Confused about what systems change is?

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NPC has been talking about the importance of systems change for more than ten years. You can see this in our first guide from 2015. In many ways, it is encouraging that the term has become more mainstream across the UK impact economy in recent years.

However, our recent conversations with clients and colleagues across the sector suggest something else is also true: while many people in the UK impact economy use the term ‘systems change’, there’s still confusion around what this really means. The term is often used in abstract ways, making it hard to understand what it looks like in practice.

‘Systems change’ is sometimes an unhelpful term

There is no single agreed-upon definition of systems change. In practice, different organisations use the term to mean things that can seem contradictory:

A process or an outcome
Large-scale change or smaller shifts in how people and organisations work together
Solving a whole problem or influencing part of it

It’s no surprise, then, that the term can feel confusing or even unhelpful.

What matters most is not landing on a perfect definition. It is making sure you have a shared understanding of what you mean when you use it, particularly when working with colleagues, partners, or funders.

Cutting to the chase

If you’re looking for a practical starting point, NPC sees systems change as both a process and an outcome designed to shift the conditions of a wider system that are holding a problem in place.

Rather than focusing only on the symptoms of a problem, such as providing a direct service to people experiencing social challenges, systems change means addressing factors that are either:

Root causes of a problem, causing it to exist in the first place. For example, wider social or economic insecurity may contribute to poor youth mental health across a country.
Unhelpful conditions that, while they may not cause a problem in the first place, help it to persist. For example, multiple organisations may provide youth mental health support, but in a fragmented way with limited coordination between schools, services, and voluntary organisations.

At NPC, we often refer to the ‘six conditions’ when trying to understand what is holding a system in place. To make this more concrete, we’ve illustrated each of them below using examples from our research on the youth mental health system.

Conditions holding a system in place	Examples from the youth mental health system
Policies	Funding and commissioning approaches that prioritise crisis support over early intervention
Practices	Rigid referral and screening processes that require young people to go through multiple steps, or rely on adults to access support
Resource flows	Uneven and often insufficient funding for statutory and non‑statutory services
Relationships and connections	Limited coordination between schools, health services, and voluntary organisations
Power dynamics	Young people and their families with lived experience having limited influence over how services are designed, with decisions often shaped by commissioning systems and institutional priorities
Mental models	Stigma and societal attitudes towards mental health discouraging health seeking

Which ‘system’?

There can be multiple systems, with different boundaries, in the context of one problem. Not all of them are large. For example, in youth mental health, you might be looking at a system:

Within a single school, involving relationships between teachers, safeguarding leads, students, and external partners, and shaped by factors like staff capacity and school culture.
Within a local area, where schools, NHS services, charities, and community organisations interact, influenced by local referral pathways and availability of local support.
Nationally, shaped by policies, funding decisions, workforce capacity, and broader societal attitudes towards mental health.

The key is to be clear about which system you are referring to when discussing a problem, as the boundaries you draw will shape what you focus on and what opportunities for change you identify with.

Systems ‘change’, ‘thinking’ or ‘practice’?

People use several related terms, often interchangeably, including systems change, systems thinking, and systems practice. You can read more about these in our Systems Practice Toolkit.

In many cases, when people talk about ‘systems change’, they are using it as an umbrella term for taking a systems lens and applying systems thinking to create change within a system.

In practice, the distinctions between these terms are less important than three things:

You can take a systems thinking approach to any impact work.
You should have a shared understanding of what you mean when you use these terms with colleagues, partners, or funders.
It can be helpful to be more specific about what you actually mean, rather than relying on the term systems change alone. For example, you might be talking about understanding patterns in a system, changing how organisations work together, or shifting decision-making structures.

If you’re still feeling confused after reading this, that’s okay

Systems change is not something you either ‘get’ or ‘don’t get’. It is a way of looking at problems that encourages us to zoom out, notice patterns, and ask different questions about our role.

What matters more than agreeing on a perfect definition is being clear about which system you are talking about, why it matters, and what role your organisation is realistically trying to play within it.

If this way of thinking helps you make better decisions, ask better questions, or work more collaboratively with others, then it is probably useful.

Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing bite-sized content exploring what systems change can look like in practice, as well as convening our next systems change peer network for organisational leaders in June.