Bottom Up Change Tool

Future Search

A Future Search is a way of bringing together a community or organisation to create a shared vision. It's about people taking responsibility for their own planning. To achieve this it is necessary to get the 'whole system' in the room, win over people's hearts and minds, find the common ground on which to build a way forward, generate the energy needed for action to be taken and give the issue and the solution a high profile.

The Future Search Conference follows a well tested format. It works best with about 30-50 people. The emphasis is on a community dialogue to get at what people would like to happen. It follows a verbal tradition, not a written one. Any conflict that emerges has to be rationalised to get a resolution. If not it goes on a 'disagree list'. The outcome is an agreed Action Plan to implement the most desired future.

KEY POINTS:

Spend time agreeing the purpose
Get clear what form the output is likely to take
What form will a concensus take
Get people to take responsibility for their own planning

The conference has five parts.

PART ONE - Focus on the past

To get out of all participants their experience and potential to contribute to the topic or issue being addressed. This is achieved by getting everyone in the room writing on flip charts within 45 minutes of the start. The themes will be self, society and organisation. Each person is asked to note milestones and trends over XX years. This work is done in mixed groups. This exercise usually lasts one to two hours.

PART TWO - Focus on the present (internal and external)

Participants now work together in stakeholder groups to create a Mind Map of trends that are having an impact on the organisation and the lives of employees that affect the topic or issue being addressed. This exercise introduces participants to the complexity of the situation. It is up to those who submitted the trend to clarify it if asked. Each person is then asked to indicate on the map their own personal priorities (usually done with 7 to 10 dots, with different stakeholders using different colours). This provides data for discussion to help them make lists of PROUDS (what they feel good about) and SORRIES (what they regret) in their relationship to the topic or issue being addressed. These lists are posted and people vote on the PROUDS they want to see continued. This exercise usually lasts one to two hours.

PART THREE - Focus on the future

Working in mixed groups to create an ideal future scenario. They are asked to dramatise the details as concretely as possible - as if it had already happened. They also have to explain how they overcame the barriers to change. The scenarios reflect how people would rather work to make important changes happen. When the various scenarios are compared two lists are drawn up for discussion/validation (common features and unique features). This can take between an hour and two hours.

PART FOUR - Creating a consensus scenario

In this session, common features are highlighted and validated by the whole group. Smaller groups consider the unique features they would like to see incorporated. If validated by all groups it goes into the consensus that represents the ideal future that the whole group wants to work to create. This lasts about 30 minutes.

PART FIVE - Action Planning

Volunteers, or stakeholder groups then makes long and short-term action plans to start implementing the ideal future. Their plans are reported to the conference before closing, and plans are made to collect and disseminate the learning and the the documents created. It is often helpful to post up the themes so that people can self-select which consensus themes they want to work on. This usually takes and hour or two.