WIRE-Net -- Planning Outside the Box

WIRE-Net’s strategic plan is designed to play a vital role for an organization by serving as its road map to future success.  Our current plan provides clear direction as the organization reaffirms its commitment to building on one of Cleveland's most distinctive characteristics: our manufacturing base. 

2005 marked the last year of WIRE-Net’s 4-year strategic plan.  WIRE-Net’s Board and staff decided to use a ground-breaking planning methodology –developed in Cleveland at CASE’s Weatherhead School of Management – to identify WIRE-Net’s greatest opportunities for positive change and greatest impact.

As described in the Winter ’04 edition of the National Association of Manufacturers’ “Leadership for Manufacturers” magazine, Appreciative Inquiry is a “strength-based” approach to organizational change.  Appreciative Inquiry (AI) “engages people to look at the best” in an organization “in order to imagine the future they most want, and find the capacity to move toward that future.” 

WIRE-Net chose AI for several reasons:  first, for WIRE-Net to continue to move its agenda forward, the organization will need stronger and broader connections with key leaders and organizations across the region. AI has been used successfully in many different settings to broaden and deepen stakeholder involvement.  Secondly, WIRE-Net wanted to use a tool that supported leadership development among its members, supporters and staff.  AI’s positive approach to maximizing opportunities has proven to be a highly effective tool for leadership development and engagement.  Finally, WIRE-Net wants to demonstrate how AI can be used as an economic development planning tool, energize its staff and leadership and help the NE Ohio region find new ways of working together.

“AI was attractive for many reasons,” says John Colm, WIRE-Net’s President. “It has been used globally in businesses, non-profits and other institutions to maximize opportunities, release energy, and to mobilize effective action – places like Roadway, the Cleveland Clinic, even the United Nations.”  WIRE-Net would like to thank the William J. & Dorothy K. O’Neill Foundation for their generous support of WIRE-Net’s 2006-2008 Strategic Planning.

Colm, who in 2004 was trained and certified in the AI strategic planning model, states that “AI has the power to change the way organizations do business and create a healthier culture and climate for challenging work.  And, it was invented right here in Cleveland, in fact, the leading experts in AI live and work here. Through a grant from the William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Foundation, WIRE-Net has a chance to make great use of a tremendous Cleveland resource and help show many of our members and other organizational stakeholders how the tool can benefit them as well.” 

For more information, see these links:

WIRE-Net’s current strategic plan

National Association of Manufacturer's article on Appreciative Inquiry from their Winter 2005 issue of Leadership for Manufacturers

Case Weatherhead article on Appreciative Inquiry