In May this year, we launched the initial findings of our year-long enquiry into what it takes to change a system. Here, Senior Project Manager in Place and Systemic Change Kezia Jackson-Harman reflects on the overall learning and approach.

Find the Guide to Systems Change here, including examples of this work from our partner organisations.

This guide to systemic change sets out five activities that we have found critical for organisations and partnerships that want to change a system. We know that this journey will look different for each organisation and that the journey won’t be linear. You cannot tick one activity off and move to the next – you will need to continually work on and embed each activity in your work over time. But we do think that there is a clear starting point – and that starting point is yourself.

The article below sets out the first activity – Self – as the starting point in our guide to systemic change.  

Activity 1: Self

Interrogate your own role in the system by prioritising the voice of lived experience to understand what’s causing harm.

Why is this important?

Readiness for systemic change requires honesty, humility and a willingness to change.

We’ve learnt that organisations often embark on systemic change by focusing on partnership building, systemic analysis, narrative shifting, or redesign. These are all important, but pursuing these without starting from the self can overlook some of the most challenging, power-shifting elements of systemic change. Meaningfully engaging with systemic change requires that you build your readiness to think systemically, engage with others with humility and honesty, and acknowledge the narratives, attitudes and processes that might be causing harm.

That’s not to say that an organisation wanting to engage in systemic change has to undergo a year of self-reflection before any other action – rather we’ve found that starting from the self is about leading your systemic change work with a genuine understanding of your own role, and a willingness to take active steps to change how you operate. This needs to continue and deepen throughout your systemic change work.

What does it look like in practice?

This activity requires interrogating why you are making the choices you do. To engage in systemic change we have to understand the processes, narratives and beliefs that current systemic have embedded in your own organisation, some of which might be causing harm. As a funder selecting grantees, a researcher determining your sample, or a manager hiring staff, the choices we make about how we bring others into our sphere of influence reflect how power moves within the system. Scrutinising your own decisions is the best place you can start to begin understanding what is causing harm and what needs to change.

Exploring your own role can initially feel daunting and painful as you uncover the ways that you might be contributing to unintentional harm despite good intentions. But is about recognising the interaction between how your organisation works and the flawed system we operate within. It is not about blame. Embracing this process is all about being open to learning and growing. It requires determination, resilience and humility.

Doing this work requires changing whose voices shape your organisations’ understanding of the system by creating mechanisms for people with direct experience of marginalisation and exclusion to design and oversee work. Individuals who benefit from the current system, especially unknowingly, are unlikely to fully grasp its harmful effects and power imbalances. Shifting power to those with experience of harm will uncover your organisation’s blind spots and build deeper understanding of system dynamics. Establish compensated, long-term, decision-making roles for those with lived experience of marginalisation.

This process necessitates giving away some of your organisational power to engage in long-term meaningful coproduction. It can be uncomfortable, but is a critical part of engaging in systemic change with clarity on your own role and how it needs to shift.  This process also requires devoting time to build your approach to coproduction with those engaging in it, recognising that they might have experienced exclusionary, extractive or tokenistic approaches to coproduction in the past.

Shifting power at the beginning of your work is critical to enable the approach that follows in the next activities to be a reflection of different voices and hierarchies to those upheld in the current system.

Key questions to unpick in this activity:

  • What are your relationships like with the organisations and individuals you interact with? Where does the power sit?
  • How do you share and spread the power you have (e.g. your resources, assets, relationships or expertise)? What drives your decisions around this?
  • What processes and practices do you adhere to that cause harm and/or maintain a power hierarchy? Why do they exist? Can they change?  
  • Whose voices need to be heard to change the balance of power?
  • What stories about ourselves and others might be (unintentionally) holding problems in place?  

Indicators of change:

  • Processes evolve to shift the burden of risk to those with more power.
  • Decisions about who you bring into your sphere of power change.
  • More (often unexpected) resources become available.
  • Tense or challenging conversations emerge, that generate new ways of working.
  • Collaborative and trusting relationships between staff and people bringing lived experience develop.
  • Those with lived experience listened to and their ideas implemented.
  • Changes in staff’s perspectives on how change happens, what their role is and where there is potential for change.

We hope you’ll download and read the full guide, which sets out the full detail of our approach along with examples of this work from partner organisations including Youth Futures Foundation, Black Thrive and Smallwood Trust.

For more information, please contact Kezia.

Kezia Jackson-Harman