Futures Wheels: facilitation worksheet
Published 29 August 2024
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This worksheet is for the user to adapt and fill in as needed – timings and wording are suggestions only and will need to be tailored to the user’s context. Read other Futures Toolkit resources.
Scoping question:
Participants:
| Time | Activity | Content | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -00:30 | Set up | If face-to-face, you will need notepads, pens, screen. Make sure that you are able to pin flip charts up on a wall. Provide space for each group to work. If virtual, make sure that you have prepared your online whiteboard with the scenarios to be explored. You will need to be able to use breakout rooms in the video meeting package. Display the Scoping Question prominently. Prepare slides if using (recommended). | If you are working virtually, you may need an introduction to the online whiteboard before you start or send a short “how-to guide”. | |
| 00:00 (5 mins) | Introduction and agenda | Introduce the aims of the project. Explain how this workshop fits in with any wider futures process. Introduce the concept of a vision – a desirable, but feasible future. Then, introduce the workshop, what people will do and what the outcomes will be. | Agenda: 1. Introduction to Futures Wheel. 2. Identify Focus. 3. Primary impacts. 4. Secondary impacts. 5. Tertiary impacts. 6. Debrief | |
| Introduction to Futures Wheels | ||||
| 00:05 (10 mins) | Futures Wheels – setting the context | A Futures Wheel uses Cascade Thinking, allowing you to go out three levels of impact to gain insight (and discover unintended consequences). At the centre is your initial focus. Consider the first-order impacts within the next year. What follows on from these within 2–5 years? Finally, what are the third-order impacts 5–15 years plus? | Slide with overlays of each step | |
| 00:15 (45 mins) | Futures Wheel Exercise | Start with impacts within the next year – write them on a sticky in the first circle. Continue until you feel sure that you have covered all the impacts within the first year. You may like to use a list of trends or PESTLE to ensure that you cover a sufficiently wide area. Next, look at each one and see what impacts follow on in 2–5 years. Finally, consider 5–15 plus year impacts. Pick an impact chain to share. | In groups of 4–8. Each group should have their own flip chart paper or their own space on the online whiteboard with a template for Futures Wheels. You will have 10 minutes for each circle of impacts. | |
| 01:00 (30 mins) | Debrief | Look at each group’s template and share one impact chain. If you have time, share further impact chains. In Plenary, what surprised you most? Who might win? Lose? What might you do with what you’ve learned? | Call everyone back into plenary session and ask for feedback (5 mins each group) then plenary discussion | |
| 01:30 | Close | Thank you and questions |