Take Me to Your Chief Global Pathfinder

by George Bickerstaffe

Something funny is going on with people’s job titles. In the past couple of months I have bumped into a “head of imagination” (he runs a strategic marketing company in London) and been introduced to a “global knowledge nomad” (he’s a Scandinavian executive who writes). I’ve come across a “choreographer” who’s actually just a plain vanilla project manager and the impressive “wow virus disseminator” (I have no idea what she does).

It’s definitely spreading. In May the Swedish Internet start-up company wannago.com, which handles entertainment and events, placed a full-page job recruitment ad for senior managers in London’s Financial Times. A strange enough way to recruit, perhaps. But even odder were the job titles it was looking to fill. Among others it wanted to recruit a chief “making-the-customer-happy” officer, a “getting-the-numbers-in order” officer and a chief “attracting-and-keeping-talent” officer. In the old economy, the ad explained, these would have been known as chief operating officer, finance and accounting officer and human resources manager. The company went even further and pointed out in smaller print that it doesn’t even care much about job titles — in fact, it claimed, people would be able to decide their own titles and even design their own business cards.

As well as spreading, it’s also going up and down the status ladder. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers, now styles himself iCEO — the “i” for interim has transmuted into “i” for Internet. This fits in very nicely with Apple’s branding of its iMac and iBook. Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s Bill Gates may no longer be CEO or even iCEO but he is now “chief software architect” (and still old-fashioned chairman, of course).

And a recent survey in the UK revealed that 70 percent of office workers would be prepared to turn down more pay in return for a more dynamic title — “data storage specialist” rather than filing clerk, for example.

Lots of people believe that the whole idea of wacky labels began with Vermont hippy ice cream makers Ben and Jerry. This seems plausible. The head flavor developer, after all, is called the “primal ice cream therapist” and one group of employees known as the Joy Gang is headed by the “grand Poobah of Joy.” It will be interesting to see if the grand Poobah survives in the more staid Anglo-Dutch atmosphere of new owner Unilever.

You could be forgiven for thinking that all this is mere frivolity. It is not. Above all, job titles are a prime indicator of corporate culture. Giving people silly labels is just one way of saying “Hey, look at us; we’re a young, brash unhierarchical company that’s going places”. It’s a bit like having dress-down Friday every day of the week.

Come to think of it, a lot of pretty old, dull and pyramidal companies are already doing just that. So maybe they’ll pick up on the trend for outlandish job titles too. Could the CFO become “chief bean counter” or the senior executive vice-president “the chief panjandrum in waiting”? Seems doubtful.

While job titles might in some cases reflect a corporate culture, they can never create it. Cultural change, if that is what a company wants or needs, can only come from addressing and redirecting corporate and individual mindsets.

Job titles are, in the end, a rather silly corporate game, more to do with status or self-importance than anything else. Notice how even the supposedly non-hierarchical examples above often include the word “chief” or some other status identifier.

Perhaps what we really need is to get away from that idea and just carry a label that actually says what we do. My own favorite is Harvey Mackay, chairman of the $85 million-turnover Mackay Envelope Corporation, author of a series of best-selling business books and a top corporate speaker. On his business card he describes himself simply as “salesman”. Now that is radical.

George Bickerstaffe is author of Which MBA? (Economist Intelligence Unit 2000).