Sustainability work is fundamentally about 'systemic' social change. Yet, social change efforts often focus on specific victories versus the root causes of problems. For example, within the legal field, granting women legal rights has been inadequate to ensure equal access and equal pay. History is also filled with examples of unintended consequences resulting from social and organizational change efforts missing the big picture. These challenges stem from the fact that the issues being addressed are embedded within broader complex systems.

To improve our work on effecting sustainability-oriented change, we collaborated with The Weatherhead School of Management, at Case Western Reserve University, to jointly convene a December 2003 dialogue focused on how to effect change within communities, organizations, nations and global systems. This dialogue launched our social change projects which aim to clearly identify and describe pathways that allow social change efforts and movements, such as the sustainability work, to achieve deep, systemic, lasting, positive change.