Last week I got promoted — I now have the lofty title of Development Manager. Previously my job title included Team Lead but now I no longer lead, I manage. I have stepped over the line from doing into getting other people to do.
In practice, as our company has a “managers who can also do / lead from the front” ethos in R&D, this is more a change of rank than anything but I can’t deny one fact: For the first time there are people who report to me on the organisation chart. Wish me luck!
Back before Christmas I had a conversation with Richard about job titles. I released during that conversation that the grammatical form of jobs titles indicates a lot about their relative position within an organisation.
Let’s say you work at Balloon Corp (who changed their name to Xeloflex in 1999 but changed it back again in 2002 when they realised nobody knew what they did any more). You start at the bottom where there are lots of people doing things, so there are lots of agent noun job descriptions like Balloon Engineer, Balloon Analyst and Balloon Administrator. Of course there are lots of people who’ve been with the company a long time, so you also have Senior Balloon Whatever so that you promote them and get away with smaller pay rises.
Going up a level, the managers naturally adopt the title Balloon Manager but what about their managers? Here, for the first time, we see the principle I call Job Title Reversal: Manager of Balloons. That little “of” makes all the difference. In addition, the pluralisation makes you sound busier.
Now, if you have many layers of management there are several independent means of increasing the job title pool. Firstly, for those who do less doing and more managing you can swap Manager for Director. See how strategic Balloon Director sounds? US companies will generally have a “VP” level too: Vice President, Balloons.
Secondly, you can add geographical adjectives, such as European Balloon Manager or Global Balloon Manager. This really expresses the scale of the job.
Thirdly, you can cover more than one area of the organisation, for instance Balloon and Pump Manager. The person with this job must be really busy!
All of the above can be combined, as in European Balloon and Pump Director. Furthermore, our old friend JRT can still be employed, even at this heady level: Global Director of Balloons and Pumps.
There is a subtle twist on JRT. You can replace “of” with “for”, which leaves you with a more strategic, caring title such as Director for Balloons.
Finally, as you approach the very top of the organisation, job titles collapse back on themselves in the same way that Queen outranks First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In our example, we are left with Chief Balloon Officer.
I was halfway through this conversation and we were commenting what a load of bollocks it all was when Richard remembered he had an “of” in his job title. D’oh!
Tags: work