Job titles that obscure

We stand on the edge of an abyss. All those baffling and over-complicated job titles that make understanding what an organisation is up to are multiplying at a speed that none of us will ever be able to keep up with. Those old jokes about US companies having more vice-presidents than there are rats on the streets of New York City will soon be redundant.

If you already have no clue what someone’s job title tells you about what they actually do, then the dense definitional fog is about to thicken further. Job titles, particularly if they include the word ‘delivery’ in them, could now be for anyone responsible for getting the audit done on time to someone in charge of the next catering disaster.

Once upon a time, truly daft job titles were invented to make people laugh and were not to be taken seriously. In my student days a friend turned up during the summer break with the news that he was making good money as an octane consultant. It was his witty way of explaining that he was working as a petrol pump attendant. The deliberate obfuscation was the point. It was a joke.

Out of fashion

But joke no more. Plain and simple language has long gone. I received a press release this morning from a noble organisation that I know well and respect. But even they, in talking about changing their font and typeface, felt the need to call it their branding. It was ‘to be impactful and influence positive change’ and was ‘designed with accessibility at its heart’. Simple and direct no longer does it. Clarity of definition is completely out of fashion.

When I was a young lad striving to qualify as an accountant, the role that most people aspired to was that of finance director. Simple. They wanted to be on the board and in charge of finance. Then it morphed into chief financial officer, taken from American business. People then aspired to that role because all the CFOs they met in America were being paid shedloads more money than they were.

But what has really gone in this flood of multi-word descriptors for relatively simple jobs is the notion of accountability. The argument now is that everyone in an organisation works across a huge range of disciplines and the job title should reflect this.

Simplicity is dead

A couple of years ago an article on the subject in the Harvard Business Review suggested that simplicity was no longer possible. A job description, it said, should be the answer to these three questions: What current and future business needs would this role directly solve? Where else in the organisation can this role have an impact? What core competencies will make this individual (and, thereby, your company) successful? Well, that’s clarity, understanding and accountability out of the window for a start.

There is, of course, a solution to all this. Everyone should imagine they have to explain their job in one sentence to a total stranger. And if they struggle with that, then they should reduce it to a two-word job title. That simple test will clear their minds and provide them with an understanding of what they are there for. It will also stop the confused person on the front desk being lumbered with a ‘practical director of the customer experience’ label.

Meanwhile, you may think that my job today has been as a skilled magazine columnist trying to make life for the reader simpler, better informed and happier. Not so. A newspaper flopped on to my doormat this morning with the headline: ‘I’m not a columnist anymore – think of me as your words and ideas architect’. Words fail me.