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Time required 30-45 minutes
Resources required Pens and paper – you could also use flipchart paper and post-its, or digital note-taking tools
In person or online Either
Number of people Any number can work, including alone. With more people, more time will be needed for whole-group discussion
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This tool was created in 2025 for the PTP Toolkit. It is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0.
This license enables re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
What happens when we try to trigger a change before the enabling conditions or feedback loops are in place?
Creates space for imagining different potential scenarios, and for noticing our different responses to what we feel could happen. Generates new ways of thinking about our strategy in preparing for and responding to the potential triggers that could lead to a tipping point in the system we are working to change.
A simple imagination exercise to explore how a group or organisation can best anticipate the potential impacts of a tipping point trigger, and how their work could make a desired system shift more likely.
Near the beginning of a process, to support people to think about the importance of understanding how the system might respond to our attempts to change it.
This tool looks at triggers, and the importance of spending time first with enabling conditions and feedback loops before we attempt to push a system past a tipping point.
Make sure everyone has some way to write down ideas or capture their thoughts.
Take a moment to make sure you are familiar and comfortable with the idea of triggers.
When we work in environmental and social change, our default state is often urgency. There is so much to do. There is not enough time. This is an emergency. But as we learn to understand that change does not always happen in a straight line, we need to consider when constant forward motion is not always the quickest and most effective way towards our goal.