How can you build understanding when working towards systems change

Our work as the Change Makers learning partner highlighted a practical lesson: meaningful, sustainable systems change depends on understanding the system, and continually refreshing that understanding. This article offers four questions that organisations can use to test and strengthen that understanding. 

You can’t change a system you don’t understand.  

Over five years of the Change Makers programme, 20 Funded Partnerships worked to create change across complex systems including homelessness, forced migration, domestic abuse, racial justice and mental health. 

As part of the NPC team working as the learning partner, one lesson stood out to us. Achieving meaningful, sustainable systems change begins with something surprisingly simple: understand it and then keep understanding it. 

Building understanding required continuous listening, learning and adaptation as circumstances changed. Our work with the Change Makers cohort identified four connected questions that can help guide anyone working towards systems change. 

Organisations were better positioned to achieve meaningful, lasting change when they deepened and regularly updated their understanding of the system.

Do we understand the issues and needs?

The organisations needed to understand the experiences of the communities they worked for and alongside: the challenges people faced, the barriers holding the system in place and the conditions that made positive change possible. 

• Keep research broad: Avoid narrowing the question too early; stay open to unexpected findings and connections. 
• Stay flexible: Adapt consultation and engagement methods when circumstances change or conventional routes exclude important voices. 
• Bring perspectives together: Combine insight from people with lived experience, practitioners, policymakers and partner organisations to test assumptions. 

Do we understand the policy landscape?

For many partnerships, influencing policy was a route to systems change. That required understanding formal structures as well as the political environment, public attitudes and shifting government priorities. 

• Talk to everyone: Draw insight from people with lived experience, charities, local authorities, parliamentarians and sector networks. 
• Remain independent: Be clear about organisational independence to maintain trust as political and social contexts shift. 
• Invest in policy skills: Build specialist expertise through recruitment, partnerships or training to engage decision-makers with confidence. 

Do we understand our stakeholders and their perceptions? 

Systems change depends not only on policy, but also on attitudes, behaviours and relationships. Organisations mapped who they needed to engage, from service users and practitioners to researchers, decision-makers and the wider public. 

• Use multiple engagement methods: Combine workshops, events, surveys, networking and collaborative exercises to reach different audiences. 
• Take advantage of opportunities: Respond to moments of public or political attention that create new openings for influence. 
• Reduce barriers to participation: Use clear communication, accessible formats and realistic expectations to involve a broader range of voices. 

Do we understand our own capacity? 

Understanding the external system was only half the task. Partnerships also needed an honest view of their own skills, resources, relationships and limits. 

• Invest in partnership management: Use clear decision-making, regular communication and reviews of partnership health. 
• Value people and skills: Support diverse teams, development, flexibility and lived experience to strengthen delivery and retention. 
• Recognise the importance of long-term funding: Stable, flexible funding helps retain knowledge, sustain relationships and keep adapting. 

Understanding is an ongoing practice

The central lesson from the Change Makers cohort is that understanding is not a stage to complete before the ‘real work’ begins. It is part of the work. Building and maintaining insight into communities, policy, stakeholders and organisational capacity creates the foundation for stronger partnerships, better evidence, more credible influencing and lasting impact. 

These four questions are only the starting point. Our full learning summary with Comic Relief explores what the cohort learned in greater depth, with practical examples from organisations working across homelessness, forced migration, domestic abuse, mental health and racial justice.