What I’ve Learned About How Change Really Happens
I used to think change happened to me. When I first started this work, everything felt reactive. Systems were broken, resources were scarce, and problems seemed external. Like many of us, I tried to make sense of it all by creating structure.
So we designed programs. You know the kind – structured, measurable, outcome-driven. They looked good in presentations. They made great grant applications. But something was always missing. The programs helped people, sure, but they rarely touched the deeper conditions that made them necessary in the first place.
That led me to projects. More flexible, easier to adapt. We could experiment, try new things, respond to what we were learning. But no matter how well they worked, scaling felt like pushing a boulder uphill. Each success stayed small, isolated, contained.
I remember sitting in a meeting, surrounded by data showing how well our latest project was working, and feeling this nagging sense that we were missing something bigger. That’s when we started exploring partnerships. If individual projects struggled to grow, maybe working together with aligned organizations could create greater impact. We shared learning, pooled resources, built on each other’s strengths.
But partnerships had their own limits. They depended heavily on existing relationships and often got stuck in institutional constraints. We were working alongside each other, but not really transforming how we worked.
That insight led us to collaboratives – not just working near each other, but truly integrating our efforts. Bringing organizations and leaders together in ways that went beyond coordination. The work became more responsive, more adaptive. But even then, we were still operating within structures that weren’t designed for long-term systems change.
Then I started thinking about platforms. Instead of pushing change from the center, what if we could create spaces where change could emerge from anywhere? Platforms opened up participation, letting more people contribute instead of just receiving. But here’s what I learned the hard way: platforms can scale access, but they can’t scale trust. And trust, I was beginning to see, was everything.
That realization shifted my focus to trust-based funding. Moving away from short-term grants with rigid deliverables to investing in people, relationships, and movements over time. Letting communities lead their own change. It felt scary at first – harder to measure, harder to control. But the results went deeper than anything we’d seen before.
Which brought me, finally, to understanding systems change as fundamentally relational work. Systems don’t shift through interventions alone. They shift through trust that lets people imagine new possibilities together. Through networks that make action possible at scale. Through the slow, patient work of changing norms, behaviors, and culture.
Looking back, I see this wasn’t just about trying different methods – it was about fundamentally shifting how I understood my own role in change. I moved from reacting (things happening to me) to taking ownership (creating change by me). From designing solutions alone to co-creating them with others. And finally, to understanding that my job isn’t to control change but to hold space for it to emerge through me.
Each stage felt necessary at the time. I had to build programs to see their limits. I had to design platforms to understand their gaps. I had to learn to trust before I could truly let go.
Now I find myself asking different questions. Not “how do we fix this?” but “what wants to emerge?” Not “how do we control outcomes?” but “how do we create the right conditions?” Not “what solution can I design?” but “what possibilities can we discover together?”
Because here’s what I’ve learned: Change doesn’t happen to us. It doesn’t happen by us alone. It happens with us, through us, in ways we can’t always predict. The best we can do is show up, stay in the work, and keep learning how to move between these scales while keeping our humanity intact.
That journey – from trying to control change to learning to dance with it – has transformed not just how I work, but how I understand transformation itself. And while I can’t tell you exactly where this path leads, I can say this: it feels truer than anything I’ve tried before.
Originally published on Substack on 23 February 2025. Read on Substack →
Gautam John 
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