Tackling global change challenges is becoming increasingly important with the rise
of global interdependence. However, seemingly intractable global issues such as
environmental sustainability, war and poverty suggest that current mechanisms and
processes for responding to them are insufficient. There are some emerging experi-
ences that suggest more successful possibilities are under development. Drawing
on work with these multi-stakeholder global networks called Global Action Networks
(GANs), the author proposes seven principles to guide successful global change
strategies: (1) make the approach multi-stakeholder; (2) aggregate stakeholders by
organisational sectors; (3) address the individual to societal change challenges; (4)
make ‘learning’ a core value; (5) understand the work as building complex systems;
(6) organise for ‘third-order’ change; and (7) think in terms of development stages.