In the System, Of the System, With the System, Outside the System
“Navigating the complexities of our interconnected world requires a balanced approach — being in the system to understand it, of the system to leverage its resources, with the system to foster collaboration, and outside the system to maintain critical perspective.”
The most fundamental strategic question for anyone who wants to change a system is: where do you stand in relation to it? The answer is not fixed. The most effective systems-change practitioners I have observed move fluidly between at least four positions, each of which offers different advantages and carries different costs.
In the System
To be in the system is to be a participant in its operations — to work within its structures, follow its protocols, and accept its constraints as the conditions of your work. This position offers maximum access to the system’s resources and relationships. You can see how it works from the inside. You can build the trust and credibility that insider status confers.
The cost of being in the system is the risk of capture — of slowly adopting the system’s assumptions, priorities, and blind spots as your own. Institutions have powerful normalization effects. The longer you operate within one, the harder it becomes to see it clearly from the outside.
Of the System
To be of the system is to be constitutively shaped by it — to carry its logic in your bones, its categories in your perception, its values in your intuitions. This is not a position you choose; it is a condition you inherit. We are all of multiple systems: the family we grew up in, the culture we were socialized into, the professional field we were trained in.
Being of the system can be a resource. It provides credibility and fluency. It allows you to translate between insider and outsider perspectives. But it also means carrying the system’s limitations as unexamined assumptions. Effective systems-change work requires becoming conscious of the ways you are of the systems you want to change.
With the System
To work with the system is to treat it as a partner — to look for alignment between the system’s existing trajectory and the changes you want to catalyze. This is the logic of judo: using the system’s own momentum to redirect it, rather than opposing that momentum frontally.
Working with the system requires deep knowledge of how it actually functions, not just how it is supposed to function. It requires identifying actors within the system who share your goals, even if they do not share your analysis. It requires patience — the willingness to make progress incrementally, through the system’s own processes, on the system’s own timeline.
Outside the System
To stand outside the system is to refuse its terms — to critique it from a position that the system cannot fully contain or co-opt. This is the position of the prophet, the dissident, the radical. It offers clarity — the ability to name what insiders have normalized — at the cost of influence. The most powerful critique is often the one that cannot be acted upon within the existing system.
No single position is sufficient for systems change. The art is in knowing which position is called for in which moment — and in having the self-awareness and flexibility to move between them. The systems change practitioner who can only operate inside institutions will be captured by them. The one who can only stand outside will be ignored by them. The work requires all four stances, held in dynamic tension.
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