Future Search
What is Future Search?
Future Search is a large group planning meeting that helps people unleash their capability for action very quickly. Typically a meeting brings together from 60 to 80 people in one room (or hundreds in parallel rooms) for a task-focused series of sessions extending over three days.
Future Search brings people from all walks of life into the same conversation - those with resources, expertise, formal authority, and need. People tell stories about their past, present, and desired future. While conflicts among participants may be extant, they are acknowledged and then set aside to allow the group to focus on common ground and building their future together.
The meeting design comes from theories and principles tested in many cultures for the past 50 years. It relies on mutual learning among stakeholders as a catalyst for voluntary action and follow-up. People devise new forms of cooperation that continue for months or years. Future searches have been run in every part of the world and sector of society.
What is the essence of Future Search?
A Future Search is based on the following principles or beliefs:
- Get the "whole system" in the room.
- Global exploration before local action.
- Put common ground and future focus front and center.
- Encourage self-management and responsibility for action by participants.
- Every person and every group is doing the best they can with what they have every minute of every day.
- People do only what they are ready, willing and able to do.
- People need not change their own minds or anyone else's for a group to discover its common ground and potential for action.
For More information: www.futuresearch.net