Liberating Structures
Future~Present
Develop imaginative tactics for scaling up from local to global action. This structure helps groups notice the subtle threads of success in the present that, if pulled, could unravel a much more attractive future. Instead of creating another strategic plan that sits on a shelf, Future~Present builds confidence, social proof, and the capacity to spot and seize emerging opportunities.
Future~Present
What is made possible - What it unlocks
Notice threads in the present that if tugged on might unravel a more attractive future. Identify how the hints of a more ideal future are present, just not widely distributed yet. Participants can notice small changes, support structures, and local success patterns that have the potential to be scaled up to a global transformation. This includes surfacing strategies to overcome resistance and methods to spread early successes. Future~Present does not produce a plan to be implemented but rather builds momentum, imagination, social proof, and confidence in subtle or incremental signals. This builds capacity to actively shape next steps and pounce on opportunities.
When to use it
- When you want to spark imagination and build momentum around what’s already working—before it’s widely visible.
- When you need to build momentum and confidence around a worthy but elusive goal
- When you want to surface what’s already working and scale it up
- When strategic planning feels heavy and you need a more imaginative, energizing approach
- When you want to identify early signals of success and strategies to overcome resistance
- When you need to shift from problem-focused thinking to possibility-focused thinking
- When you want to create social proof and shared belief in what’s achievable
- When you need to help a group actively shape next steps rather than wait for perfect conditions
🛠️ The five design elements of Future~Present
Each Liberating Structure consists of five simple design elements to make participation possible for everyone. By shaping these elements with care, you move beyond rigid control or chaos and create space for people to contribute, listen, and co-create.
- 1. The Invitation
- 2. Setup & Materials
- 3. Participation Flow
- 4. Group Configuration
- 5. Sequence & Timing
How you frame the purpose or question that sets the focus and energy of the group.
As the facilitator, you invite participants into a future scenario 10-20 years ahead where their worthy goal has been achieved. You set the stage with a compelling story and invite participants to look ‘back’ at the past years, using four guiding questions:
- Pioneer, I have heard about the old days, times were hard. [Add the topic. Often a worthy yet elusive goal you are moving forward toward]. There seemed to be no way out. Is it true? What problems existed? Tell me.
- Pioneer, what was it like in the midst of this turmoil? How did you feel? What gave you hope amid the despair? Tell me.
- Pioneer, there are many stories about you and your fellow pioneers, what first small steps did you take? How did you turn up the heat? How did you build and maintain momentum? Tell me.
- Pioneer, I know you did not stop with those early actions. Tell me, where did you find the strength to go on? What unusual suspects showed up that gave you hope something more was possible? Tell me.
The arrangement of space and which tools or resources are needed to support interaction.
- Use an open space without tables—participants can stand facing one another or sit on the floor in small circles
- Make the four guiding questions available via handout or projection
- For extra atmosphere: provide (preferably used) yellow, orange, and red post-its that can be crumpled to create “indoor campfires” (see Riffs & Variations)
- Optional: mobile phones with flashlight function for the campfire effect, and forest sounds audio for ambiance
Who gets a voice and how everyone is actively included in the process.
- Everyone can contribute simultaneously and equally
- About half the group functions as storytellers/pioneers, the other half as questioners/youth
How people are arranged (alone, small groups, or all together) and how this shifts during the activity.
- Quartets or quintets with 2 people acting as the storytellers/elders
- Two people act as youth of a future generation asking the pioneering elders to look backwards on 10-20 years of progress and share their reflections.
The step-by-step flow of the activity and the time given to each step to keep energy and focus.
- Gather everyone’s attention and share your introduction story about the future. Use the guiding questions (download free worksheet below) or create your own compelling narrative. (5 min)
- Divide into small groups of 4-6. Assign roles: 2 pioneers, 2-4 youth. Create your campfire setting (3 min)
- Youth ask the first question: “Pioneer, I have heard about the old days, times were hard. [Add your topic—often a worthy yet elusive goal]. There seemed to be no way out. Is it true? What problems existed? Tell me.” (3-5 min)
- Youth ask the second question: “Pioneer, what was it like in the midst of this turmoil? How did you feel? What gave you hope amid the despair? Tell me.” (3-5 min)
- Youth ask the third question: “Pioneer, there are many stories about you and your fellow pioneers. What first small steps did you take? How did you build and maintain momentum? What gave you confidence to keep trying? Tell me.” (3-5 min)
- Youth ask the fourth question: “Pioneer, I know you did not stop with those early actions. Tell me, where did you find the strength to go on? What unusual suspects showed up that gave you hope something more was possible? Tell me.” (3-5 min)
- Youth debrief together to identify themes while pioneers listen without commenting. (3 min)
- Pioneers then share their experience, and everyone reflects together (3 min).
Total time: 25 minutes
Online version
Adapted for virtual use, with the same impact
All the steps are the same as described above.
- Prepare breakout rooms for the small groups.
- Ask participants to turn off their lights, and for extra dramatic effect, let them use their mobile phone flashlights to shine on themselves when they speak (as if you’re sitting around a campfire).
Total time: 25 minutes
Solo version
Adapted for individual use and personal development
You can do this structure solo and it works great! Make sure to have your prompt questions at hand.
Step 1 – Create Your Future Story: Write a brief introduction to your desired future. Imagine it’s 3-5 years from now and you’ve achieved your goal. What does life look like? What has changed? What became possible? Write 3-5 sentences describing this future as if it’s already real. Make it vivid and specific. (5 min)
Step 2 – Acknowledge the Past (Now): Now write from your future self, looking back at the present day. Answer this question as your future pioneer self: “Back then, times were hard regarding [your goal/challenge]. There seemed to be no way out. What problems existed? What made it feel impossible?” Write honestly about the current obstacles and challenges. (5 min)
Step 3 – Remember the Feeling: Continue writing from your future self: “What was it like in the midst of this turmoil back then? How did you feel? What gave you hope amid the despair?” Explore the emotional landscape—the difficulty AND the glimmers of hope that existed even then. (5 min)
Step 4 – Trace the First Steps: Your future pioneer self remembers how it started: “What were the first small steps you took? How did you build and maintain momentum? What gave you confidence to keep trying?” Write about the early actions, experiments, or shifts that began the journey. What small things made a difference? (7 min)
Step 5 – Identify Unexpected Support: From your future perspective: “Where did you find the strength to go on? What unusual suspects showed up that gave you hope something more was possible? Who or what helped in unexpected ways?” Write about the surprising sources of support, insight, or energy that emerged. (7 min)
Step 6 – Extract the Themes: Read back through what you’ve written. What themes or patterns emerge? What was already present in your current reality that you might have overlooked? What small changes or successes are already happening that could be amplified? Write down 3-5 key insights or patterns you notice. (5 min)
Step 7 – Return to the Present: Come back to now. Based on what your future pioneer self revealed, what becomes visible? What first small step can you take this week? What unusual suspects might you reach out to? What thread can you pull on right now? Write 1-3 concrete actions. (5-6 min)
Total time: 30-40 minutes
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- Simple methods for big changes
- Have interactions that truly matter
- Build a culture of innovation step by step
- Involve and activate everyone in the group
Proven over decades
🧠 Why it works
Liberating Structures are not magic tricks—they work because they tap into how people naturally think, connect, and collaborate. Each structure is carefully designed to unlock participation, spark creativity, and build trust, using principles grounded in social science and human interaction.
Attribution:
Liberating Structure developed by Keith McCandless and Fisher Qua, adapted from Joanna Macy’s work in Coming Back To Life.
“The future is already present yet very poorly distributed.”
Note: As a Liberating Structure in Development, Future~Present hasn’t been tested in all possible scenarios and doesn’t always deliver predictable results yet. This simply means it’s still being refined through practice and feedback from facilitators worldwide.
Future Retrospection
By looking backward from an imagined successful future, participants bypass the usual constraints and skepticism that plague forward planning. This mental time travel unlocks creative thinking.
Narrative Intelligence
Storytelling activates different neural pathways than analytical planning. When people tell stories about overcoming challenges, they naturally surface strategies, resources, and patterns they might otherwise overlook.
Social Proof
Hearing pioneers describe success—even imagined success—builds collective confidence and makes the goal feel more achievable. The group creates its own evidence that transformation is possible.
Weak Signal Detection
The structure trains participants to notice subtle early indicators of success already present in their environment. This builds capacity to spot and amplify what's working before it's obvious to everyone.
Riffs and Variations
Start with creative constraints to learn this structure and then... go liberate yourself and try some variations.
- Indoor Campfires: Create atmosphere by placing mobile phones with flashlights face-up on the floor, then crumpling and scattering yellow, orange, and red post-its over them to simulate campfire flames. Add forest sounds audio for full effect.
- Role Reversal: After one round, switch roles so pioneers become youth and vice versa—this deepens the learning and gives everyone both perspectives.
- Gallery of Futures: Have each small group create a visual representation of their future scenario, then do a gallery walk where groups visit each other’s futures.
- Time Compression: Instead of 10-20 years, try 5 years for more near-term goals, or 50 years for truly transformational visions.
- Combine with Mad Tea: Use Mad Tea’s rapid rotation format to have pioneers interviewed by multiple groups of youth (though the original creators note this was “fun but not terribly productive”).
- Written Letters: Have pioneers write letters to their present-day selves from the future, describing what they did and learned.
Tips
Lessons learned from other facilitators.
- Lean into the theater—your enthusiasm and commitment to the scenario will give others permission to play along
- Create a compelling, detailed future scenario in your introduction—specificity makes it real
- Encourage pioneers to speak in past tense as if it all really happened
- Remind youth to listen deeply and follow up with curiosity, not just read the questions mechanically
- Use the campfire variation if you can—physical atmosphere helps people step into the imagination space
- Capture key themes and strategies that emerge during the debrief—these are actionable insights
- Consider recording the pioneer stories (with permission) to harvest later
Traps
Don't make the same mistakes.
- Don’t skip the introduction story—without a compelling setup, people won’t fully engage with the scenario
- Don’t let the exercise turn into regular strategic planning—keep the future-looking-back frame intact
- Avoid having groups that are too large—intimacy is key for storytelling
- Don’t rush the debrief—the reflection is where insights solidify and momentum builds
- Don’t expect a concrete action plan—this structure builds imagination and confidence, not implementation steps
- Don’t be discouraged if some participants are initially skeptical—once one or two lean in, others usually follow
Try it with…
The real power of Liberating Structures emerges when you combine them into "strings." Link different structures together to build on insights and create more powerful results. Here are some nice combinations:
- 15% Solutions afterward to identify immediate next steps participants can take based on insights from the future
- TRIZ to identify what to stop doing that would prevent the desired future
- Appreciative Interviews to ground the future vision in existing success stories from the past
- Wicked Questions to surface the paradoxes that pioneers had to navigate
- Improv Prototyping to act out scenarios from the pioneer stories
- 25/10 Crowd Sourcing to prioritize which early signals or strategies to amplify first
- Drawing Together to create visual representations of the future world
Field stories
To get to know Liberating Structures without having used them yourself, it helps to see familiar situations from real-life practice. Chances are that you or your team have faced one of these challenges before. Discover how to approach these kinds of situations in a fresh and engaging way.
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Future~Present
Develop imaginative tactics for scaling up from local to global action.
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