We live in a world saturated with metrics.
We measure productivity, performance, engagement, growth, satisfaction, retention, reach. We measure outputs down to the decimal point, and dashboards glow with confidence about what is supposedly working.
And yet, when it comes to change — the kind that actually alters how systems behave — we are remarkably unsophisticated.
Not because people don’t care.Not because they lack intelligence or effort.And not because they underestimate how hard this work is.
In fact, in conversations with changemakers around the world — people who have dedicated years or decades of their lives to environmental justice, public health, democratic renewal, education, and economic reform — I’ve noticed something striking.
None of them assume they can orchestrate the change they are working toward.
They don’t presume outcomes.They don’t mistake effort for causality.They don’t confuse commitment with control.
If anything, the most serious changemakers I’ve met are defined by humility: a clear-eyed awareness that systems are complex, that progress is fragile, and that the results of their work may only become visible long after they’ve stepped away — if at all.
That humility is admirable.It is also revealing.
Because it tells us something uncomfortable about the state of changemaking today.
How haphazard transformation still is
Even at its highest levels, transformation remains surprisingly haphazard.
Many changemakers hope that the next right action will lead to something meaningful. That effort will compound. That conditions will align.
This stance reflects seriousness and restraint.It also reflects the limits of the field.
In this way, changemaking today resembles early parenting.
For most of human history, parenting was deeply consequential — and almost entirely un-instrumented. Children were born. Care was given. Outcomes varied wildly. Harm was often accidental. Knowledge was local, anecdotal, and unevenly shared.
Parents did their best with what they had.For a long time, “doing your best” was the only available standard.
Today, no new parent leaves the maternity ward without at least some shared, evidence-based guidance: clear warnings, basic practices, and an understanding that while outcomes are never guaranteed, some conditions reliably matter.
No one believes this makes parenting controllable.It means it has become intentional.
Changemaking has not yet made that shift.
Despite the stakes, we still rely heavily on intuition, inherited narratives, and personal tolerance for uncertainty. We accept burnout, miscasting, and stalled efforts as inevitable side effects of “how hard this work is,” rather than as signals of a field that has not yet taken its own practice seriously enough.
Accepting unnecessary harm in the name of humility is not humility at all.
My work is about changing that — not by promising control, but by insisting on intentionality.
Because if we are to do better without burning through people, we need more than hope and heroics.
How transformation actually happens
Across contexts, sectors, and cultures, a simple pattern repeats.
Somebody spots what’s broken.Somebody earns permission to change it.Somebody makes it real.Somebody protects what must not be lost.
When any one of these functions is missing — or miscast — change stalls. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes catastrophically.
This isn’t a theory about personalities or titles.It isn’t a hierarchy of importance.
It’s an observation about how transformation actually works.
And yet, we rarely name these functions explicitly. We rarely ask whether they are all present. We rarely notice when one person is trying to carry three at once — or when a system rewards one function while suppressing the others.
Instead, we default to individual heroics, vague leadership language, or blunt performance metrics that tell us everything except whether the system itself is changing.
A field without a compass
Every mature field develops ways of orienting itself.
Medicine has diagnostics.Aviation has instruments.Finance has accounting standards.
Changemaking — despite its stakes — largely does not.
What we have instead are fragments: leadership models, skills frameworks, inspirational stories. Useful, sometimes. Insufficient, always.
What we lack is a shared way to:
* distinguish disposition from role
* separate support from intervention
* understand how different contributions interact over time
* assess impact without centering ego
Until we take that gap seriously, we will continue to exhaust the very people we rely on to carry change.
Why I’m returning to this now
Over the past year, many of you — across countries, sectors, and stages of life — have asked me questions like:
* How do I know if what I’m doing is actually making a difference?
* What kind of work is mine to do — and what isn’t?
* When is staying the responsible move, and when is leaving?
These are not questions of ambition.They are questions of stewardship.
I’m spending the coming weeks returning to these themes — here, and in conversation — because I believe our field is ready for more precise, more honest, and more humane ways of making sense of changemaking itself.
For now, I’ll leave you with a question worth sitting with — one that cuts across roles, sectors, and cultures:
If the work you care about succeeds, what will actually be different when you’re no longer in the room?
If you’re new here
You might want to revisit (links at the end):
* the pieces on how to tell whether impact is real
* the reflections on exit, handoff, and continuity
* the essays exploring agency without illusion
They’re increasingly speaking to each other.
And so, soon, will we.
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/are-you-impactful-how-you-can-know
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/what-to-know-youre-making-a-difference
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/change-fails-when-we-deny-choice
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/playlist-planning-for-exit
