The Campaign Orchestrator

by John A. Warden III and Leland A. Russell

For years, Motorola had been organized into separate product lines: a paging unit, a two-way radio unit, a cell phone unit, a cellular infrastructure unit and a satellite unit. The problem with this structure was that the market, driven by demand for mobile communications, was changing very rapidly and Motorola was having difficulty meeting the changing needs of its major customers. These customers were consolidating and, at the same time, were looking for more integrated communication solutions.

Meanwhile, demand was exploding, competition was intensifying and end-user expectations were increasing. People wanted cheaper, smaller, and more universal devices. They no longer wanted to carry around multiple personal productivity devices—a pager, a cell phone, a palm top computer—to meet their mobility needs. They wanted these devices and the related services to be integrated.

But Motorola had an organizational problem. Because the product lines were effectively operational silos, it was difficult if not impossible to offer customers an integrated solution. So the decision was made to create a fully integrated business unit—the Communications Enterprise—that would bring everything together.

Sandy Ogg, Corporate Vice President and Director of the company’s Office of Leadership, was part of the founding leadership team of the new organization.

Deciding to create the Communications Enterprise group was the easy part. Making change happen was a challenge that required a rapid, massive change management effort. After consulting with us, Ogg decided to apply many of the concepts presented in our book, Winning In FastTime. Sandy recalls his thought process:

How does Motorola—or any company—go about organizing such an effort? The answer is to commission campaign teams.

The first step is to select a Campaign Orchestrator.

To achieve maximum system impact, campaigns need to be strategically integrated. Someone must be responsible for dealing with these issues. That's the job of the Campaign Orchestrator: ensure that each campaign moves rapidly in parallel with the others and that, collectively, they achieve the desired strategic results. In short, the Campaign Orchestrator assumes overall responsibility for the success of the campaigns. The role is not directive in the sense of telling people how to do their jobs but does insure that everyone is meeting timelines, that people are getting approvals they need in real-time, and that efforts are coordinated.

Good Orchestrators share some common characteristics. They make rapid, decisive decisions; they do what it takes to liberate people from the bureaucratic constraints that inhibit creativity and momentum; they are able to maintain a strategic perspective in the midst of dynamic change.

To succeed, the Orchestrator needs the authority to make decisions almost instantly on most campaign issues without reference to higher authority; if the Orchestrator is merely serving as a data and information forwarder, there is little value added. To make real-time decisions, the Orchestrator needs to be constantly available to the campaigns teams to answer questions, to provide (or get) answers, and to make strategic choices when necessary.

Colonel John Warden played the role of Orchestrator in the planning of Desert Storm. As the leader of the Checkmate planning team, he didn't give orders, but rather told the team to "get busy and flesh out the plan as rapidly as possible.” With little debate, the team self-organized and divided tasks among small groups that could react quickly to changing events. John saw himself as a conductor of planning process. "I didn’t own the concert hall or tell the musicians how to play. My role was to lead the information symphony."

The Orchestrator’s job is easiest when there is a central campaign room that is the focus of most campaign activity. This facility is invaluable in keeping everyone involved with the campaigns, and others in the organization, up to speed on what is happening and allows them to see how they may be able to contribute.

When John first pulled together a large number of people to begin the Gulf War planning process that was to produce the plan approved by General Schwarzkopf forty-eight hours later, he first chose one of his division’s large briefing rooms in the basement of the Pentagon. What became known as the “Campaign Room” was not pretty, nor elegant, but it accommodated a lot of standing people and it had plenty of wall space. The wall space in this case, was especially good because it consisted of multiple sliding panels with

white boards, corkboards, and maps that could be slid back and forth as circumstances demanded. This allowed the information to be displayed in such a way that everyone could see it at the same time and always see it in a total context.

Most people try to do serious planning in small conference rooms without much useable wall space and that must be vacated at the end of the day. They start with a terrible physical handicap: too small a room to accommodate enough people; too little wall space to allow contextual display of information; and an obvious transitoriness which diminishes the importance of the effort and greatly complicates the work if it doesn’t get done in a single day. So important is the Campaign Room concept that we usually insist that our clients agree to create a campaign room as a condition of us working with them.

What if you don't have space available for the Campaign Room? If you consider it a priority, you will probably find a solution. For example, one of our clients, a major supplier to McDonald's, leased a double-wide mobile office trailer and parked it behind one of its plants. It provided the necessary space, but there was an added benefit. From the moment that mobile office arrived, everyone knew that something serious and very different was going on.

Where is the Orchestrator's office? Colonel John Warden put his desk in the middle of the Campaign room, which remained the heart of the planning effort through the end of the war. The room was noisy and sometimes chaotic, but by being right there in the middle, John was instantly available to anyone of any rank who needed a decision or an answer or who had a question. Having someone right there on the spot made a huge difference in the velocity of the plan development.

In high-velocity campaigns, rank and position have little meaning. The focus is on the quality of ideas and the capacity to make things happen quickly. The campaign organizational structure is very flat and creates a span of control far larger than most would think possible or desirable.

We have found that good campaign Orchestrators can easily “manage” (but not micro-manage) even hundreds of people.

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