Now for Future has earned a reputation as a leader in facilitation and stakeholder engagement. Our unique approach engages participants and leaves them feeling respected and listened to.

This is what sets us apart:

Genuine Engagement
Genuine engagement relies on creating a safe environment for conversation where people can expose their thinking and make it open to the influence of others. We use World Cafés as one way of creating such an environment. Built around the metaphor of a café with its small tables and comfortable conversation, participants engage in constructive problem solving and the harvesting of collective intelligence. New ideas are generated, common issues are identified, and patterns begin to emerge and coalesce – all with a high degree of ownership by the group.

Graphic Recording
Now for Future uses graphic recording to add another dimension (the visual dimension) to its facilitation. Using words and pictures, the group’s output is captured live on large wall charts.
Graphic recording…
Increases participation – people see their contributions acknowledged
Increases creativity – participants use visual, big-picture thinking and see other dimensions of the discussion
Increases group memory – everyone remembers and makes links by looking at the chart
Increases ownership – as the record of the meeting is generated directly with participants
The resulting charts form a permanent visual record of the forum. They can be distributed by email; printed as posters; included in reports or other publications; and used for de-briefing, follow-up actions or meetings.

Professional Look-and-Feel
While the quality of the stakeholder engagement outcomes are determined largely by the quality of the process design and facilitation, the look and feel of the venue also play a key role. We “dress our rooms for success” with a welcome poster, graphic agenda, welcome slide show, and table tent-cards. If the event includes a World Café, we create the ambiance of a café with small tables and checked tablecloths. Together with the graphic recording charts, participants know as soon as they walk in that they are about to participate in something special.

Meticulous Preparation
We believe that the key to successful meetings rests largely with the preparation – refining and clearly articulating objectives, managing expectations, becoming literate in the issues, designing the briefing package for participants, developing the agenda, designing the engagement process, anticipating the type of results and how they will be communicated, and planning feedback and next steps so that momentum is not lost after the meeting. We use our skills, experience and creativity to custom-design unique events to meet the specific needs of our client, participants and situation. Consequently, we typically spend 70-80% of our total time investment in advance of the actual event.