Making Together: The Emergence of Dialogic Systems Change

Are we seeing two different models of change, or a fundamental evolution of the field?

Over the past decade or so, I’ve observed something happening across the systems change field. Practitioners and organizations have been shifting how they approach complex challenges—moving beyond diagnostic-based approaches toward more conversational and collaborative sense-making processes.

This isn’t just about individual preferences or methodological tweaks. What appears to be scattered individual practices is actually a coherent pattern and, possibly, a fundamental evolution in how we understand and practice systems change.

The Emerging Pattern

In a 2024 article, the Center for Evaluation Innovation identified two distinct mental models operating in philanthropy’s approach to systems change: a “systems dynamics” model focused on identifying leverage points and predicting outcomes, and a “systems emergence” model centered on creating conditions for new patterns to arise. Their observation validates what many of us have been experiencing: there are indeed two different models at play in how we think about and approach systems change, and when these models collide, often invisibly, they can undermine our collective effectiveness.

But what appears to be two competing alternatives may actually signal something larger: a field in transition. The systems emergence model is newer and gaining traction, while the systems dynamics model has been dominant. As often happens during paradigm shifts, there’s a period where old and new compete for mindshare, where practitioners feel pulled between familiar approaches and emerging ones that seem to work differently, and maybe better.

This pattern has a recent precedent. About fifteen years ago, organizational development scholars Gervase Bushe and Robert Marshak identified what they initially called in 2009 a “bifurcation in the practice of organization development“ between “Diagnostic OD” and “Dialogic OD.” At first, it looked like simply two different ways to approach organizational change—like choosing between available tools in a practitioner’s toolkit.

But over time, something became clear: this wasn’t just a bifurcation. Dialogic OD represented a shift in where the field was heading, a shift not just in practice but in fundamental mindsets. Today, it’s unlikely that a professional OD practitioner isn’t at least familiar with, if not actively practicing, some form of Dialogic OD. What seemed like two competing models turned out to be a fundamental evolution in the field.

Bushe and Marshak’s core insight was that transformational change occurs not by diagnosing what’s broken and fixing it, but by changing the ongoing conversations and meaning-making that have become patterned in an organization. The methods matter less than the mindset and basic assumptions about how change actually happens.

What we’re witnessing now may be that same evolution playing out at the larger systems level, in how foundations fund change, how coalitions organize for impact, and how communities address complex challenges. If the OD field’s experience offers any guidance, what currently appears as two legitimate alternatives may actually be an older paradigm giving way to a newer one. This isn’t about choosing between equally valid tools. It’s about recognizing that the ground is shifting beneath us.

And this less mechanistic, more human-ful way of working, while new to modern systems change practice, is not new at all. Indigenous communities have practiced dialogic approaches for millennia, using stories, dialogue, and metaphor to make meaning together about complex challenges. What’s new is that the dominant modernist approach—which privileges rational analysis, objective diagnosis, and expert-driven solutions—is beginning to make space for these older, more relational ways of knowing and working.

From Diagnostic to Dialogic: A Necessary Evolution

Diagnostic approaches became dominant because they aligned with the modernist worldview that shaped how we think about problems and solutions. In this view, systems are like complicated machines that can be taken apart, analyzed, and fixed by experts who understand how the pieces fit together. Armed with the right frameworks, systems maps, theories of change, and root cause analyses, we believed we could diagnose what’s wrong, prescribe solutions, and deliver correctives.

This approach has produced real value. Diagnostic tools help us see patterns, understand relationships, and identify potential intervention points. The problem isn’t that these tools are useless. It’s that we’ve treated them as sufficient when they’re not.

Here’s what diagnostic approaches often miss:

First, our individual rational minds can’t grasp and process complexity nearly as well as our collective intuitive minds. When diverse groups engage in structured dialogue and shared meaning-making, they access ways of sensing and knowing that transcend what any individual analysis could capture. Our intuitive capacities for holding ambiguity and discerning what’s needed are far more powerful than our analytical capacities, but diagnostic tools often prevent us from accessing these other ways of knowing.

Second, diagnostic tools tend to be static and transactional rather than generative. We need approaches that generate not just understanding and insight but shared ownership and sustained energy to advance work over long periods of time. A polished systems map or theory of change might help people understand a system, but it rarely creates the kind of engagement and ownership that sustains truly transformational work.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, diagnostic approaches typically involve some people (the experts) gathering information from others (the people in need of help) and developing the analysis. They may test their findings with the broader group, but the dynamic remains fundamentally transactional rather than generative. A few people think hard about what everyone else shared, then present their conclusions back. This creates a different kind of relationship to the work than when people generate shared understanding together.

But there’s an even deeper issue at play. As Luke Craven from PLACE has pointed out, the familiar parable of blind people touching different parts of an elephant, often used to suggest that together we can “see the whole system,” misses a crucial point: there is no elephant. The system we’re trying to change doesn’t exist as an objective reality separate from our collective experience of it.

This moves us from seeing reality as “objectively given” to understanding it as “subjectively problematic,” not in the sense that it’s not real, but in the sense that what we see depends on who we are, where we stand, and crucially, who we’re in conversation with. As Anaïs Nin observed, “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Communications professionals tend to see systemic challenges as fundamentally communications problems. Community organizers see the power dynamics and the need to build power. Policy experts view systemic problems as essentially policy problems requiring policy solutions. Each perspective reveals something real, and each is necessarily partial.

The diagnostic approach fails precisely because it assumes there’s one “true” system to discover, if only we gather enough data and apply the right analytical frameworks. It treats different perspectives as pieces of a puzzle that, when properly assembled by skilled analysts, will reveal the objective reality. But what if there is no singular system waiting to be discovered? What if the system exists in the relationships between different ways of seeing, in the meanings we negotiate together, in the conversations through which we continuously create and recreate our shared reality?

Better Questions and New Conversations Shape Systems

Because reality is co-constructed in this way, our inquiries inevitably matter. As the saying goes in Organization Development, to ask is to intervene. The moment we begin inquiring about a system, we start changing it. As just one example, David Cooperrider has observed that, when organizations conduct stress audits/surveys, the levels of stress rise, demonstrating how inquiry and intervention happen simultaneously, not sequentially. This isn’t a bias to control or minimize; it’s the fundamental nature of working with living human systems.

Diagnostic approaches try to minimize the observer effect, treating it as contamination that threatens the validity of the analysis. They create distance between the observer and the observed, seeking objectivity through separation. But this separation itself is an illusion. How we make sense of things fundamentally affects what we see and don’t see, what we come to know, what we think is possible or impossible.

Diagnostic approaches create distance between the observer and the observed, but this separation itself is an illusion

The act of changing a system is simultaneously the act of changing ourselves. Change is essentially interactional. We’re not standing outside systems, manipulating them like machines. We’re enrolled in a process of transformation that involves mutual feedback across levels, time, and parts. Everyone involved is being shaped even as they’re shaping what emerges.

If systems are continuously recreated through the conversations and interactions among people within them, then the most direct way to change systems is to change the conversations. Not to diagnose the system and then communicate findings about it, but to shift who is in conversation, how they’re engaging, and how they’re generating new shared meaning. This is why dialogic approaches aren’t simply preferable to purely diagnostic ones but, for transformational change in complex systems, they’re necessary.

A Build, Not a Replacement

The shift from diagnostic to dialogic systems change isn’t about abandoning analytical tools—it’s about repositioning them within a fundamentally different approach to how change happens.

In primarily diagnostic approaches, expert analysts gather data, apply established frameworks, and develop theories of change that explain how the system works and what interventions might shift it. The process is systematic and replicable: collect information, analyze patterns, identify leverage points, design interventions, and measure outcomes against predetermined indicators. A small group does the thinking; a larger group receives and acts on the analysis. Facilitation requirements are relatively modest because the work follows established protocols.

Dialogic approaches incorporate these same analytical tools—data, frameworks, metrics—but deploy them in service of something fundamentally different: generating shared meaning among diverse stakeholders who must collectively understand and act within the system. The frameworks themselves may evolve through the process as people discover new ways of seeing what’s happening. Analysis becomes something people do together, not something done to or for them. Design emerges from the specific context, purpose, and composition of the group rather than following standardized protocols. Evaluation isn’t a discrete event but an ongoing dimension of collective learning and adaptation.

This doesn’t mean dialogic processes disregard facts—data and evidence remain essential. But as we see clearly in how social dynamics actually play out, the stories and meanings we make from facts are often more powerful than the facts themselves. A diagnostic approach assumes that presenting people with accurate analysis will lead to aligned action. A dialogic approach recognizes that people must construct shared meaning together for genuine commitment and coordinated action to emerge. The facts become part of what groups weave together in their collective sense-making, but they’re not sufficient on their own.

The practical implications are significant. Dialogic approaches demand more sophisticated process design and skilled facilitation because the work isn’t following a predetermined path; it’s creating the conditions for meaningful emergence. The time investment is substantial because you can’t rush genuine dialogue and collective meaning-making. But what emerges—the depth of shared understanding, the quality of relationships, the strength of commitment—creates a fundamentally different foundation for sustained systems change.

When Dialogic Approaches Become Essential

Not every change effort requires a fully dialogic approach. At CoCreative, we think about five levels of engagement with stakeholders, and the level you’re working at determines how essential dialogic approaches become.

At Levels 1-3 (influence, consult, involve), you’re gathering information from stakeholders to inform decisions and plans that you ultimately determine, then communicating these back to the system through policies, plans, and solutions. Diagnostic approaches work well here because you’re addressing complicated problems with knowable solutions. You can use surveys, interviews, and analytical frameworks to understand stakeholder perspectives and incorporate their insights into your strategy. The dynamic is fundamentally transactional: you’ve built something informed by the input of others, and now you seek their buy-in to support it.

At Levels 4-5 (collaborate, co-create), you’re developing vision, goals, analysis, and plans together with diverse stakeholders so that everyone owns the work. These levels are suited to truly complex, adaptive challenges where the system, interactions, and patterns continue shifting over time. Here, dialogic approaches become essential because the work is no longer about gathering information to create something—it’s about co-creating together. At these levels, genuine ownership emerges because the vision, goals, analysis, strategies, and metrics are built collectively.

The challenge many initiatives face is that they speak the language of Level 4 or 5 engagement but continue using Level 1-3 methods. Then they wonder why stakeholders don’t feel ownership of the strategy, why engagement wanes, and why momentum stalls. Often it’s because the approach itself—how the work is actually done—doesn’t match the talk of shared ownership.

This creates a practical guideline: The higher you aim to go in stakeholder engagement, the more your approach needs to evolve from diagnostic to dialogic. If diverse people aren’t even in the room together, genuinely wrestling with complexity and making meaning together, you simply can’t do dialogic systems change work. You might do good diagnostic work, but you won’t generate the kind of collective ownership and emergent understanding that characterizes transformational change.

Examples of Dialogic Practice

Here are a few practical examples of methods and tools we use to support dialogic meaning-making and generative change:

The Values Iceberg Process: When stakeholders arrive at a collaboration with seemingly incompatible positions, such as ”we need immediate action” versus “we need more research,” a dialogic approach helps them move beneath these surface positions. Using CoCreative’s Values Iceberg framework, we guide groups to explore what interests lie beneath their positions, what values drive those interests, and ultimately what creative tensions exist between seemingly opposing values. When a housing coalition was stuck between developers wanting fast approvals and community advocates demanding thorough review, this process revealed a shared value around community wellbeing—developers wanted to quickly respond to the need for more housing while advocates wanted safeguards for residents. By working at this deeper level, new possibilities emerged that neither side had imagined when arguing their positions.

Divergence-Convergence with the “Groan Zone”: Diagnostic approaches often rush too quickly from problem to solution. Dialogic processes make space for what collaboration expert Sam Kaner calls the “Groan Zone”—that uncomfortable moment when a group has diverged widely enough to see the full complexity but hasn’t yet converged on a path forward. We explicitly name this zone before groups enter it: “You’re probably going to feel a bit overwhelmed by how complex this system really is. That discomfort means we’re doing the real learning needed for robust solutions.” In the first convening of the Clean Electronics Production Network, stakeholders spent three hours mapping the system from multiple perspectives—workers, chemical suppliers, factory managers, component suppliers, integrators, brand owners, policymakers, and more. The Groan Zone hit hard, but by staying with that complexity rather than jumping to familiar solutions, deeply systemic intervention points emerged that no single perspective could have identified alone.

Asking the Next Right Question. Developed by Patricia DiVecchio and Todd Erickson, the Asking the Next Right Question technique helps groups work explicitly to find the most meaningful and powerful questions before attempting to discover answers. In our practice in multi-stakeholder collaborations, when small teams start developing elements of the overall system change strategy, it’s often not clear that they are even asking the right questions. So when they present their draft plans to the larger group, rather than giving feedback or advice, the larger group simply offers questions, which the team systematically harvests. Invariably, the team finds that 2-3 of the questions provide fresh insight that helps them refine their solution on their own, which builds deeper clarity and ownership.

A Path Forward?

The evolution from diagnostic to dialogic systems change doesn’t mean abandoning the tools and frameworks that have served us. Systems mapping, root cause analysis, theories of change—these remain useful. But we need to reposition and recontextualize them in our work.

Diagnostic tools should support intersubjective meaning-making, not replace it. A systems map becomes most powerful not as a finished product that “explains” the system, but as a catalyst for conversation among people who see the system differently to create shared meaning about what’s going on. A theory of change works best when it emerges from genuine dialogue about what’s possible and how change happens, and continually evolves over time to reflect our current hypotheses about what might work, not when the theory becomes the plan itself.

This repositioning requires a different kind of question. Instead of asking “How can we better understand what’s going on in this system?” we might ask: “Who needs to be in the room together to both understand the purpose, analysis, and direction of this work, and move it forward together? What shared purpose might bring them together? And how might we weave together their diverse parts of the picture into a map toward the future they want?”

The diagnostic question leads to more sophisticated diagnostic tools and frameworks. The dialogic questions lead to different conversations—and ultimately, to different outcomes.

We’re at a moment where this meta-shift is already becoming visible. Practitioners are moving toward more dialogic approaches, often intuitively, because they’re finding that the old diagnostic paradigm isn’t sufficient for the complexity we face. The Center for Evaluation Innovation has begun mapping the distinction between systems dynamics and systems emergence mental models. Individual initiatives are experimenting with new ways of working that are more generative and draw together seemingly disparate views into coherent plans.

By naming this evolution explicitly—Dialogic Systems Change, and articulating what distinguishes it from diagnostic approaches, we can be more intentional about when and how we use these different ways of working. We can recognize that we’re not inventing something new but rather reconnecting with ancient wisdom that some Indigenous communities have practiced for millennia. We can learn from the dialogic evolution that happened in Organization Development fifteen years ago and apply those insights to our work at larger levels of systems.

Most importantly, we can be more honest with ourselves and our partners about what we’re actually trying to do. If we aspire to create deep, transformational change with diverse stakeholders who genuinely own the work together, then our approaches need to match that aspiration. Dialogic systems change offers us a way forward that honors complexity, respects diverse ways of knowing, and generates the collective energy and commitment that sustained transformation requires.

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Russ Gaskin is founder and co-owner of CoCreative, a consulting and training organization specializing in network weaving, systems change strategy co-design, and facilitation of multi-stakeholder collaborations.