The Future Forward College

How do you get to the future faster and more successfully?

This is how. In April 2014, Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh North Carolina held a two day retreat to further develop the ability to adapt successfully for an ever-changing future.

The event was organized and facilitated by US futurist Ric Smyre, President of Communities of the Future. The two-day session was attended by faculty, faculty from other community colleges and the Future Forward community of consultants. Colleagues that Ric invited included John Findlay, from Australia, who facilitated the Zing feedback, knowledge creation and planning sessions.

Some of the teams. Inset: the shared Zing screen

Ric Smyre has inspired many colleges and communities to develop a proactive approach to getting to the future. His large body of knowledge and well-developed processes, help clients acquire the necessary skills to becomes what Smyre calls Master Capacity Builders.

During the course of this event, participants rotated through six activities to develop a deeper understanding of the critical capacities for operating as a Future Forward College.

• Trans-disciplinary thinking – connecting totally disparate ideas
• Complex adaptive systems – chaos theory
• Adaptive planning (DICE)
• And-both/parallel processes
• Identifying emerging weak signals
• Master Capacity Building

Here's the plenary session process and a guide to the design of each activity/question:

Develop a shared context/model of the system: A great starting point to help people develop a good model of the system. That's why we ask people to identify the trends/challenges.

• Describe some of the big challenges, issues or problems that are EMERGING for colleges and the students, communities and industries that we serve.

Connect to the theory/models/methods: When people hear how others would apply what they are learning, the knowledge of the entire group expands. It also helps to generate additional ideas or reinforces/confirm what you were thinking.

• Thinking about the weak signal that you were given, what did you learn from this afternoon's session that could help you deal with it? Respond like this: weak signal and solution.

 Refresh and Anticipate: At the start of a new day, it is always a good ideas to recap what we learned or discovered the day before. It builds a solid foundation for the next stage of the journey and give the facilitators leaders some guidance on how to enhance their sessions.

• Thinking about yesterday's ideas and interactions, what are you CURIOUS about? Attracted to? Want to try?

Create/derive new knowledge: Experiential activities are a great source of  knowledge for a group. You reflect on what happened, then create a model to explain. The knowledge you acquire this way is far deeper than what you learn via knowledge telling (lecture) or comprehension (reading).

• Thinking about the Lego activity, what are the principles and processes for building community?  How do we BUILD MOMENTUM? Invite and involve others? Build capacity?

Commitment to action: By the Monday after an off-site, the excitement wears off and is often overtaken by more mundane matters. So we ask people to make promises/commitments that tap into their passions.There's also a sense of completion.  It's also a great way to finish.

• Thinking about what you feel PASSIONATE about AND an exciting/amazing AHA! from the past two days, what WILL you DO differently starting TOMORROW or at the latest MONDAY? For example learning AND assessment are an adaptive system, or learning is played like a game.