Customer Reviews

Future Search

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, Marvin R. Weisbord and Sandra Janoff describe a three-day program to help organizations develop a future plan. Their conference is designed to unite groups of people from different areas of an organization so they can create a program together that they all support. Typically, the conference includes 50 to 70 people who review the past, explore the present environment, create future scenarios, identify common ground and make action plans. The program encourages dialogue and working together as peers.

Future Search suggests how you might organize this program yourself, from setting up the agenda to planning the logistics. Because the book is a specific, practical guide for a particular type of conference, it will primarily interest those leaders and managers who want to put on such a program. We at getAbstract recommend Future Search as a good hands-on tool for companies, non-profits, government agencies or other organizations that want to hold a future planning conference.

No need to go any further. This the THE book to read if you are involved in planning or facilitating a future search. The authors anticipated all my questions and answered them in a clear, concise manner. The book is an excellent manual for anyone responsible for conducting future searches. Don't leave the present without it.

This book has not been incredibly useful. The authors have some apparently good techniques, however the book is written more like an infomercial. It is as if the book is trying to sell the "Future Search" meeting format. I only have the book because I was required to read it for class.

This is a quick read, and for under $10 it's a good book to share with your committee when you're planning a Future Search. It describes the process, the roles that will be played by various actors in the process, what to expect and what not to expect. To dissuade me of telling the committee that this was an Organizational Development technique, for example, the authors described the differences between O.D. and the Future Search. I would go ahead and buy "Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground," by the same authors, to get the complete picture with the details.

I found this book easy to follow and easy to understand. If you want to understand Future Search as a large group strategy, this book will be very helpful. By the time I finished the book, and it is a fast read, I felt that I had a strong understanding of Future Search and when it is to be applied.

Weisbord and Janoff provide practical tools, advise and many decades of experience in organizational change and action in their "Future Search." As they say, a Future Search Conference is "simple, not easy" and provides a structured means for leaders to bring in the "whole system" into planning and action.