Memo to Chairman Steele: Organizing RNC 2.0

Congratulations Chairman Steele! Your election is not only a decisive victory for a new brand of leadership, but presents a significant opportunity to rethink the modern political organization. The people you hire at the staff level will be setting the tone for Republican campaigns at least one or two Presidential election cycles to come. The consultants should work for you -- and not for their own agendas -- and must be on board with your reform efforts as well as the Rebuild the Party plan you've endorsed. It is critical that all senior staff -- and not just your New Media or "eCampaign" people -- "get it," not just in the sense of embracing technology, but in understanding the way that technology has changed the basic character of the traditional side of campaigns -- making them bigger, more participatory, more like movements, and potentially much more powerful than they are today... if done right.

The other day, fellow Rebuild founder Mindy Finn and I were going back and forth on what an ideal org chart for a revamped Republican National Committee would look like. Here's what we came up with:

Veterans of the committee will recognize many of these boxes, though a number have been realigned or restructured.

The two biggest changes come in two new jobs near the top that fundamentally reshape how we think about 1) messaging and 2) operations.

The new office of Chief Advocate would have oversight over all aspects the GOP brand and message, ending the fragmentation that currently exists between 1) communications and press, 2) strategy, polling, and targeting, 3) eCampaign, and 4) coalitions, and 5) political mail -- all of which are responsible for communicating to the public in some form or another. Of these, Communications has generally been seen as the first among equals -- but here's the problem with this: their job is to communicate through the press -- NOT directly to the public, making communications out of the RNC more stilted and insidery than they need to be.

Most of the pieces listed above are big enough to warrant a seat at the Senior Staff table, but we need a Chief Advocate with a light level of oversight to ensure syncronicity in our message, consistency in our branding, and to reorient RNC communications away from talking to the press and toward talking directly to the people, primarily online to a massive e-mail list, through social networks and YouTube, but in other traditional venues -- like direct mail -- as well.

If you're looking for analogues to this, think of the director of sales and marketing at a large corporation (thanks to Michael Turk for first raising this as a model).

The second big change is the creation of an office of Chief Innovator. We are thrilled that Saul Anuzis is going to be involved at the RNC in a technology role, and this may be a great fit for him. More than just a Chief Technology Officer (which implies siloed IT), the Chief Innovator would be chief implementer of the reform aspects of the Chairman's agenda (including Rebuild the Party) and have budget and oversight authority over all things technology, with the ability to yank funding from divisions that aren't moving fast enough to embrace new models of campaigning.

Shouldn't this already be the job of the Chairman? In many ways, yes. But the natural instinct of those who surround the Chairman is caution -- and properly so. The Chairman's staff needs to ensure that the promises the Chairman makes can be delivered upon. We need an additional finger on the scale for someone whose primary job is to think about and effect disruptive change when it makes sense -- not just in new media, but in rethinking everything about how the building operates.

If this is not the role you have in mind for Saul, we strongly recommend promoting Cyrus Krohn to the job of Chief Innovator for the Republican Party.

In staffing the RNC, it is also imperative that it's not just the Chairman or the eCampaign that "gets it" -- but to hire division heads who are fully on board with a new way of doing things and are considered innovators in their fields. Look with skepticism on any potential division head who isn't on Facebook or Twitter -- not because these ways of communicating are everything, far from it -- but because someone without a basic understanding of today's media isn't qualified to lead a 21st century political organization. (For those considering joining the new RNC, consider this your cue to create a profile!)

Drilling down a bit more, here's what we would expect to see from each of the divisions, starting with those under the purview of the Chief Advocate:

• Media Relations: Press relations, blogger outreach (moved from eCampaign), and opposition research
• New Media: Let's quit calling it a cutesy name like eCampaign shall we? All things public facing on GOP.com -- with an eye towards innovative marketing and messaging concepts to attract 5 million new online activists. Graphics team to maintain consistent branding across all RNC assets online and off.
• Polling & Advertising: Paid media, polling & focus groups, microtargeting, and political mail.
• External Relations: Revamping Government Relations (with the House & Senate) to include building coalitions with groups like the Heritage Foundation to stop the Obama agenda and develop a constructive relationship between the party and the movement.

And on the operational side:

• Political: Traditionally the most powerful division because of its large grassroots and GOTV budget, Political needs an upgrade. Ken Blackwell had an interesting idea in merging eCampaign into Political. Though this was too one-dimensional a role for our tastes, there is no real distinction anymore between someone on an e-mail list and an activist on the ground. The people on the RNC's email list are ultimately the same people who will knock on doors and give money. Let's stop creating arbitrary divisions between "email people," "volunteers," and "donors." The latter two groups will ultimately flourish if we cultivate our list with a consistent message that engages and motivates. Political needs to use new media as the platform on which the volunteer base is built and cultivated: from monthly house meetings turning into walks and phone banks closer to the election, to actively managing our version of My.BarackObama.com -- a 24/7/365 networking and activism community for volunteers, to opening up internal tools like Voter Vault with APIs that extend its functionality and allow for relevant information from commercial databases to be appended in real time. Today, there is a real disconnect between the efficient database-driven model of the RNC and GOP.com and the Excel sheets or even paper lists of volunteers that exist in the field. This disconnect needs to end with Political moving to a flexible online model for organization (and granted, a big part of this is that the online tools need to be delivered on time and suck less).
• Finance: Raising the money, with an eye towards moving more and more of our considerable base online. We think a goal of $20 million raised online for the 2010 cycle is eminently attainable -- and some might say this is modest.
• State Party & Members: Expand Member Relations to include a component that actively builds up state party infrastructure, everything from booking Lincoln Day speakers and help with fundraising.
• Administration: Keeping the lights on.
• Legal: Keeping everyone out of trouble.

Our readers are encouraged to offer their own ideas to add to this proposal. CogMap is a great resource for corporate organizational charts. Here are those for Apple, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart for starters.