There is so much to be explored on this topic however here is a piece I wrote for the email circular. Would be great to have your thoughts and additions!
If there is one thing that our industry is great at, it’s inventing clever new terms to describe what we do. Over the years we have been introduced to many interesting descriptions of working with people to help them do their stuff better. Back in the early days we might have been tickled to know what was a T-Group, Transactional Analysis, Interactive Planning or a Viable Systems Model. By the 1990s the flavours had expanded to terms like Large Group Interventions and so it continued: Participatory Design, Deliberative Democracy, Co-Design / Co-Creation / Co-Production, Causal Loop Mapping, Social Labs, Collective Impact, Regenerative Design, Human-Centred Design, Sensemaking, Participatory Innovation, Adaptive Leadership, Learning Organisations, Complex Adaptive Systems, Participatory Budgeting, Sociocracy, Agile Transformation, you get the picture. These represent just a flavour of what has been sold to leaders as ways to change their world! The newest we have come across is Systemic Consulting. Whatever it is, we think we do it!
The major question is what has fundamentally shifted?
In physicist, philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn’s fantastic book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), he describes how a revolutionary change comes about in science when the current dominant way of working is challenged until it collapses due the overwhelming evidence that it is no longer fit for purpose. A new reality emerges that shifts everything and the cycle continues. He called it a paradigm shift. Sandra often points out that the paradigm we are living in is a Systems Orientation. We now recognise that we are a series of connected nodes in a series of systems - from cosmos, to planet, biosphere, communities, organisations, human groups and to the individual. We are in the practice of creating more and more ways of navigating that reality. Much of what has been invented over the last four decades in our field of change is different ways to work with systems. What we have done is become better at carving out niches in the world of change.
Where does the Future Search Approach fit with this?
Future Search is unique because it is based on principles of whole system change. It works with two foundational elements - structure and people. Future Search is a marriage of the structural realities of how systems operate, including human systems, and of the relational, deeply human experience of seeing and hearing each other deeply. It recognises and celebrates diversity of thought, experience and reality. Future Search Principles have allowed Future Search to evolve over time as new insights and realities emerged. It is action research.
Because the principles are foundational, they span the breadth of systems work. While many know Future Search as a three day meeting, it is actually much more than that. Future Search asks deep and searching questions of a leader, then of a planning group, and then of the whole system. This inquiry is at the heart of everything.
What is your issue?
Can you bring together a group to help you plan what to do?
Can you (as a planning group) say what the clear task is?
Who has a stake in this task?
Can you get them into a room?
Can you (stakeholders) explore the whole system over three days?
Can you discover a common ground agenda that you can all sign up to?
Can you say what actions you want to take?
Can you set in motion the structures to bring this forward?
Will you meet in 6 or 12 months time to say what you have done?
AI will never be able to replicate that intimacy and depth of experience of all these complex humans with their complex realities. All that complexity is able to converge on a real and solid platform for action that is created by and will be implemented by the people of the system. It is possible because the principles that underpin this work are foundational and universal - Getting the “Whole System” in the room and taking time to learn about all the parts before choosing where to act.
Every leader and every systemic consultant should know the principles and how to apply them. Even if you never run a full Future Search process you will always have a foundational understanding of what working with the system means. Moving from fragmented work to working with the whole.
Be curious and join a course. The next one is in Philadelphia. Get in touch at fsn@futuresearch.net to let us know you are interested in having one where you are in the world and thanks to all of you who respond to these posts.
Join us in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, November 17–19, 2025 and learn all about the process that has transformed systems worldwide.
Sign up, join us. Share this with your colleagues who need to know this work. Join Sandra and Michael on LinkedIn where you can add your voice and commentary to amplify this way of working.
Thank you.
Sandra Janoff and Michael Donnelly