Locations
Three steps to use the Futures Triangle to find your Drivers of Change:
You should now have a well-populated Futures Triangle that could look a little like the image to the right. Now you are ready to synthesize clusters and start framing these clusters of signals into Drivers of change. Cluster signals by identifying connections between Pushes, Pulls, and Weights to form coherent themes.
A signal from the ‘Push of the Present’: “Rural to Urban migration hits an all-time high in 2024”. This can be combined with another Which is: “The government announces plans to build climate- resilient cities and calls this a national priority”. Finally, a signal from the ‘Weight of the past’ could be “Bridge collapse points to the inability of current infrastructure to meet growing urban demands”.
Together, these signals could probably be brought together under the driver: “Urban migration intensifying pressure on cities.”
A note on Sensemaking
The term 'sense-making' can be used for any activity that involves finding insights from a collection of data. In this broad sense, identifying patterns in the different signals around the futures triangle to define a driver of change is a sense-making exercise.
Sensemaking has been described as an art and a science. While there is an overarching logic to finding patterns- the patterns you do find will vary depending on the perspective you take, your backgrounds and your experiences.
It is for this reason that we suggest defining drivers using signals in a workshop setting – with a diverse group of people. The same set of signals may be combined in very different ways by different people.
Click Here to Download the PDF TEMPLATE OF THE FUTURES TRIANGLE
Example: Drivers of change that formed the basis for scenarios used for stress- testing elements of the UNDP Strategic Plan 2025-2029
