What is transformation?
- Ioan Fazey
- May 6
- 4 min read
Transformation has become one of the most overused words in policy and practice. It is applied to technology upgrades, funding rounds and institutional restructures — rarely meaning more than about enhancing efficiencies and performance. This matters, because genuine transformation is something quite different to other forms of change, and the distinction has real consequences for how problems are understood and addressed. Given the nature of the complex challenges facing people and planet we need to go much further than simply enhancing a status quo. This article explains why we need transformational approaches to change and what it involves in practice.
Why it is needed
Many of the serious challenges facing societies today, such as climate change, food insecurity, inequality, poor health, share a common feature. They are not isolated failures but symptoms of how social and economic systems have developed and continue to operate. These challenges are deeply interconnected and sustained by the very systems, structures and ways of thinking within our society. Improving performance within those systems will not resolve the challenges they generate. Instead something more fundamental and transformational is required.
The UK food system is a good example. Poor diets currently account for one in seven deaths each year and cost the economy an estimated £27 billion annually. Food poverty is rising, with some food banks seeing a 26-fold increase in use between 2010 and 2019. Agriculture is responsible for 10% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, and a third of UK soils are now degraded. These problems are not isolated with policies aiming to tackle them spanning sixteen different government departments and agencies where achieving coherent and effective effort is difficult. Piecemeal interventions have not resolved challenges in our food systems because no single component can be fixed in isolation. Instead we need systemic kinds of change that can address underlying causes.
Transformation is a distinct form of change
Transformation can be understood as fundamental change occurring over time. It is qualitatively distinct from adjustments, which improves performance within an existing system, and reform, which modifies parts of a system while leaving its core logic in place. Instead, transformation changes the underlying dynamics and goals of the system itself. A useful analogy is that of transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Rather than being simply a faster or more efficient caterpillar, a butterfly is an entirely different organism. It can fly, drink nectar and procreate, meaning it has a different function, ability and identity. The butterfly emerges through a process of the dissolution of the old structure and then by reorganisation to something new.
Transformations in social systems often involve similar dynamics: existing resources are not simply optimised, but also reallocated to support something that is, in existential terms, something different. This frequently involves both winding down established patterns and nurturing the emergence of alternatives. Applied to the UK food system, this means asking not how to make the current system perform better, but what kind of system, with fundamentally different dynamics, goals and relationships between its parts is needed instead.
Several aspects are important when using the concept of transformation:
Subjectivity: What counts as transformational depends partly on perspective. A change that feels transformational to one stakeholder may appear incremental to another. It is therefore important to ask what transformation means in a particular context, and how it differs from other forms of change.
Normativity: Transformations can be desirable or undesirable. Deliberate efforts to support transformation therefore need to be clear about the kind of future being pursued, and whose values and interests shape that direction.
Scale and speed: Transformation unfolds across multiple interdependent scales — from individuals and organisations to regions and wider systems — and at different speeds. These dimensions need to be made explicit when designing initiatives intended to support transformational change.
Scope: Transformation also requires attention to the breadth of elements involved: behaviours, technologies, institutions, infrastructures, and the deeper assumptions and worldviews that sustain current arrangements.
Together, these insights suggest that responding to the scale of contemporary challenges requires more than improved practice or better-designed interventions. It requires long-term vision, strategic clarity, and a willingness to work on the conditions that enable change, such as the relationships, narratives, and capacities that may not produce immediate results, but which create the foundations for the deeper shifts that the challenges demand.
Want to explore this further? The concepts introduced here are drawn from Fazey, I and Colvin, J. (2023). Transformation: An introductory guide to fundamental change for researchers and change makers in a world of crises - A Report for the Transforming UK Food Systems SPF Programme. University of York. The full guide covers what to transform towards, through what means, and whose perspectives shape the process.
AI use: This article was developed from the source report by the authors. AI tools were used to support editing and to suggest structure. The analysis, framing and content are drawn directly from the report and reflect the authors' own judgement throughout.
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