Polak Game

A diagnostic futures tool for surfacing assumptions about agency and optimism

Introduction

The Polak Game is arguably the most accessible entry point into Futures Studies, transforming abstract concepts about future orientation into a tangible, participatory experience. Based on Fred Polak’s seminal work on The Image of the Future, this simple yet powerful exercise reveals participants’ underlying assumptions about the future through a 2x2 positioning exercise¹².

What makes the Polak Game particularly valuable is its immediate visual impact. Simply showing the axes helps people understand that there are fundamentally different perspectives on the future and that others might have a radically different relationship to what’s coming. This realization alone often sparks profound conversations about agency, hope, and collective action.

Origins and Development

From Theory to Practice

While Fred Polak laid the theoretical foundation in his 1961 work The Image of the Future (translated to English by Elise Boulding in 1973), the transformation into a participatory game came much later. Polak himself never created an interactive exercise—his contribution was the conceptual framework distinguishing between essence-optimism/pessimism and influence-optimism/pessimism².

Key Developers

Peter Hayward deserves primary credit for operationalizing Polak’s concepts into the game format we know today. As a futures educator at Swinburne University in Australia, Hayward recognized the need for an accessible way to help students and practitioners grasp Polak’s abstract ideas. Around 2015-2017, he began using the physical positioning exercise in workshops and classrooms¹.

Stuart Candy, a experiential futurist and designer, collaborated with Hayward to refine the game’s structure and debrief process. Candy brought his expertise in experiential futures and participatory design, helping evolve the game from a simple positioning exercise into a more sophisticated diagnostic tool¹³.

Jim Dator at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies influenced the game’s development indirectly through his “four futures” framework, which shares conceptual territory with Polak’s quadrants. While not directly involved in creating the game, Dator’s work on images of the future provided important context for understanding how the exercise fits within broader futures methodologies³.

Evolution and Spread

The game gained significant traction after Hayward and Candy’s 2017 Journal of Futures Studies article formally documented the methodology. From there, it spread rapidly through the global futures community:

• Futures educators began incorporating it into curricula worldwide
• Corporate consultants adapted it for organizational foresight workshops
• Community facilitators used it for civic engagement on local futures
• Digital adaptations emerged during COVID-19, with virtual versions becoming standard

The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) and Teach the Future networks were instrumental in disseminating the method, including it in practitioner toolkits and training programs⁴.

Practical Facilitation Guide

Basic Setup

The game operates on two fundamental axes derived from Polak’s theory:

• Vertical Axis: Optimism vs. Pessimism about the future (Will the world get better or worse?)
• Horizontal Axis: High vs. Low sense of personal/collective agency (Can I/we influence the future?)

These create four quadrants where participants position themselves based on their honest assessment of their future orientation¹⁴.

Facilitation Variations

Based on extensive facilitation experience, here are four tested approaches:

1. Physical Room Version

• Setup: Mark axes on the floor with tape or rope
• Process: Participants physically move to their position
• Duration: 20-30 minutes including debrief
• Caveat: Strong performative aspect emerges, especially with teams or management boards. People often position themselves based on perceived expectations rather than genuine beliefs

2. Virtual Miro Board Version

• Setup: Create digital 2x2 grid with moveable avatars/sticky notes
• Process: Participants drag their marker to chosen position
• Duration: 15-25 minutes
• Benefit: Reduces performance pressure while maintaining visual collective mapping

3. Anonymous Tools Version (Mentimeter/Slido)

• Setup: Digital polling tool with quadrant selection
• Process: Participants select position anonymously, results displayed in aggregate
• Duration: 10-15 minutes
• Key Insight: Provides dramatically more honest results, revealing actual distribution of perspectives without social pressure

4. Mental Positioning for Keynotes

• Setup: Display axes on screen
• Process: Ask audience to position themselves mentally, then reflect
• Duration: 5-10 minutes
• Application: Ideal for large audiences where interaction is limited

Step-by-Step Process

1. Introduction (2-3 min)
   • Explain the two questions without revealing the quadrants’ names
   • Emphasize there are no “right” positions
   • Clarify timeframe (typically 10-20 years)
2. Positioning (3-5 min)
   • Ask: “Looking ahead 10 years, do you see the world getting better or worse?”
   • Ask: “How much influence do you feel you have on shaping that future?”
   • Have participants position themselves
3. Initial Observation (2-3 min)
   • Note distribution patterns
   • Ask participants to observe where others are
   • Identify any empty quadrants
4. Quadrant Exploration (5-10 min)
   • Reveal quadrant names and characteristics
   • Ask volunteers from each quadrant to explain their position
   • Explore reasons for their placement
5. Movement and Reflection (5-10 min)
   • Ask: “What would need to change for you to move quadrants?”
   • Allow repositioning if perspectives have shifted
   • Discuss what enables or blocks agency
6. Debrief (5-15 min)
   • Connect to context (organization, community, topic)
   • Discuss implications of the distribution
   • Link to next activities or deeper Methods

The Four Quadrants

Upper Right: “Optimistic & Empowered”

• Characteristics: Believe the future will be better and they can help create it
• Mindset: Proactive, entrepreneurial, change-makers
• Risk: May overlook systemic barriers or dismiss valid concerns

Upper Left: “Optimistic but Passive”

• Characteristics: Hope for a better future but feel limited personal agency
• Mindset: Trusting in others, systems, or providence to improve things
• Risk: May wait for change rather than initiating it

Lower Right: “Pessimistic but Active”

• Characteristics: See challenges ahead but determined to make a difference
• Mindset: Realistic fighters, prepared for difficulty while taking action
• Risk: May burn out from constant struggle against perceived decline

Lower Left: “Pessimistic & Powerless”

• Characteristics: Expect decline and feel unable to influence outcomes
• Mindset: Fatalistic, resigned, potentially disengaged
• Risk: Self-fulfilling prophecy through inaction

Practitioner Insights

Through years of facilitating the Polak Game in diverse contexts, several key patterns emerge:

The Performativity Problem: In organizational settings, especially with intact teams or hierarchies present, participants consistently position themselves more optimistically and with higher agency than anonymous polling reveals. This performative aspect can obscure real sentiment and limit the exercise’s diagnostic value.

The Power of Anonymity: Using tools like Mentimeter reveals surprising distributions—often showing more pessimism and lower agency than verbal discussions suggest. This honest data provides a crucial reality check for organizations planning transformation.

The Axes Effect: Even without full participation, simply displaying and explaining the axes creates an “aha” moment. People suddenly recognize their own position and realize others may inhabit completely different quadrants with equal validity.

Cultural Context Matters: The game works differently across cultures. High-agency positions may be less common in cultures emphasizing collective harmony or fate, while individual agency might be overrepresented in individualistic societies.

Critical Perspectives

Methodological Limitations

The Polak Game’s simplicity is both its strength and weakness. The binary axes force complex, nuanced views into four boxes, potentially losing important subtleties[^4]. Real future orientations exist on spectrums and may vary by domain—someone might be optimistic about technology but pessimistic about climate.

Cultural Bias

The framework embeds Western assumptions about linear progress and individual agency. Many cultures understand time cyclically rather than linearly, and privilege collective or relational agency over individual impact⁵. The very notion of “optimism” and “pessimism” may not translate across worldviews that see change differently.

Temporal Instability

Positions prove highly susceptible to current events and mood. The same group might distribute completely differently after positive news versus during crisis. This volatility limits the game’s value for longitudinal assessment without careful contextualization[^4].

Scope Ambiguity

Without careful framing, participants struggle with scope. Are we discussing personal futures, local communities, or global trajectories? This ambiguity can muddle results and reduce comparability across sessions.

Integration with Other Methods

The Polak Game works best as an opening exercise before deeper work:

• Before Scenario Planning: Reveals baseline assumptions that might bias scenario development
• With CLA Game: Surface positions can be deepened through causal layered analysis
• Alongside Sarkar Game: Complements power dynamics exploration with agency mapping
• Leading to Causal Layered Analysis (CLA): Positions often reflect deeper worldviews and myths worth excavating

For Critical Futures Studies work, the game provides an entry point for questioning why certain futures seem more/less possible and who benefits from different distributions of agency⁵.

Conclusion

The Polak Game remains valuable precisely because of its simplicity. In under 30 minutes, it surfaces fundamental assumptions about futures that might otherwise remain hidden. While it cannot stand alone as an analytical tool, it excels at opening conversations, revealing collective orientations, and preparing groups for deeper foresight work.

The key is matching the facilitation approach to context—using anonymity when honesty matters most, physical positioning when embodied experience adds value, and always remaining aware of the cultural and performative dynamics at play.

References

Additional Resources

• Fearless Culture Facilitation Guide
• SessionLab Template
• OECD Futures Toolkit Entry