Strategic Planning for Reference in a Team Environment: the Preferred Futuring Model

Preferred Futuring Process Model

Created by Ronald Lippitt, Preferred Futuring is a planning model grounded in sound theory and a thirty-year history of successful practice. Lawrence Lippitt, Ronald’s son, has detailed and documented the development of Preferred Futuring and the practical applications of the process as a leadership tool and a change model.¹⁰ In the last twenty-five years, Preferred Futuring has been used by many organizations in the public and private sector. In recent years Richard Dougherty has pioneered the use of this tool in academic libraries through his “Planning and Implementing Changes in Reference Services” workshops, and library conference presentations.¹¹
Lippitt details three critical phases in the Preferred Futuring change process: definition of the status quo, including accomplishments, disappointments, core beliefs, and future trends; definition of the preferred future state, capitalizing on organization strengths and visions; and, commitment to logical and predictable action planning, focusing on the link between planning and doing. The assumption behind this process is that linking preferred vision to committed actions creates a force that is stronger than resistance to change, thereby encouraging progress to be made (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Preferred Futuring Process Model
CD + SV + B + NFS > RC
Where:
CD = Current Dissatisfaction
SV = Shared Vision
B = Perceived Benefits
NFFS = No Fail First Steps
RC = Resistance to Change
Source: Richard Dougherty, Planning and Implementing Changes in Reference Services: A Workshop (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Richard Dougherty and Associates, 2002), 150.

Figure 1. Preferred Futuring Process Model

Preferred Futuring is a highly adaptable process that helps bring alignment to an organization and generates staff enthusiasm and a willingness to move forward. Whereas strategic planning is a rational, left-brain process, Preferred Futuring is a creative, right-brain activity. Yet the process itself, while flexible, is also well defined. It includes a series of eight steps that correspond to Lippitt’s three change phases as reflected in figure 2.

In the process of defining the status quo, celebrating the past provides new staff with a sense of what senior staff have accomplished and also helps some staff let go of the past and move on to the future; assessing the present allows for identification of current dissatisfactions and grievances, which is important to gaining staff cooperation and support for change; stating core beliefs affords managers an opportunity to work with staff who are having trouble accommodating traditional values such as in-person reference with newer initiatives such as virtual reference.

The process of defining the preferred future helps participants expand their ideas of what is possible as a prelude to envisioning a preferred future. Staff are given the opportunity to identify images of the reference future they find pleasing (such as setting up a roving librarian service designed to take reference service to the café or the stacks). The objective of a preferred futuring activity is to help staff identify a course of action for which there is group agreement, rather than to point to the “proper” path to follow. Nevertheless, the products of the process can, if desired, be used as the basis for a formal strategic plan.¹²

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