Introduction: Rethinking Change A practical look at how change happens in everyday life

Change is often seen as an individual choice or a top-down plan. But in complex systems, this view breaks down. What truly drives transformation is interaction: the quality of our relationships, conversations, and shared sense-making. To rethink change, we must pay attention to how we relate, not just what we decide.

In this chapter, I explore a shift in how we understand and approach change. Not as a matter of executing plans or persuading individuals, but as something that develops through interaction, adaptation, and learning in uncertain conditions.

Traditional change models often begin with a goal, followed by a plan and a series of actions. But in unpredictable and dynamic environments, such linear approaches quickly run into limits. Dave Snowden’s Vector Theory of Change offers an alternative. Rather than fixating on specific outcomes, it suggests orienting around a direction of travel. It encourages movement toward what matters through small, safe-to-fail steps, adjusting based on what becomes visible along the way.

This is not a solitary process. The idea that individuals alone drive change is being reconsidered. Interaction, not the individual, is increasingly seen as the basic unit of change. Change takes shape in the quality of conversations, in how people relate to one another, and in the shared interpretation of experience over time.

The adjacent possible adds another useful perspective. It shows how change and innovation often take place by building on what already exists and moving into nearby possibilities, not by making sudden leaps. Progress depends on noticing what is just within reach.

Taken together, these ideas ask us to think of change not as control, but as ongoing adjustment. Not as persuasion, but participation. And not as execution, but engagement with others, with context, and with the shifting conditions of life.