The biggest mistake in building orchestration workflows

Summary

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

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

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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.

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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."

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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

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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.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate. Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising. Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. We're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action. Then it's just a matter of timing.

[A]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that you use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

[B]

I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Christine Royston, the Chief marketing officer at Wrike, the intelligent work management platform trusted by over 20,000 companies. And today Christine's going to reveal how teams are using AI to transform corporate creative collaboration, keeping human creativity at the center while automating everything else. What's the biggest mistake you see marketing leaders make when they first try to build orchestration workflows?

[C]

So this goes back to our discussion on focus. I think you have to decide where are you going to focus first when you're building out workflows, you have to prioritize so, you know, looking at where, where is the area that you, you know, there's, that is ripe for, for automation, it's ripe for streamlining. It is, you know, a lot of resources going into it so that you can show some learnings, show some momentum. But you do need a roadmap. You need to look at, you know, what's that, that priority based on the expected impact of, of creating an automated workflow as well as the time to execution. Because some workflows may take longer to build depending on integrations, number of steps involved. So I do think it's, it's the focus. And as we mentioned earlier too, you can't just spend your time building workflows and not executing anything. So that focus lets you build while you're also continuing to execute on, on the other side.

[B]

Yeah, I have some counterintuitive advice. You need to add more steps into your workflow and it's not that you need to make your workflows more complex in My experience building orchestration and workflows, the smaller and more concrete you can make each individual step, the higher percentage of success. So instead of saying, and I'll use an example from creating a podcast, write an interview script for Christine. It's not write an interview step for, it's not write an interview script for Christine. It is conduct the research of who Christine is. Take that research and then look at what the topics that she talks about in public. Then, you know, analyze the audience. Now that you have an understanding of who Christine is, what she likes to talk about and what the audience is, use that information to write an interview script for Christine. And the more you can break up the sort of steps and logic, the more successful your workflows become.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. You know, actually I was just talking to, to one of my leaders the other day, and we were, we were talking about, okay, well everyone who, who's going to do the, to own this, this type of project, they need to do this as the first step. And she said, do you think everybody actually knows what you mean when you say do you know, do XYZ process? And I thought, well, that's a good. I, that's a good point. I know exactly what I mean. But five different people are probably going to take that in a different way unless we specifically define what is included within that first kickoff caller or, you know, what this first piece of the project looks like.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, I think everybody has a different way to skin the cat here. Right. You know, everybody builds workflows and it's sort of the mind map. Everybody thinks a little bit differently. So when people get together to create their workflows, they're going to be a little different. There's a lot of creativity built into the process. There is no real right one way. Just the same way, there's no right way to create a prompt.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You can, you can word it however you want. I think 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.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And that wraps up this episode of the MarTech podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Christine Royston, the Chief Marketing Officer at wrike. If you'd like to contact Christine, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com or you can visit her company's website, which is rike.com, w r I k e.com if you haven't subscribed yet. And you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. We're on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

[C]

Foreign.

[A]

Thanks for listening to the Martech podcast and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.