Facilitation · 2.5 to 3 days in five half-day sessions, plus a review meeting 6-12 months later.

Future Search (Weisbord & Janoff)

Future Search is a large-group planning meeting in which a whole system of stakeholders, typically 60-80 people, works through past, present and future to find common ground and plan action together. It was developed by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff and is used worldwide by the Future Search Network.

When to use Future Search (Weisbord & Janoff)

When an issue cuts across organisations or communities and no single party can act alone, and the key stakeholders are willing to spend several days together.

How Future Search (Weisbord & Janoff) works

Use it as the design for a whole 2.5-3 day event: five half-day sessions in a fixed order, with stakeholder and mixed groups alternating. Invest heavily in inviting the right mix of people before the event.

Phases of Future Search (Weisbord & Janoff)

  1. Past: Mixed groups build timelines of key events in the world, in their own lives and in the history of the topic, then share what the patterns mean.
  2. Present: The whole group maps trends affecting the issue. Stakeholder groups then say what they are doing now, what they want to do, and what they are proud of and sorry about.
  3. Future: Mixed groups imagine a preferred future as if it has already happened, describing what exists and which barriers they overcame.
  4. Common ground: The whole group identifies the themes everyone can support, treating unresolved conflicts as information rather than action items.
  5. Action planning: Participants commit to concrete actions and take personal responsibility for them. A review meeting 6-12 months later checks progress.

Key principles

  • Get the whole system in the room
  • Explore the whole context before acting on part of it
  • Focus on common ground and the future, not on problems and conflicts
  • People are responsible for their own participation and action

Best for

  • Community and regional planning
  • Cross-organisation or multi-stakeholder strategy
  • Organisational change involving many functions
  • Groups of roughly 40-80 people

Considerations

  • Recruitment of the right stakeholders is the hardest and most important part.
  • Requires a long, uninterrupted time commitment that many organisations find hard to secure.
  • Deliberately does not resolve conflicts in the room, which can frustrate participants who want them settled.

Attribution & sources

Developed by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, 1995

Primary source

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