Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities

When the term ''future search'' appeared in Productive Workplaces (Weisbord, 1987), so many people sparked to it that we decided, after trying fancier names like ''strategic futures conference,'' to retain it. The response to the concept led to Discovering Common Ground (Weisbord et al, 1992), a work that pulled together principles and practices for value-based action planning. The earlier book presented a variety of high participation models and cases, most based on the Emery/Trist Search Conference, including early experiments with future search. In this book we focus on our evolving future search model. Here we go deeply into our sources and rationale, our experiments with tasks and techniques, and examples of how we and many colleagues have employed this model and its variations. We also provide a philosophical rationale for our design and facilitation practices.