How Individuals Can Drive System Change
By Dr. Sobia Khan, Director of Implementation
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At The Center for Implementation, we think a lot about how to make change happen at different levels of the system. One thing we always make sure to do is to train and support people to understand individual behavior, regardless of what level of the system they’re working at. This is why we always bring up individual change theories such as the COM-B and the Theoretical Domains Framework in our capacity building and consulting.
The role of individuals and organizations in creating systems change
When we do this, we always get the question, “What’s the point of understanding individual change when I work in a ‘big S system’?” That’s a valid question, and the response is that no matter what level of change is occurring, the actions of people are responsible for that change. I consider myself big systems thinker, and I came to this realization several years ago when I was exploring topics for my PhD thesis. I was trying to understand how interactions between organizations can manifest change within a system. One thing I couldn’t escape was that often we talk about organizations as conscious entities and yet they run on the collective conscious of people. So if the relationships between organizations are paramount to understanding how we can foster change, then we have to understand the people in those organizations who are fostering those relationships - what the characteristics of these individuals are, and what drives them to change. The same idea is true when trying to work at other levels of the system — we might write policy, but policy is influenced by people, written by people and enacted by people. Therefore, in addition to understand the systemic impact of the policy, it helps to understand the people involved in making and rolling out that policy to fully and comprehensively grasp implementation.
Interactions between individuals to create systems change
This also brings up another key point when trying to understand change. It’s not only the actions of individuals, but the interactions between individuals, that can facilitate change in a system. Overall, understanding trust and power, as well as other relational dynamics, is very important when you’re trying to find levers for change in a system.
All of this is to say that systems change requires us to pay attention to change at multiple levels, including ultimately the people that are involved. Fully understanding the dynamics within a system means understanding the individuals within it.
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