Future Search

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

Marvin Weisbord, Sandra Janoff

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781605099842
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATEDFuture Search is among the best-established and most effective methods for enabling people to make and implement ambitious plans. It has been used to redesign IKEA's product pipeline in Sweden, develop an integrated economic development plan in Northern Ireland, and demobilize child soldiers in Southern Sudan. Written by the originators, this book is the most up-to-date account of this powerful change method. This third edition is completely revised, reorganized, and updated with nine new chapters. It contains new cases and examples, advice on combining Future Search with other methods, and a summary of formal research studies. The chapters on facilitating diversity provide a theory, philosophy, and method for working with any task group. Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff offer specific guidance for Future Search sponsors, steering committees, participants, and facilitators and new ideas for sustaining action after the Future Search ends. They've added striking evidence of Future Search's efficacy over time, examples of its economic benefits, guidelines for making Future Searches green, and much more. They include a wealth of resources—handouts, sample client workbooks, follow-up methods, and other practical tools. If you want to do strategic planning, product innovation, quality improvement, organi-zational restructuring, mergers, or any other major change requiring stakeholder en-gagement, this book is your guide.

PART I
Learning

1 Any Sector, Any Culture

Future Search Cases from Everywhere Provides an overview of res ults in many sect ors and cultures

2 The Ripple Effect

How One Meeting Can Change the World Follows cases that ripp le through societ y for many years after an initial Future Search

3 Conditions for Success

Describes the conditions for a successful Future Search

4 Origins of Future Search Principles

Offers a historical perspect ive on translating theory into practice

5 In Pursuit of the Perfect Meeting

Updates our continuing design evolution and why we do what we do

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

In 1953 our friend Bapu Deolalikar, then head of human resources for the parent company of Calico Mills in Amedabad, India, witnessed one of the world’s first participative work design projects. Uneducated loom-shed workers, faced with a new technology, implemented their own multiskilled teams in a few days after a briefing from A. K. “Ken” Rice of London’s Tavistock Institute (Weisbord, 2004, ch. 9).

Nearly 40 years later, having consulted to development projects on many continents, Bapu startled us when he called Future Search “culture free.” He pointed out that Future Search enables people to work entirely from their own experience and belief systems. “I could use this model with people anywhere,” he said. That day Bapu did for us what Ken Rice had done for the loom-shed workers. He opened us to a universe we did not know existed.

Within a year Future Search Network members were taking FS everywhere. Over the next decade in Africa, Asia, and Europe, we learned firsthand what Bapu was talking about. People were using Future Search within and between diverse cultures, adapting the method to any sector, issue, or problem they chose. Nor was it necessary that facilitators be a part of the culture. They needed only to respect the traditions and the experiences of the people in the room.

Where Have People Held Future Searches?

Future Searches have been held in Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mali, Mexico, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Trinidad, the United Kingdom, the United States, the West Indies, and Zimbabwe.

Which Sectors Have Used Future Search?

Arts and culture. Museums, zoos, choirs, and arts councils

Business. Service, manufacturing, technology, retailing, construction, insurance, and banking industries

Community. Employment, healthcare, housing, transportation, and economic development

Congregations. Many denominations, singly, locally, and statewide

Economics. To attract business, tourism, investments, and jobs to specific locales

Education. Public and private schools, entire districts, and colleges and universities

Environment. Cities, regions, and watersheds on sustainability and issues like open space and water quality

Government. Local authorities and agencies for integrating public services

Healthcare. Hospitals, statewide systems, insurers, and medical and dental schools

Social services. Housing, families, employment, and family planning

Technology. Trade groups, software developers, and service providers

Youth. Daycare, Head Start, Girl Scouts, and community centers

What Questions Do People Take On?

Transcending a Divisive Past in Northern Ireland

Seventeenth-century walls surround Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second-largest city, where the Irish civil rights movement and, some say, “the troubles” began. On Sunday, January 30, 1972, a civil rights protest turned violent and ignited nearly three decades of conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities. In 1998 the Good Friday Peace Agreement enabled local citizens to believe that an economic turnaround and a brighter future for their children were possible.

One government initiative was Ilex, a company set up to promote the area’s physical, economic, and social regeneration. “In June 2008, Sir Roy McNulty, recently appointed chair of Ilex, reported to the government that the city lacked leadership and had no agreed-upon structure for creating the city’s future,” said Director of Regeneration Gerard McCleave. “We began asking ourselves how a city divided symbolically and physically by its river could get all of its key stakeholders to agree on a regeneration road map.”

Future Search was suggested by Permanent Secretary of Employment and Learning Aideen McGinley, who sponsored her first FS as chief executive of County Fermanagh in 1999. Later, as permanent secretary of a new Department of Culture, Arts, and Leisure in the Northern Ireland government, she sponsored Future Searches to create the first arts strategy, followed by a national soccer strategy, geographic information systems, a library and archives policy, and a vision/action agenda for the Ulster-Scots language and culture (see her comments in Chapter 14).

“We all recognized,” recalled Sir Roy, “that running such an event was a real challenge given the city’s history, the high levels of deprivation, the failure of past initiatives, and the cynicism that engendered.” Nonetheless, 120 people agreed to meet in February 2009 for an experience unprecedented in Derry-Londonderry. They called the conference “Changing Patterns—Changing Outcomes.” Despite the area’s divisive history, people found common ground in unlikely places. Their biggest surprise was how political controversy, even over the city’s name (Derry to some, Londonderry others) receded into the background. after acknowledging the painful past, people came together on key priorities: education, skills training, infrastructure, enterprise, jobs, eliminating poverty, and making the city a welcoming place for citizens and visitors alike. For the first time, key influencers from across the political spectrum found common ground.

Despite Northern Ireland’s divisive history, FS participants found common ground. “Some call it Derry, some call it Londonderry,” said Northern Ireland’s deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, “but we all call it home.”

They agreed on lifelong learning for all, regional integration, sustainable employment, and leveraging a cultural heritage of arts, sports, and tourism. They imagined the Foyle River and connecting roads, footpaths, and rail lines as an integrated transport system. Their overarching value, however, was to ensure that equality and the needs of the most deprived people were addressed in every action plan. “Some call it Derry, some call it Londonderry,” said Northern Ireland’s deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, “but we all call it home.”

The Future Search spawned 12 sectoral working groups. Ilex adopted the meeting’s output as the basis of its regeneration plan. Within months 450 people were meeting regularly. Within 18 months their number had swelled to involve more than a thousand. People were collaborating to identify the needs, inequalities, and future initiatives required to realize their common-ground vision. “The work during the past year and the results we saw at the review meeting have stood up remarkably well to this extreme challenge,” noted Sir Roy. “We are driving a plan forward on the enthusiasm and commitment that our Future Search helped generate.”

There is more to this story. Derry-Londonderry in July 2010 was named the United Kingdom’s first ever “City of Culture.” The award cited unprecedented collaboration among citizens on a cultural program that would address their difficult past, appreciate their heritage, and create a compelling new story.

Putting Sustainability into Global Business Plans

IKEA is the world’s largest home-furnishings company. For years it has had a corporate culture that supports good relations with customers and employees. The company was introduced to Future Search in 2003 by its human resources manager, Tomas Oxelman. It was immediately embraced by Josephine Rydberg-Dumont, then head of IKEA’s design, production, and distribution arm (see Chapter 14). At her urging the company ran a Future Search “to look clearly at the entire global operation from design to customer through the lens of a single product, the Ektorp sofa” (Weisbord and Janoff, 2005). In 2005 Rydberg-Dumont and Supply-chain Manager Göran Stark then used Future Search to redesign IKEA’s supply process and again in China to improve supplier relations. Of the latter effort, Stark said, “We put quality in focus, assuring that ‘Made in China’ actually stood for quality in our stores.”

The company also had a public commitment to sustainability. “We had been thinking about environmental questions,” said Torbjörn Lööf, Rydberg-Dumont’s successor, “but we had never been able to put it into a strategic context. We didn’t have a common language. We lacked a holistic view.”

In 2008 IKEA decided to make itself a global leader by reducing its carbon footprint. “We could have done what we have always done and written the strategy centrally,” said Sustainability Manager Thomas Bergmark. “What we really wanted was to integrate sustainability fully into the way we do business.”

In May 2008, IKEA organized a Future Search with internal stakeholders from all functions, suppliers, and external partners such as the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace International, UNICEF, and the European Union Commission. The aim was to imagine how a fully sustainable IKEA would do business. People worked intensively on how to reduce the carbon footprint of 300 stores, 10,000 products from suppliers in 55 countries, and 130,000 staff servicing 600 million customers per year.

“If you succeed in furnishing the homes of all the people on earth the way you do business today,” asked one external participant, “will we have any resources left?”

As the dialogue progressed, the NGO members had an “aha” moment when they realized that their individual wishes for IKEA made it impossible for the company to satisfy any of them. Said one environmentalist, “We want you to be successful. It’s your moral obligation to be both profitable and sustainable.”

IKEA and its partners then built a common-ground agenda. They committed to a long-range “cradle-to-cradle” concept of having every product made from recyclable, reusable, or renewable materials. “Our materials strategy completely changed as a result of this,” said Lööf. “We began tracki...