Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Jannoff, Future Search: Getting the Whole System in the Room for Vision, Commitment, and Action, 3rd Edition. Berrett-Koehler, 2010.
Referenced in: Strategies for Church Renewal – Whole Systems, Large Group
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is one of several Whole-Systems approaches to congregational renewal. The publisher’s description below is a good summary. For excellent insight on church applications, see chapter 3, “Methods that Generate Change,” in Mead and Alban, Creating the Future Together. Future Search is potentially good for congregations that are polarized and unable to get “unstuck” from the assumptions key groups and invividuals have about each other. It helps remove misunderstandings, surface common ground, mine constructive possibilities out of somewhat polarizing pasts, and reveal future possibilities. Also, while it is not a subsitute for Conflict Resolution, it could serve as a latter-stage partner in congregational peacemaking, helping congregations that have reestablished conciliatory relational climates to go to the next stage of crafting constructive futures.
From the Publisher
A Future Search is a meeting that uniquely enables people to take down the walls that keep them apart. Future Search details this highly successful way for organizations and communities of all types to apply global thinking and democratic values to achieve rapid, whole-systems improvement. In this widely successful approach, diverse stakeholders in an organization, community, or issue come together for two or three days to explore their shared past, present, and future in a global context. What makes this meeting different from other look-alikes are the transformative underlying principles: Get the whole system in the room; think globally (the “whole elephant”) before acting locally; focus on the future and common ground; self-manage tasks and take responsibility for action.
The practical uses of this approach are unlimited. Future searches have resulted in stakeholders becoming better able to understand and take responsibility for their joint situation. Others have provided a way to create a shared vision and action agenda for the future while fully facing the past and present. If your goal is a values-based umbrella for action across lines of culture, class, race, ethnicity, status and educational background, future search is for you.
Weisbord and Janoff provide guidance for every step of the way, from a detailed discussion of conditions for success to setting up rooms and facilitating the conference. In addition, they include a wealth of resources such as handouts, sample client workbooks, follow-up reports, and other practical tools. New materials for the third edition include:
- New cases and examples
- Further emphasis on the four core principles
- How the methodology has changed, including practices that are no longer part of the techniques.
- Further concentration on follow-up post-conference
- Update to the logistics section to show how Future Search can “go green.”
New chapters will include:
- A chapter on the “ripple effect” and how the Future Search movement has gone global, crossing both geographic and cultural boundaries
- A chapter on Future Search in cyberspace and how Future Search meetings can be effectively held online and through virtual communities
- Interviews with Future Search leaders and what they accomplished and learned in the last few six – seven years
About the Authors
Marvin Weisbord, an international consultant for more than thirty years, is the author of Organizational Diagnosis, Productive Workplaces, editor/coauthor of Discovering Common Ground, and coauthor of Future Search. He is co-direcor, along with Sandra Janoff, of Future Search Network (formerly SearchNet), an international non-profit dedicated to community service, colleagueship, and learning.
Sandra Janoff, consultant and psychologist, works with Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, communities and non-profits on whole systems transformation. She is the coauthor of Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There, and Future Search. She is co-director, along with Marvin Weisbord, of Future Search Network (formerly SearchNet) an international non-profit dedicated to community service, colleagueship and learning.
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