Planting the Seeds of Causal Thinking: Reflections on How to Get Started
Written by
Kimberlin Butler, Ed.D., M.P.A., a possibility catalyst and cross-sector leader who uses participatory and emergent learning to help foundations, organizations, and communities reimagine systems, center lived expertise, and turn collective insight into strategy and action.
Alison Gold, an optimistic anthropologist, emergent learning practitioner, and facilitator who collaborates with groups to transform everyday insights into collective wisdom and shape strategies to bring a more just and joyful world into being.
When each of us first encountered “causal pathways” (an umbrella term for evaluation approaches that explore how, why, for whom, and under what conditions systems change), neither of us identified as causal methodology specialists . However, we both were working - in different ways - to support systems change and ask questions about context, strategy, power, and how change actually happens. What initially felt unfamiliar about causal pathways was not the thinking itself, but the specialized language and some of the specific methodologies commonly applied.
Often, the way that we’ve seen (and - full disclosure – been part of) presenting Causal Pathways work has focused on it as a tool for in-depth, rigorous systems evaluation. This contrasts with our own experiences, where through our engagement with the people who make up the Causal Pathways Initiative, we were invited to contribute our expertise and ideas and questions.
It helped us recognize that causal thinking - the mindsets and questions which underpin causal pathways evaluation approaches - is a powerful tool, whether or not it leads to a formal evaluation. This feels important to name because formal causal pathways evaluations may require methodological expertise, experience, time, and financial resources that many people and organizations do not have.
WHAT IS CAUSAL THINKING?
Causal thinking enables individuals and teams to shift how they think, act, and learn as they work to transform systems. And causal thinking is a mindset and practice that everyone can develop.
For many of us who do work in the social sector, the evaluation questions we’ve encountered have often been: “What did we do?” “Did it work?” and perhaps, “What resulted from what we did?” These questions center an organization or a program, consider them without context, and often rely on a small group or individual - usually with a specific type of academic training or methodological expertise - to collect and track data that often is not shared beyond the organization.
In contrast, practicing causal thinking - in the context of causal pathways work - pushes people to put understanding the system and how it changes at the center, while recognizing the importance of context and sharing and interpreting together with others from within and across the system.
At the core of the practice of causal thinking are five questions:
How did things change?
Why did they change?
For whom did change occur? Change may have occurred for some people and not others.
Under what conditions did change happen? Social, technological, environmental, economic, political, or other conditions may have influenced what was possible.
According to whom? Causal thinking requires gathering perspectives and information from multiple people, then examining the patterns that emerge.
In addition to our own experiences, we’ve seen how these questions and the practice of causal thinking is resonating more widely in the field. For example, in early 2025 a well-known funder participated in a CPI Brain Trust with a small set of complexity-aware evaluators to gather advice on how they could use an upcoming grantee-partner convening to introduce causal thinking.
WHY IS CAUSAL THINKING POWERFUL?
First, causal thinking helps move systems transformation from an aspiration to a practice.
While asking the questions that are the foundation of causal thinking can start as an individual practice, answering them is not. The power of these questions is that they invite people with different identities, experiences, expertise, and roles within a system to make sense of change together—moving beyond any single perspective toward a fuller, collective understanding.
This is especially valuable because it recognizes the critical knowledge and on-the-ground intelligence held by community organizations, movement leaders, and people whose lives are most directly shaped by these systems. They navigate these systems every day, and as they do, they often notice and experience shifts in conditions before others do; yet, their knowledge and expertise are too often overlooked, undervalued, or excluded.
In practice, integrating causal thinking does not require creating an entirely new process. It may simply mean changing the questions we bring into places where learning and decision-making already happen, including strategy discussions, grantmaking conversations, convenings, focus groups, interviews, learning sessions, research projects, and evaluation planning.
Second, causal thinking connects fragmented signals to build collective intelligence and inform change.
Systems are made up of mindsets and norms, behaviors, policies, funding flows, and practices that together produce a set of results. However, no individual or single organization can see all of this on its own.
Different systems actors contribute distinct and complementary forms of intelligence. Community organizations bring proximity to people, places, and changing conditions. Governments, academics, and other researchers may connect those insights to population-level conditions, public policy, and resources. Businesses may bring different technologies and insight into markets. Funders may be able to recognize patterns across an issue area or geographic portfolio.
The opportunity is not for the organization or institution with the broadest view to claim an authoritative understanding of the system. It is to bring different actors and perspectives into relationship with each other so they can develop and share a fuller understanding of what is happening, and work together toward the transformations they hope to bring into being.
This leads us to an important question: With a deeper understanding of the system that is directly informed by the wisdom and intelligence of people across it, what are we prepared to do differently?
HOW WILL YOU START PRACTICING CAUSAL THINKING?
We believe that systemic change starts with what we think and do, since we are part of many systems. So, if we individually start to explore causal thinking and model it with others, it can start to spread and shift how teams and organizations and communities and systems operate and understand change.
With that in mind, what’s one small (or big) thing you can do in the next month to practice causal thinking? Is there a question (or questions) you want to commit to asking others? An assumption that you or your organization or community is holding that you want to better understand the thinking behind? Or - it could be something else!
We’d love to hear about what you’re trying out and what change you’re noticing (and why and for whom and under what conditions and according to whom, of course!)
And If this post has sparked your interest in how causal pathways work can extend beyond methodological experts and well-resourced organizations, we hope you’ll continue with our companion post exploring the different roles people can play in causal pathways work.
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