Surreal Notions

A great bard once asked that rather pertinent question, “What’s in a name?”  I’ve been thinking a lot about job titles lately, so I feel the need to respond.

Within the context of a company, a job title has little or no value. Traditionally, job titles separated management and line workers. This is, fundamentally, a relic of the Spartan military that has influenced most of Western organizations for well over 2500 years. Certainly large companies still need this division to some extent, but titles become less important as teams become more cross-functional and roles become less siloed (which I hope is happening after the last 30-years of learning in management). Within small companies, titles rarely represent the roles being fulfilled by individuals. Therefore, internal to the company job titles are fairly ineffective communication devices.

Communication outside of the company can be broken into to sub-categories. First, there is communication by individuals representing the company. A job title is supposed to infer some information about how much power the individual holds. For instance, talking to a Director, VP or C-level person is more likely to result in decisions than a Supervisor or Manager. Of course, this isn’t really true any longer. How many salespeople go by titles of “Account Director,” “Business Consultant,” or “Senior Relations Director?” These are not Directors or Consultants. Sales is important, but this common tactic is a weak attempt to deceive potential clients into assuming they are more important. It feels good when a “Director” took time to call you personally… never mind there are 40 “Directors” making cold calls on that floor. The result is a complete dilution of the supposed value of job titles, which means no valuable information can be reliably inferred from any job title.

Lastly, there is external communication when attempting to fill a position. The job title is usually the first thing a potential applicant will see. This is primarily what job hunters are searching by and looking for. By using these amped up and inappropriate titles, the value of the job title is lost again. While looking looking at postings for “Experience Designers,” I have found job descriptions for front-end developers, third-teir help desk, project managers, records managers, etc. I thought “Experience Designer” was both specific and fairly well defined. Apparently I was wrong. This is occasionally caused by HR processes that don’t have people familiar with the job describe the job. Nobody in HR will ever accurately describe the requirements of an engineer (and nobody has “25 years of experience in VB). These false job titles are also encouraged by management fat, poor hiring practices (which lead to distrustful environments), plain old hubris, and archaic salary bands tied to titles. In short, the potential value of a job title in job postings is seriously hampered.

So, job titles are supposed convey information about the power, responsibility and role of the individual or position. However, thanks to deceptive practices (and yes, I’m looking at you sales and HR), job titles are confused at best and typically convey no consistent information. So, what’s in a name? In this case, absolutely nothing.

Job titles should be more flexible and represent a snapshot of the person’s role. Job titles are, as I think I’ve described, confused. So, rather than attempting to fix job titles to be descriptive, I suggest companies abandon the current assumption that job titles need to be descriptive both internally and externally. The external communication is a lost cause, but internal information is still possible. Simply use clever role descriptions. In fact, I think companies should use the job title as part of the indoctrination process. After an individual performs on a team for so long, or reaches some initial milestone goal, a title is bestowed by the team. A sort of “coming of age” concept to reinforce participation, acceptence, contribution and accountability. For instance, somebody coming onto the team to perform the role of an “Interaction Designer” might be given the title “Design Samurai” after completing a full design cycle with the team.  ”Code Ninjas” could attain different belts as they improve their skills and contributions to the team.  This, if done properly, can improve the espirit de corps of the group.  This also separates, to some extent, the title from the specifics of the position (management vs. line worker, senior vs. junior, etc.) facilitating better communication up and down the chain of command. Lastly, the inventive titles will force external parties to actually question the role rather than making poor assumptions about the position, ultimately leading to better communication (although it might annoy some Baby Boomers).

I know Google and a few select Silicon Valley companies have, to some extent, adopted this philosophy. I’d like to see more companies take it forward and reinvent the way we process job titles in a world where one person might fulfill several roles within a cross-functional / matrix team.