Futures Workshop Template
This one-day workshop introduces foundational foresight tools that help teams explore change, navigate uncertainty, and consider the implications of emerging trends. Participants will engage with practical, participatory methods to uncover risks, opportunities, and possible futures. The goal? Better strategic thinking and future-ready decision-making.
By the end of the day, participants will have:
- Explored key drivers of change through scanning and systems mapping
- Identified possible future impacts using speculative tools
- Mapped risks, opportunities, and areas for resilience
- Defined next steps to take futures thinking further
Objectives
- Playfully engage with different possibilities to shape the future.
- Explore and discuss trends and scenarios.
- Develop a shared understanding of possible futures that impact the organization.
- Establish possible next steps for the organization to be more resilient to change.
- Discuss next steps towards a desirable future.
Materials
Attachments
- futures triangle.png
- postcards.png
- scale.png
- Screenshot 2025-05-28 091903.png
- wheel futures.png
Instructions
This workshop is a great introduction to working with futures. It’s ideal for when conditions are uncertain and/or before setting long-term strategies. It does require work for follow-up so make sure that is scheduled in as well.
Futures: refers to systematic approaches to thinking about the future and exploring factors that could give rise to possible and probable future characteristics, events, and behaviors.
Foresight: refers to the application of specific tools/methods for conducting futures work, for example, horizon scanning (gathering intelligence about the future) and scenarios (describing what the future might be like).
Futures work helps us, among other things:
- Spot patterns of change, emerging trends, surprises, and disruptors earlier, giving us more time to respond.
- Build resilience in a community or organization by preparing for different possibilities;
- Create a collective narrative of possible futures, based on structured frameworks and evidence, and start moving towards the plausible future we hope to inhabit.
To learn more about these topics, download the publication SessionLab created with FuturesFit, Facilitating Futures – Workshop Tools for Uncertain Times.