How To Make Job Titles Useful (And Fun)
Traditional Job Titles Are Pointless - Here's What We Should Have Instead
“What do you do for a living?”
Whenever you meet new people, some variant of this question is bound to come up, and probably pretty early on in the conversation too.
And here’s something I’ve noticed: When you ask people what they do, most people will give you their job title. As in “I’m an engineer” or “I’m a project manager” or “I’m a writer”. Or consultant, speaker, software developer, manager, contractor, freelancer, secretary, or…
But that’s not what you do – that’s just your title. It really says nothing about you or your job, so I always find myself asking follow-up questions. “So what kind of projects do you manage?”
Some titles DO say what you do. If you’re a pilot you fly planes. Teachers teach. Builders build. Coaches coach. But most titles are more ambiguous.
So think about it for a moment. How much does your job title really say about what you do? And what would be a better way of telling people what it is you do in just a few words.
Whenever people ask me, I always tell them that “I make people happy at work.” That is what I do.
This may look like just semantics, but it matters. See, your job title is never going to make you happy at work, but knowing what you do, may. Knowing your contribution, how you add value, how you make a difference – THAT can make you happy at work.
Matt Cardwell of Quicken Loans (a home loan lender based in the US) read my tips on this and liked it so much that he decided to completely rethink job titles in his department. Here he explains why:
We never used to have titles on the Marketing Team at Quicken Loans because we always prided ourselves as having a marked anti-corporate and non-hierarchical culture. Actually, we did have titles, but everyone was called a “Marketing Manager.” So it was kind of a forced equality and no one EVER even talked about titles. But as the team grew from a few dozen people to over fifty, HR decided we needed some “consistency”, especially for purposes of external salary comping. So against our better judgment we relented and started creating a bunch of silly titles like: Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Program Manager, Project Manager, Jr. Project Manager, Sr. Project Manager, etc.
That is music to my ears and in response to Matt’s challenge, people got very creative. Here are some of the new titles:
Royal Storyteller & Propaganda Minister
Supreme Challenger of the Status Quo & Wicked Web Site Innovator
Mastermind of Possibilities, Visual Linguist, and Czar of the High Fiber Revolution
Flasher
Conceptologist
Pixelardo da Vinci
How did Matt inspire people to do this? Here’s the email he sent out:
Okay, team, so I want each one of you to take 15 minutes today to really think hard about what YOU DO and what MAKES YOU HAPPY at work and create a title for yourself that expresses who you are and your impact on the business and your team mates. Forget about what salary.com or some HR person said your title is or should be. Forget about what you get paid, how many years of experience you have, or what other people’s “titles” are in comparison to you. Tell us WHAT YOU DO and make that your new “title”.
I had to know more, so I emailed Matt with a few follow-up questions, and here’s an update from him:
You had a couple of questions around the titles ban from your previous e-mail. One question was about whether we had abolished titles company-wide. So far only the Web Marketing Team and the Idea Lab (our creative team – basically an in-house agency for our advertising production) took up my challenge. Not surprisingly, the team that actually got the title “promotions” that started this whole thing opted not to join us in our little revolution. I threw the challenge out to them, but I haven’t really seen anyone take up the torch.
This is just fantastic!
Your take
What’s your take? Is your workplace ready to scrap job titles? Or do you see some value in having a “real” title on your business card? Please write a comment, I’d really like to know.