method · all tools
Future Search
A structured 2.5–3 day planning conference that gets "the whole system in the room" — 40–80 stakeholders across interests review their common past, map present trends, own their responses, and develop shared future scenarios, converging on common ground and concrete action commitments. Built to work precisely where interests diverge and no single actor holds the answer.
Prerequisites
- Careful stakeholder selection — the method's power is who is in the room
- Working across live interest conflicts asks real holding: the design channels disagreement into common ground, but only when facilitators keep to it under pressure
Practical
- Time
- 1200-1800 min
- Group
- 30–100 · large-group, organization
- Settings
- in-person
- Materials
- Mixed-stakeholder invitation process; timeline walls; breakout tables
- Mechanisms
- dialogic-encounter, systems-sensing, perspective-taking
- Change scope
- state · one-off
Instructions
- Where
- futuresearch.net
- Availability
- In the source document — the instructions live inside the material linked, on its terms
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Marvin Weisbord & Sandra Janoff — Whole-system change methods (Future Search Network)
In this directory via IDG Phase 2 Research Report & Toolkit (2022)
From the Phase 2 "Scaffolding Collaboration" family. Holding is rated 3 not for emotional depth but for the craft of containing multi-stakeholder conflict potential over days — an example of holding capability that isn't about affect.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25