What is your definition of systems change?

An excerpt from “Systems Change: A Field Building Convening”
Submitted by Anna Birney, Darcy Riddell, and Laura Winn

Back in June, Dr. Darcy Riddell from McConnell Family Foundation and Dr. Anna Birney from Forum for the Future convened twenty-five people in Wasan Island, Canada, to collectively explore how they might concert their efforts and find shared pathways to cultivate the field of systems change.

In the context of growing use of the term “systems change” and increasing interest in systemic approaches to address some of the world’s most complex challenges, they wanted to convene a retreat bringing together practitioners, academics, and funders to explore how they might work together. In the run-up to the retreat, they harvested people’s definitions of “systems change” so they might explore alignments and differences.