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Readers who come from fields like education, organizational theory, sociology, community organizing, leadership, or management will likely be familiar with the extensive body of research on theories of change that has been developed over the last sixty years. We won’t review that literature here, but we will provide references to overviews that we’ve found helpful for this activity in the Playbook notes.

For others—or even for those familiar with the literature—it’s sometimes surprising to make the connection between theories of change and putting those theories into practice. We’ll use ourselves as examples: we consider ourselves quite familiar with the literature; we try to be very reflective; we’ve both done a great deal of research and have a great deal of experience on institutional change-making and leadership. And yet we regularly find ourselves veering toward actions that are not aligned with our own theories of change, like wishing we could simply make a decision or set a direction for others to follow. In our case, we have to resist such temptations because we operate from ideas aligned with sociocultural theories that emphasize shared sensemaking, attention to context, community and consensus building, and a great deal of dialogue.

As we’ve worked with teams, we’ve recognized how important it is to surface the theories of change that key members hold, too. If different people operate from radically different theories of change—say, one person believes that change is made by leaders and others fall in line, but another believes that change comes from the bottom up— that’s something that needs to be addressed. The activity that we’ll outline here, which borrows heavily from Adrienna Kezar’s fantastic book How Colleges Change (2018), can be used just as well with a team as with an individual. And of course, we encourage you to modify the activity for your own purposes.

Step One: Reflecting on a Change

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The first step in this activity is to reflect on a change that you felt was successful because it led to a change. You’ll use the responses you generate from this brief reflective activity to help name elements of your own theory of change in steps two and three.

Step Two: Considering Existing Theories of Change

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The next step is to try to see where and how your ideas about change align with elements of existing theories. We find Kezar’s “Theories of Change” (a chapter in How Colleges Change) a useful overview. That chapter includes a chart outlining (briefly!) characteristics associated with six dominant theories of change, which we’ve adapted in the table (see worksheet).

Step Three: Analyzing Your Change

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Having completed two steps intended to facilitate intentional reflection, the penultimate step is to try to start to attach names (from Kezar’s diagram) to the change you’ve described. We find fill-in-the-blank exercises helpful for this kind of thinking because they provide a structure, even if it’s clunky (and maybe because it’s clunky). Try using the exercises (see worksheet) or create your own.

Step Four: Your Theory of Change

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The final step is to synthesize your analysis to create a draft of your own theory of change. If the change process you analyzed in step three is aligned with your own values, you’re probably close. But even if it didn’t, identifying things that aren’t in your theory of change can help you get to what is. Note that you want to focus on what you want to see/have happen, not what you don’t want. A theory of change about what shouldn’t occur is not motivating. Again, we’ll provide a fill-in-the-blank for this structure. While you’ll of course want to modify this when you write your leadership statement, this can provide a helpful starting point (see worksheet).

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References

Kezar, Adrianna. 2018. How Colleges Change: Understanding, Leading, and Enacting Change. Taylor & Francis Group.

Cite This Resource

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Chris W. Gallagher, eds. 2026. “Engagement 3: Your Theory of Change.” Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn: Playbook. Center for Engaged Learning. https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa11.