Future Search
A three-day planning meeting that brings everyone with a stake in an issue into one room. Over five tasks the group looks at its shared past, the trends shaping the present, what each stakeholder group is doing now, and an ideal future, and then confirms the common ground and plans action on it. Differences are acknowledged rather than fought over; the work builds on what everyone can stand behind.
Use when an issue crosses many organisations or groups and no single one of them can move it alone.
Solves: Strategy is written by one part of the system and the other parts, who have to carry it out, never sign up to it.
- 1
Step 1: A planning team identifies the stakeholder groups and invites people who can act on the outcome. This takes weeks (prep).
- 2
Step 2: Past: individuals and mixed groups build timelines of personal, world and issue-related events and discuss what they show (about 3 hours).
- 3
Step 3: Present, external: the whole room builds a mind map of trends affecting the issue, then stakeholder groups say which trends matter most to them and what they are doing about them (about 4 hours).
- 4
Step 4: Present, internal: stakeholder groups report on their own current actions, including what they are proud of and sorry about (about 2 hours).
- 5
Step 5: Ideal future: mixed groups describe or act out a preferred future as if it had already happened, then list the themes they share (about 4 hours).
- 6
Step 6: Common ground and action: the room confirms the common ground and self-organises into action groups with plans (3-4 hours).
- Get the whole system in the room. If a key stakeholder group is missing, the common ground is missing too.
- Facilitators run the structure and leave the content to the groups.
- Spread it over three days with two nights in between, so ideas settle.
- Schedule the review meeting 6 to 12 months later before you leave the room.