Capture your WIRED Success

It was a dark and stormy night....

It's been said that the four most seductive words in the English language are once upon a time...Whether it's movies, fiction books, short stories or People Magazine, we all love to read and hear about others.   As one network tags itself:  Characters welcome.  They know that characters, i.e. stories, sell!

Same is true for WIRED.  How we learn to tell our stories - the stories of new jobs, new hopes, and new economies could very well determine the future of WIRED.  Stories sell WIRED.

So how do you go about creating stories?  

First thing:  remember your successes. What makes your region feel good?  What experience that you engage in leaves the participants wanting more or the team members feeling that their time was well spent?  Have you created new jobs or banded together for the first time as a new region.  Success doesn't necessarily mean hitting all of your goals on time and under budget - success can be the incremental steps that take you to achieving the big goal.

Small successes can be found in new types of engagement, new friends, new alliances, using old institutions in a new way.  Often, the success goes unnoticed until someone looks at the situation with fresh eyes.  

Keep a historical account of the process.  Appoint someone to be in charge of journaling WIRED.  Keep a "scrapbook" of ideas, meetings, events, beginnings and ends.  Journaling is said to be a healthy activity because it makes us review what has happened.  We can learn, remember and track progress.  Some WIRED regions are actually recording the WIRED process on video and audio so they will have a record of what occurs.  WIRED is an unfolding story and you want to be there at the beginning, at chapter 2, 3 and 4 as well as the end.

Humanize Wired.  Think in terms of people not numbers.  If you are talking about job creation, don't just talk about creating 165 new jobs but talk about what that could mean to the community.  Interview one of the new employees - find out their story - how did they find the job, what does the new job mean?  If they got a $2,000 raise over their last job, explain that in terms of what they can do with the money- buy a washer or dryer, take a family vacation to Mount Rushmore or buy new school clothes for the kids.  

Think about the State of the Union Gallery.  President Reagan was the first President to have guests in the gallery and talk about them.  So when he spoke about a new governmental plan or hailed the military, he spoke about Rosa Garcia who just became a citizen and bought her first home or PFC Andrews who serves his country through the Army Reserve on the weekends and is a junior high teacher and orchid grower by day.  Same goes for your Wired Region.  When you talk about training entrepreneurs, check in with your own gallery - the people who have gotten help.  Ask them about their experience - ask if you could use their story to help tell yours.

Count Things.  In contrast to humanizing WIRED, remember to count Wired, too.  For example, how many businesses are involved, how many meetings have you had, how many partners are at the table, how many dollars have been matched, how many news articles have been written, how many hits on the website, how many new jobs, how many new teams have been formed.  The list goes on and on.  We get so busy doing life that we often forget that things are happening each day that are worthy of being counted.

The Quotable Wired.  WIRED is a meeting generator.  Appoint someone to take down all those "pearls" that are dropped at meetings.  For example, when competing cities come together and put down their territorialism and work together for the first time, there are some aha moments.  Check out the story of SKYBUS in this issue.  The Piedmont Triangle region found that by working together they were stronger and more attractive to an airline.  There are great quotes from the principals.  We could have just told that story as a narrative but hearing from the principals makes it come alive.  Get quotes.

Appoint a WIRED Storyteller.  Whether it's your communication team, your executive team or a volunteer - someone needs to be thinking of the stories coming out of WIRED.  As Ed Morrison from the Indiana region describes it, WIRED is a whole new way of doing government - it's horizontal; not vertical.  This is unique and you need to have someone looking out for the stories that will come out.   Schedule conference calls when people just share what's going on.  Sponsor a social hour where the admittance is a piece of good news from the region as a result of WIRED.  You have to be intentional about gathering stories or it won't get done.

Finally, TELL US YOUR STORIES! Want to see your WIRED region in print or on the website?  Send in your story.  Even if you don't think it's written well - get the who, what, where, when and why and we can help you fill it out.  But we crave your input.  Go to the submit a story button on the website and tell us your story today.