MarTech Podcast ™ – "The Biggest Mistake in Building Orchestration Workflows"

Host: Benjamin Shapiro
Guest: Christine Royston (Chief Marketing Officer, Wrike)
Date: February 5, 2026

Overview:

In this episode, Benjamin Shapiro interviews Christine Royston about the pitfalls of building orchestration workflows in marketing teams, especially as AI and automation reshape creative collaboration. The conversation centers on where marketers go wrong when designing workflows, how to keep human creativity at the center, and actionable advice for building successful automation frameworks.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Biggest Mistake: Lack of Focus and Prioritization

• Christine's Advice:
  Christine emphasizes that the core mistake marketing leaders make is not carefully deciding where to focus first. Leaders often try to do too much at once or build workflows in areas not ripe for automation, leading to wasted effort and slow progress.

  • "You have to decide where are you going to focus first when you’re building out workflows. You have to prioritize." — Christine Royston, [01:45]
  • The importance of identifying areas that are "ripe for automation"—processes consuming significant resources or promising high impact.

• Develop a Roadmap:
  Christine recommends planning workflow automation by considering:

  • Expected impact of the automated workflow
  • Time to execution – "Some workflows may take longer to build depending on integrations, number of steps involved." [01:45]
  • Balance between building workflows and ongoing execution:
    • "You can't just spend your time building workflows and not executing anything." — Christine Royston, [02:30]

2. Counterintuitive Wisdom: Break Down the Steps

• Benjamin’s “More Steps” Approach:
  Benjamin suggests that, paradoxically, making workflows more granular—not more complex—improves their success rate.
  • "The smaller and more concrete you can make each individual step, the higher percentage of success." — Benjamin Shapiro, [02:44]
  • Example: Instead of “write an interview script,” break it down to:
    1. Research the guest
    2. Analyze their public topics
    3. Understand the audience
    4. Use insights to tailor the script
  • "The more you can break up the steps and logic, the more successful your workflows become." — Benjamin Shapiro, [03:25]

3. Clarity in Process Definitions

• Avoiding Ambiguity:
  Christine recounts a real situation where a vague process instruction led to confusion among team members.
  • "Five different people are probably going to take that in a different way unless we specifically define what is included within that first kickoff call or what this first piece of the project looks like." — Christine Royston, [03:45]

4. No Single “Right Way”—Embrace Creativity and Iteration

• Personalization in Workflows:
  Benjamin notes that teams and individuals process workflows differently, likening workflow building to mind mapping or prompt engineering:

  • "There is no real right one way. Just the same way, there’s no right way to create a prompt." — Benjamin Shapiro, [04:20]

• Define and Iterate:
  The key to effective workflows is being specific about goals, outputs, and being open to iteration:

  • "Understanding what you're trying to accomplish and defining it as well as you can, and then understanding what the outputs are and being iterative is probably the right answer." — Benjamin Shapiro, [04:43]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Christine Royston [01:45]:
  "You have to decide where are you going to focus first when you’re building out workflows. You have to prioritize."
• Benjamin Shapiro [02:44]:
  "The smaller and more concrete you can make each individual step, the higher percentage of success."
• Christine Royston [03:45]:
  "Five different people are probably going to take that in a different way unless we specifically define what is included within that first kickoff call or what this first piece of the project looks like."
• Benjamin Shapiro [04:20]:
  "There is no real right one way. Just the same way, there’s no right way to create a prompt."
• Benjamin Shapiro [04:43]:
  "Understanding what you're trying to accomplish and defining it as well as you can, and then understanding what the outputs are and being iterative is probably the right answer."

Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:15] – Introduction of Christine Royston and episode theme
• [01:45] – Christine defines the biggest mistake in orchestration workflows
• [02:44] – Benjamin's advice to add more granular steps
• [03:45] – Christine illustrates the need for precise process definitions
• [04:20] – Benjamin on creativity and personalization in workflows
• [04:43] – Emphasis on defining goals and iterative improvement

Takeaways

• Start with Focus: Choose the highest-impact, most automation-ready workflows to build first.
• Make Steps Granular: The more concrete and broken down each workflow element is, the better the odds of success.
• Define Processes Clearly: Assume nothing is self-explanatory; document and clarify precisely.
• Iterate and Personalize: There’s no universal way to build workflows. Teams should tailor and tweak to their own styles and requirements.