Futures wheel
Updated on Saturday, August 12, 2023
A method that helps teams identify the direct and indirect effects of a decision, event, or trend.
You and your team have a bunch of options and need to understand the most promising ones. How do you make sure you choose the options that have the best chances of working out well? Do a quick exploration of the potential direct and indirect consequences of each item.
| Difficulty | Benefits from an experienced facilitator |
|---|---|
| Participants | Up to 6 with or without experience |
| Time | 45 minutes (in-person), 1 hour (remote) |
| Materials | Standard stuff: a way to collect ideas and a place to collect them |
How does it work?
The futures wheel combines two rounds of brainstorming and uses a radial matrix to map brainstorm outputs into a visual format.
- First, note the decision, event, or trend you want to explore.
- Second, brainstorm the direct consequences of the item, both the good and the bad, in a ring around the item.
- Last, brainstorm the indirect consequences of each of the consequences you just brainstormed in a third ring.
The futures wheel produces a list of the direct and indirect effects of the item in the center of the wheel.
What do you need?
Inputs
- Start with pre-collected items to evaluate: decisions, trends, or events
Outputs
- List of direct effects
- List of indirect effects
Participants
- Use on your own
- Up to 12 participants
- For more than 12, split into groups
Materials
- Some way to collect ideas
- Somewhere to collect them like a dry erase board or physical or digital wall
Learn more
Facilitation tips and example
Mind Tools provides detailed instructions and facilitation tips for Futures Wheel on their website, Futures Wheel.
The origin of the futures wheel
Invented by Jerome Glenn in 1971. Learn more about the Futures Wheel on WikiPedia.
Futures Wheel templates
Matthew Stephens offers Miro and Google Slides templates for Futures Wheel on Medium: Explore Direct & Indirect Consequences Using a Futures Wheel.
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