Guidance

Driver Mapping: facilitation worksheet

Published 29 August 2024

This worksheet is for the user to adapt and fill in as needed – timings and wording are suggestions only and will need to be tailored to the user’s context. Read other Futures Toolkit resources.

Scoping question:  

Participants:  

Time	Activity	Content	Notes
	Pre-reading	You may wish to provide participants with outputs from horizon scanning work, or existing trends analysis, as pre-reading.
-00:30	Set up	If face-to-face: notepads, pens, sticky notes, flip charts, coloured dots for voting. If virtual, make sure that you have prepared your online whiteboard with a space in which to brainstorm drivers across PESTLE or your chosen categorisation; and a template of the matrix to map the drivers onto. You may choose to set up voting for the most important and uncertain drivers. You will need to be able to use breakout rooms. Display the Scoping Question prominently.	If you are working virtually, you may need an introduction to the online whiteboard before you start or send a short “how-to guide”.
00:00 (10 mins)	Introduction and agenda	Introduce yourself, the aims of the project for external participants, recap if only internal. Explain how this workshop fits in with any wider futures process. Then introduce the workshop, what people will do and what the outcomes will be. Share the agenda – note we will spend time on the debrief.	Agenda: 1. Introduction. 2. PESTLE approach. 3. Brainstorm drivers. 4. Map drivers. 5. Next steps. 6. Give people an example of a sticky note with a clear driver.
00:10 (10 mins)	Introduce the PESTLE approach	Introduce PESTLE or any alternative approaches that may be more relevant to the project, e.g. STEEPV to include values.	Avoid getting hung up on minor differences – all the approaches can be used flexibly.
	Brainstorm Drivers
00:20 (30-45 mins)	Brainstorm Drivers	Ask the groups to identify what is driving change in relation to the scoping question, encouraging people to think across the global context and all PESTLE categories. You could use previous work, such as Horizon Scanning outputs or trend analysis, as stimulus material here. You could ask groups to concentrate on one or two PESTLE categories each, so that you reduce overlaps and cover all categories. Your participants should write one driver on each sticky note, using a short phrase to make it very clear (“Sustained economic growth in China” is clearer than “The Economy”). Encourage as many drivers as people can find. You could use different colours for short-, medium- and longer-term drivers.	Divide participants into groups of 4–10 if face-to-face, 4–8 if virtual. If you are the only facilitator for a virtual event, limit the number of groups to two and bounce between them. Brainstorming rules: 1. List drivers. 2. Build upon each other’s ideas. 3. Don’t criticise ideas. 4. Look for quantity. Show people the sample sticky note with the driver again. Identify someone to feed back.
00:50 (15 mins)	Share drivers in plenary	Each group shares their drivers in plenary, which may spark more ideas for different new drivers. Each group should add to what the previous group has shared, to avoid repetition. Or you could have each group visit the others’ workspace
01:05 (10 mins)	Break
	Map the Drivers
01:15 (30–40 mins)	Organise the driver sticky notes into the matrix	Ask each group to place their drivers on an importance vs certainty matrix. This helps you to consider the importance that the driver has to your policy area against how certain its outcome is. Ask participants to cluster sticky notes by theme as they map them onto the appropriate quadrants.	In breakout groups. Prepare the matrix on flip charts for each group, or if virtual, have a matrix for each group ready on the online whiteboard.
	Vote on most important/most uncertain	Focusing on the top left and top right quadrants, ask each group to choose 3–5 drivers of the highest priority, those that are the most important for the policy area. Mark these with a coloured dot.	Different groups will move at different speeds. Don’t worry if groups may need to wait for a slower group to finish – the conversations groups have are valuable.
01:45 (20 mins)	Compare in plenary	Compare the driver maps of each group in plenary. Discuss differences and any additional ideas that arise. Capture all the drivers that were voted for as part of your output – your list of most important and uncertain drivers. Explain how each quadrant has different implications – e.g. prioritise and act, scenario plan, park, track.
	Next steps
02:05 (15 mins)		Discuss next steps. Is it the start of a Scenarios exercise? Or a Visioning exercise Agree what you will produce for participants, which you will already have decided when planning the exercise. E.g. a report? A list of drivers? What else?
(10 mins)	Extra exercise – if you have more time	Map your organisation’s influence over key drivers.	Optional
02:20 (5 mins)	Wrap up	Ask if there are any questions. Thank participants.
02:25	Close

The image above represents a four-quadrant matrix composed of two intersecting axes. Vertical axis labelled at top ‘More important for the policy area’ and at bottom ‘Less important for the policy area’. This crosses a horizontal axis labelled ‘The outcome is certain’ on the left and ‘The outcome is uncertain’ on the right.