Flattening the HCRP organization

The reality local Republicans face as we head into the 2010 election season is that, even if we have a perfect message and perfect candidates, if we don’t modernize the way the HCRP functions we will have a difficult time defeating the Democrats in Harris County. Much of the strategic plan I’ve proposed deals with this need to modernize the way we do business.

For the last half-century, successful organizations across the planet have changed the way they are structured in order to flatten their management, streamline their communications, and shorten the delivery time of their goods and services. Over the last decade, the Democratic Party at all levels implemented some of these ideas to be more effective at identifying Democratic voters, mobilizing them, and getting them to the polls. You could say that while the rest of the world has adopted the organization and leadership models of Drucker and Deming, the GOP has clung to the General Motors model—and we all know what happened to GM. It is time for the GOP to modernize, and we need to start here in Harris County.

Unfortunately, the plan the current team at Richmond Avenue has developed for the HCRP after seven years in office is not adequate. Regardless of many superficial similarities between the current HCRP plan being described at Townhall meetings and the plan posted on this website, there is a conflict of visions at the core of these plans, which will dramatically affect their implementation and effectiveness.

The incumbent’s plan continues to depend on the outdated, top-down, pyramidal organizational structure used in industry prior to 1960, which concentrates more responsibility in fewer hands, and which has been abandoned by virtually every other organization in the industrialized world. It depends on information and instructions flowing from the Chair and Senate District Chairs at the top of the pyramid down to the block captains, which means that action at the block and neighborhood level is completely dependent on action at each level of the pyramid. All along this type of process there are opportunities for bottlenecks that can impede the flow of information and instruction all the way down the chain of command. Bottlenecks eventually lead to inaction where it is needed—at the grassroots level. At the heart of this plan is a vision of our party that sees it comprised of a few shepherds and a lot of sheep—even among our Precinct Chairs, who themselves are elected officials. Besides being outdated and inadequate, the vision at the heart of this plan misreads the historic dynamic of the Republican Party.

Republicans are not, and never have been, sheep. We are a party of shepherds, not sheep. Appreciating this dynamic, the plan we have proposed creates a flexible structure that presses action and responsibility all the way down to the precinct and community levels, in order to capitalize on the remarkable creativity and energy of our activists. By building flexibility and autonomy into the organization, bottlenecks will be avoided. Avoiding bottlenecks will unleash the creativity and energy at our grassroots, which we will need in the upcoming election cycles to build the party and elect our candidates.

The structure we are proposing really involves a series of semi-autonomous and empowered structures. Each group will have a defined sphere of responsibility: the Director (or Vice Chair) for Campaign Support will have responsibility for the entire county, and will focus primarily on countywide races, countywide recruitment and training, and the coordination of volunteers from affiliate clubs; each Senate District Chair will have responsibility for the races in their respective Senate and legislative districts; each District Chair will have responsibility for the races and precincts in their legislative District; each precinct chair will have responsibility to mobilize the activists in their precincts; and each community representative will have responsibility to mobilize candidates and activists for the municipal, school board and utility district elections in their communities. While the Precinct Chairs are the lieutenants for mobilizing the partisan election turnout, the community representatives are the lieutenants in a separate branch of the party, who will work through the coordination of the Director (Vice Chair) for Campaign Support to focus on the non-partisan races and issues, and to help the Director (Vice Chair) for Outreach with outreach efforts.

At the center of each of these structures is its leader, who must listen to input from each member of the group, and then develop and communicate decisions to each member of the group. Policy and strategy will be set at the Director/Vice-Chair level with input from the Senate District Chairs and the HCRP officers, and the Director/Vice-Chair will directly manage the mobilization of the clubs and the community representatives. Each leader of the other groups will get input directly from one member of another sphere, and from the candidates with races in their sphere. Then the leader will manage the work of a group of activists.

Communications between and among leaders of each group and level, and with and among candidates, will be facilitated and encouraged through a secure intranet accessible by password from the HCRP’s website. A failure or bottleneck in one of these groups can be isolated and managed without threatening the effectiveness of the entire party or in an entire area of the county; as opposed to the pyramid structure, in which a bottleneck at any level above the grassroots could impede the effectiveness of the entire party, or in a large area of the county.

The Precinct Chair will mobilize and work with two groups of activists—the community representatives and the block captains—in order to identify Republican voters and get them to the polls. Coordination among the Precinct Chairs throughout the county will be maintained through the meetings of the Executive Committee, through communications on the secure intranet, and through periodic meetings and training sessions. By focusing the Precinct Chair role on mobilization, it frees each Precinct Chair to innovate, and gives each one more time to participate in the governance of the party through the Executive Committee.

This model, when implemented, will give each person in the organization a greater level of autonomy and ability to innovate, and provide them with greater access to information, while narrowing the focus of their positions to make their work more effective. In time, restructuring the organization to reward the creativity and leadership skills of our grassroots activists also will help the party recruit more Precinct Chairs.

This model will work only if we recognize and accept that everyone within the HCRP is a leader—a shepherd; and that with such leadership comes responsibility—ultimately, the responsibility to get our candidates elected.