to me. Our yearning for change is too strong and our collective power too great to accept that all of our efforts will end in just some minor progress and cosmetic edits of an otherwise largely unchanged paradigm. I don’t know about you, but that’s just not a path I can stay on. Understanding systems thinking is in my opinion key to changing course.

Indeed, even changeworkers who do not work on systems change benefit from understanding the different levels of intervention along the iceberg. Having that lens allows us to make a conscious decision about which one to focus on, rather than defaulting to the most visible issue. Knowing that even if you are currently cleaning out the ocean, what you truly wish to see happen is a paradigm shift towards a circular economy, will guide your strategic choices in the future, what you advocate for on global stages, where you donate or invest a part of the money you generate. Learning to contextualise our own changework efforts in this way also empowers us to collaborate with others, recognising how our interventions might be complementary, and gradually contribute to a deeper level of change no matter the specific intervention. Having this language allows us all to understand how the puzzle pieces can fit together, and none of us delude ourselves into thinking we have the ‘one solution’. Only together can we co-create the paradigm shifts our societies so desperately need!