Future Search: Getting the Whole System in the Room for Vision, Commitment, and Action

Future Search

Future Search

Getting the Whole System in the Room for Vision, Commitment, and Action

Third Edition

Updated and Expanded

Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff

Future Search

Copyright © 2010 by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff

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Third Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-428-1

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-429-8

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-984-2

2010-1

Cover design by Crowfoot Design/Leslie Waltzer; cover photo by Allan Kobernick.

Flipchart illustrations by Sally Ward Theilacker.

Interior design and composition by Gary Palmatier, Ideas to Images.

Elizabeth von Radics, copyeditor; Mike Mollett, proofreader; Medea Minnich, indexer.

To members of Future Search Network

and to leaders worldwide—past, present, and future—

who have made, are making, and will make

positive ripples in society.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I Learning

CHAPTER 1 Any Sector, Any Culture: Future Search Cases from Everywhere

CHAPTER 2 The Ripple Effect: How One Meeting Can Change the World

CHAPTER 3 Conditions for Success

CHAPTER 4 Origins of Future Search Principles

CHAPTER 5 In Pursuit of the Perfect Meeting

Part II Planning

CHAPTER 6 Is Future Search for You?

CHAPTER 7 Generating Money with Future Search

CHAPTER 8 Planning to Succeed

CHAPTER 9 Attending to the Details

Part III Doing

CHAPTER 10 Facilitating by Just Standing There

CHAPTER 11 Riding the Roller Coaster

CHAPTER 12 Same Principles, Other Uses

Part IV Sustaining

CHAPTER 13 Follow-up That Works

CHAPTER 14 Listening to Leaders

CHAPTER 15 Future Search Research and Evaluation

EPILOGUE: Could This New Paradigm Really Be an Old One?

APPENDIX A: Future Search 2010: A Step-by-step Facilitator Guide

APPENDIX B: Thinking Green

APPENDIX C: Logistics

APPENDIX D: Sample Workbook

APPENDIX E: Sample Invitation

Acknowledgments

Photo Credits

Bibliography

Index

About the Authors

Preface

Welcome to the third edition of Future Search, an action guide for those seeking to make the most of stakeholder engagement in a diverse, fast-moving world. With 10 new and five revised chapters, this is largely a new book. It reflects all we have learned in the past decade. We will show you how to achieve creative plans, high commitment, and fast implementation from a single meeting. You will learn how to get the whole system in the room, help people find common ground, and create long-lasting follow-up. With more than a quarter century of experience, we need not speculate on results. People are having successes all over the world. We hope you will be among them.

We use Future Search (FS) to describe:

A principle-based planning meeting adaptable to any culture

A philosophy and a theory for managing meetings proven to help people take responsibility

A strategy you can use to change your world one meeting at a time

Here are a few examples of what people have done with Future Search since the 2000 edition of this book:

Toronto, Canada, made a strategic plan for the future of its 300,000-pupil school system.

IKEA, the world’s largest home-furnishings company, redesigned its product supply chain and created an environmental sustainability plan with the recycling of all products its ultimate goal.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration got agreement from airspace users for critical changes to managing air traffic that were needed but thought impossible to achieve.

Derry-Londonderry, a city divided by sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, formed collaborations among former antagonists to commit to the city’s renewal during an economic recession.

The Indonesian Ministry of Education, backed by UNICEF, implemented a plan for decentralizing school systems through countrywide Future Searches.

Citizens of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, formed an ongoing cooperative—Sustainable Lawrence—that is reducing the city’s carbon footprint and helping other communities do likewise.

UNICEF in Southern Sudan organized the release of thousands of child soldiers from involuntary servitude.

Departments of Correction in Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Washington State created strategic plans to quickly improve key aspects of public safety and prison systems.

Why Future Search?

How do you make your world, your community, your company, more successful? You can’t do it alone. Yet involving lots of others can seem cumbersome and risky. Events unfold so fast now that the idea of planning changes to systems in perpetual motion seems crazy-making. How do you organize complex human activity as the ground shifts under your feet?

Many people see technology as both the source of and the solution to this dilemma. The world is awash in blogs, social networks, and online forums. Despite technological progress, we daily encounter intractable dilemmas of war, disease, poverty, and environmental degradation that threaten the planet. The challenges to participative democracy and personal action have never been greater. Under conditions of relentless change and mind-boggling diversity, Future Search is one way to help people act with hope, support, and new resolve. This book describes how to do that in face-to-face planning meetings. We believe, however, that the principles apply online too, so we also note experiments to integrate Future Search and new technologies.

Some years ago in India, we ran a simulated Future Search for 70 executives, consultants, and leaders from foundations and non-government organizations (NGOs). At the end we compared the common ground of middle-class Indians from many regions, castes, and religions with a similar list from diverse Californians at a Future Search on housing. The group was astonished at the similarities: lifelong learning, employment at livable wages, health and housing for all, preserving the environment, and participatory government.

We have seen similar overlaps in Brazil, Canada, China, England, Singapore, Sweden, and South Africa. Indeed most of us want the same things. Doing this work, we have come to know how our aspirations for a better world align with those of millions of others; as this collective awareness grows, so does every-one’s range of choices. Each time you sponsor, organize, or run a Future Search, you bring more people to a shared appreciation of the world we have and the world most people want. Anyone who organizes a whole system in the room meeting contributes to the betterment of all.

Who Can Benefit from Future Search?

We address three audiences:

Leaders of community, nonprofit, and business organizations who want higher commitment and better results in less time and at lower cost than with traditional strategic planning

Experienced consultants and facilitators seeking to enhance their repertoire

Anyone aspiring to foster stakeholder engagement in large groups who wants design ideas and practical advice

Whatever your motives, you also may find here a rationale—and perhaps the courage—to insist that planning meetings employ principles that maximize success. You will learn that success in Future Search comes more from its principles than any particular techniques. Still you need techniques, so we will describe the ones we know best and tell how we found them. You can supplement the text by viewing streaming video of Future Searches at www.futuresearch.net.

Origins of This Book

This book started in an experimental workshop at the Cape Cod Institute of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1991. Our goal was to find out whether we could give people enough guidance in a few days to do successful Future Searches. Several of nearly 100 participants went on to apply what they learned and to report positive outcomes. Thus we began a journey of evolving both the meeting and the training designs to enable people to do afterward what no one had done before.

We began imagining Future Search as a systemic change strategy in 1992. Philadelphia Region Organization Development Network members led by Marilyn Sifford asked if we would help them learn FS methods. Together we organized a short training and self-managed internships for consultants who would work pro bono for local nonprofits. Some 30 Future Searches resulted. after review meetings with users proved that people were getting good results, we repeated the program over several years in California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ontario (Canada), Washington State, and Washington, D.C.

Future Search Network

In 1993 we founded SearchNet, an international nonprofit organization, under the umbrella of Resources for Human Development, Inc., a Philadelphia-based human service agency (www.rhd.org). In 1999 SearchNet became Future Search Network (FSN) to Differentiate us from Internet services that did not exist when we began. As word spread we were invited to do FS workshops in Africa, Asia, and Europe. By 2010 we had introduced Future Search to more than 3,600 participants. Now people worldwide are running Future Searches in schools, hospitals, churches, businesses, and communities. Anyone can join FSN by signing an agreement to employ the basic principles and use them to serve society.

We see Future Search as a building block of theory and practice for a house that will never be finished. We think of this book as a progress report from a global learning laboratory. We believe that Future Searches are good for us and good for society. We hope this edition will inspire you to join in making a better world one meeting at a time.

Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania

June 2010

Introduction

First let us summarize 30 years of experience. The major Benefit of Future Search is transforming a system’s capability for action. You can do that in a few days when you observe our principles. We believe we can save you considerable trial and error if you take advantage of our experience. A bit of management history may help you appreciate why Future Search came into being.

Productive Workplaces (Weisbord, 1987) described how planning methods evolved on two axes: the who, from experts to everybody; and the what, from problem-solving to whole-systems improvement. A century ago, as the industrial revolution picked up steam, expert problem-solving (e.g., scientific management) became the gold standard, surviving to this day as a tarnished relic. after group dynamics was discovered, many adopted participative management when they found how hard it was to implement an expert’s solutions. When systems thinking hit the work world in the 1960s, experts rose to new heights, solving—on paper—whole systems of problems at once. By the 1980s it became clear that for progress in a speeded-up world of increasing diversity, nothing less would do than getting everybody improving whole systems. This became a central tenet of what people now call large-group interventions (see Learning Curve).

Productive Workplaces proposed that only everybody improving whole systems would prove satisfying in a fast-changing world—satisfying, that is, if you believe that economic results need not be compromised to achieve dignity, meaning, and community. For us Future Search is a learning laboratory for getting everybody improving whole systems. The enthusiastic response to this concept—letters, phone calls, requests for help—led to Discovering Common Ground (Weisbord et al., 1992), a work that sought to uncover the principles and the practices common to Effective large-group planning.

Planning methods have evolved on two axes: the who, from experts to everybody; and the what, from problem-solving to whole-systems improvement.

From Productive Workplaces Revisited (Weisbord, 2004). Used by permission.

We wrote the first detailed description of the FS method in the 1995 edition of this book. In the 2000 edition, we presented the evolving FS model, our experiments with tasks and techniques, and examples from many cultures, where, contrary to conventional wisdom, people were able to get long-lasting action from a single meeting. We also provided a philosophical rationale for hands-off facilitating, later elaborated in Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! (Weisbord and Janoff, 2007).

Changes to the Third Edition

This Third Edition, based on input from dozens of FSN members, contains 10 new chapters and five chapters rewritten to reflect new learning. We now tell the FS story with greater confidence, more-diverse examples, and clear-eyed comments from pioneers in cultures everywhere.

Specifically, we have revised the text in the following ways:

Updated the design with subtle refinements that simplify the flow and improve the output (Chapter 5 and Appendix A)

Added new cases based on our own and colleagues’ recent experiences in diverse cultures and sectors (Chapter 1)

Documented the ripple Effect of Future Search by showing results sustained in various sectors over many years (Chapter 2)

Offered specific guidance for FS sponsors, steering committees, participants, funders, and facilitators (Chapter 6)

Noted several examples of the economic Benefits of Future Search (Chapter 7)

Added more advice on planning and the use of virtual technologies (Chapters 8 and 9)

Preserved the emphasis on our core philosophy and theory of facilitating (Chapters 10 and 11)

Described FS variations and integration with other methods (Chapter 12)

Incorporated many more examples of how to sustain action with effective follow-up (Chapter 13)

Interviewed leaders around the world to discover what Future Search means to them (Chapter 14)

Surveyed research and evaluation studies for formal evidence of what works (Chapter 15)

Introduced provocative thoughts on why Future Search has crossed so many cultural boundaries (Epilogue)

What Makes Future Search Different?

Future Searches enable organizations and communities to learn more together than any one person can discover alone. Bringing the whole system into the room makes feasible a shared encounter with complexity and uncertainty leading to clarity, hope, and action. The key word is shared. When we explore common ground with others, we release creative energy, leading to projects that all value and none can do alone.

Future Search, even three days’ worth, is time efficient. People need not master abstract concepts to do good planning. They need only show up and use the skills, experience, and motivation they already have. We are seeking what people already want to do and never dreamed they could. Rarely do people encounter these key conditions for action all at once. Every meeting thereafter becomes more productive.

When to Hold a Future Search

People use Future Search for three main purposes:

To create a shared vision and action plan for an organization, network, or community

To enable all stakeholders to act on common ground and take responsibility for their own plans

To help people implement an existing vision that they have not acted on together

A Short Overview

The FS design depends on sticking to a set of reliable conditions for success. These start with four core principles that are the focus of Chapters 3 and 4:

Whole system in the room

Global context for local action

Focus on future and common ground, not problems and conflicts

Self-management and responsibility for action

We advocate full attendance, healthy meeting conditions, working across three days instead of doing it all in two, and public commitments for follow-up.

Participant Terminology

We use the following terms to describe parties involved in Future Searches:

Sponsors: those from an organization, community, or coalition who initiate a Future Search

Steering committee (or planning group): those selected by a sponsor to help frame the task, select the stakeholders, manage the logistics, and plan for follow-up

Stakeholders: participants from diverse backgrounds considered by sponsors to be essential to the success of the Future Search

Funders: those who invest in projects and programs related to the purpose of the Future Search

Facilitators (also FS managers or consultants): experienced professionals who plan and manage Future Searches in collaboration with sponsors.

Structure

A Future Search typically involves 60 to 100 people who share a common purpose. We do five activities of two to four hours each, 16 to 20 hours in total, spread over three days: review the past, explore the present, create desired future scenarios, discover common ground, and make action plans.

Mixed groups—each a cross-section of the whole—work on the past and the future. Stakeholder groups whose members have a shared perspective work together on the present. Everybody validates the common ground. Action planning employs both stakeholder and self-selected groups. Every task concludes with a whole-group dialogue.

Riding the Roller Coaster

Future Search sets up powerful dynamics that can lead to constructive outcomes. We experience the conference’s peaks and valleys as an emotional roller-coaster ride, swooping down into the morass of global trends at one moment, soaring to idealistic heights at another. Uncertainty, frustration, and confusion usually resolve into fun, energy, and achievement. We believe that good contact with our ups and downs leads to realistic choices and constructive action.

Future Search accommodates diverse learning styles. Some people seek facts; others tune in to feelings. We provide a variety of activities to help people engage on many levels. All have a chance to contribute their best. Future Search requires no training, inputs, data collection, or diagnoses. Instead people tell their stories and listen to one another. In Future Search we aspire to acknowledge what we discover as an inescapable part of our shared world. In short we look for buried potential that already exists.

A Future Search typically involves 60 to 100 people who share a common purpose focusing on five topics over three days: the past, the present, the future, common ground, and action planning. Note: this diagram represents only an overview of the three-day process; for a step-by-step agenda, see Chapter 5 and Appendix A.

Moving toward Implementation

Future Search participants bridge barriers of culture, class, age, gender, ethnicity, power, status, and hierarchy by working on tasks of mutual concern. The FS process interrupts the tendency to repeat old patterns—railroading, fighting, running away, complaining, blaming, or waiting for others to fix things. Future Search gives people a chance to express their highest ideals. Instead of a meeting requiring people to change their behavior, Future Search changes the conditions under which people interact. That is something we can control, and it enables surprising outcomes.

No process, however comprehensive, guarantees action. Still we have seen more plans implemented from Future Searches than any planning method either of us has used over four decades. People act quite apart from whether they had a good time, liked the facilitators, resolved their differences, or felt finished. Action requires that people believe in shared goals and trust one another enough to cooperate. It also requires committing resources—of time and energy and sometimes money. In this edition we show how Future Search stimulates shared goals, trust, and resources.

Future Search Pushes the Boundaries of Organization Development

We see Future Search extending traditional organization development (OD) in new directions.

First, OD was conceived not as a single meeting but rather as a strategy for large-scale systemic change. An FS meeting requires fewer than three days.

Second, whereas OD depended on many people accepting the need for change, Future Search depends on the right people accepting an invitation to spend a few days together.

Third, OD originally was based on consultants’ diagnosing gaps between what is and what ought to be. This was intended to unfreeze a system, leading people to reorder their relationships and capabilities. Nearly always the action steps involved training, on the theory that people did not know how to do what they said they wanted to do. Future Search requires no diagnosis and no labeling of participants as cooperative, resistant, and the like. The greater the diversity in the room, the less useful will be any particular conceptual scheme. We have no preconceived issues except those raised by