<p>A young man recently described himself as a Vice President with such solemnity that your columnist briefly wondered whether he should stand. It turned out that he was neither running a country nor deputising for anyone who did. His responsibilities were modest. His visiting card, however, suggested that the world should avoid making major decisions without consulting him. The modern office is full of such people. There are Heads with nobody beneath them, Directors who direct very little and Chief Strategy Officers whose principal strategy is to remain Chief Strategy Officer. Somewhere, buried beneath this canopy, a woman called Myra is doing the work. When Myra takes leave, the organisation discovers its actual reporting structure.</p><p>Young people scamper after titles with stirring enthusiasm. An appointment as Associate Vice President can prompt a LinkedIn announcement normally associated with the discovery of penicillin. The recipient is humbled, honoured and thrilled. He thanks his mentors, his team, his mother-in-law and the leadership for their faith. On Monday he returns to the same spreadsheet. His mother-in-law, meanwhile, has told the neighbours that he is now practically running the bank. Companies understand the attraction. Money is expensive. Adjectives are free. Adding “Senior” to someone’s designation costs considerably less than adding anything to his salary. “Executive” can buy another year. Once these supplies run low, there is always “Global”, even if the employee’s overseas exposure consists of a cancelled holiday in Phuket.</p><p>Your columnist’s employer operated for decades without formal job titles. People knew what they were supposed to do and, broadly, who was good at it. Then a CEO whose tenure proved short, pushed through a system of designations. He left. The titles remained, rather like luggage deposited by someone who has emigrated without leaving a forwarding address. They are now chiefly an HR headache. Why is he a Director while I am only a Head? Is an Associate Vice President senior to an Assistant Vice President? If I report to her, why does my title sound more important? These are questions with the capacity to consume an entire afternoon without improving the condition of a single customer. HR, which once recruited people, must now maintain something resembling the seating plan at a particularly insecure royal wedding.</p><p>Banking provided an early education in this absurdity. Your columnist remembers the contrast between Citibank, where an inexperienced youngster could be a Vice President and Hongkong Bank, where the Manager, North India managed a huge balance sheet and substantial asset exposures. The latter was chauffeured about in an S-Class Mercedes. His title suggested that he might help you open an account. His responsibilities suggested that you should be rather careful about asking him for an overdraft. The Citibank youngster had the more impressive designation. The Hongkong Bank manager had the exposure, the authority and considerably more reason to lie awake at night. Judging them by their visiting cards would have been like judging the size of a house by its doorbell. None of this is exclusively a youthful affliction. Senior people are perfectly capable of sulking over the omission of “Group”. Some will accept a smaller budget more readily than a shorter title. Introduce two chairmen at dinner and the host may need advice from the Ministry of External Affairs. Age does not cure vanity. It merely gives it an expense account.</p><p>Yet beneath the comedy lies a serious career mistake. Young executives often confuse being given a grander name with becoming more valuable. The two may coincide. They can also remain complete strangers for decades. Real importance comes from being able to do something that counts. Can you bring in business at a sensible margin? Keep a customer who has good reason to leave? Diagnose a problem before it becomes expensive? Take a difficult decision without first assembling enough colleagues to distribute the blame? A person who can be trusted with these things acquires authority even when the stationery department has failed to acknowledge it.</p><p> Judgement counts particularly heavily. The useful colleague can distinguish a genuine opportunity from an expensive enthusiasm. She knows when to persist, when to stop and when the boss’s brilliant idea needs a tactful funeral. This ability is rarely captured in a job description, although it can save considerably more money than the Chief Transformation Officer’s latest transformation. Then there is reliability, a quality so unfashionably plain that nobody announces it on LinkedIn. Doing what you promised; getting the numbers right; owning the mistake before somebody else discovers it. Over time, people give you important work because they can sleep after handing it over. That is a substantial professional achievement.</p><p> How you treat people matters too. Colleagues remember who shared the credit and who arrived for the photograph. Juniors know who helped them improve and who merely required an audience. Customers soon distinguish the person who fixes things from the one whose principal contribution is copying six senior people into an email. Consequently, employers should stop dispensing titles as cheap sedatives. Reward stronger performance with better pay, wider responsibility and opportunities to learn. Explain what advancement requires. Otherwise, a company eventually finds itself with fourteen Vice Presidents and nobody authorised to replace the printer cartridge. Ambitious young people should certainly want to rise. But they would do better to ask what they can handle, what they have learnt and whose confidence they have earned. A title may get you introduced with a flourish. The next ten minutes are entirely your responsibility.</p><p> And if you really want to know how important you are, go on holiday. Observe whether people need your judgement or merely your password. There is a difference and no amount of embossing will remove it.</p>
<p>A young man recently described himself as a Vice President with such solemnity that your columnist briefly wondered whether he should stand. It turned out that he was neither running a country nor deputising for anyone who did. His responsibilities were modest. His visiting card, however, suggested that the world should avoid making major decisions without consulting him. The modern office is full of such people. There are Heads with nobody beneath them, Directors who direct very little and Chief Strategy Officers whose principal strategy is to remain Chief Strategy Officer. Somewhere, buried beneath this canopy, a woman called Myra is doing the work. When Myra takes leave, the organisation discovers its actual reporting structure.</p><p>Young people scamper after titles with stirring enthusiasm. An appointment as Associate Vice President can prompt a LinkedIn announcement normally associated with the discovery of penicillin. The recipient is humbled, honoured and thrilled. He thanks his mentors, his team, his mother-in-law and the leadership for their faith. On Monday he returns to the same spreadsheet. His mother-in-law, meanwhile, has told the neighbours that he is now practically running the bank. Companies understand the attraction. Money is expensive. Adjectives are free. Adding “Senior” to someone’s designation costs considerably less than adding anything to his salary. “Executive” can buy another year. Once these supplies run low, there is always “Global”, even if the employee’s overseas exposure consists of a cancelled holiday in Phuket.</p><p>Your columnist’s employer operated for decades without formal job titles. People knew what they were supposed to do and, broadly, who was good at it. Then a CEO whose tenure proved short, pushed through a system of designations. He left. The titles remained, rather like luggage deposited by someone who has emigrated without leaving a forwarding address. They are now chiefly an HR headache. Why is he a Director while I am only a Head? Is an Associate Vice President senior to an Assistant Vice President? If I report to her, why does my title sound more important? These are questions with the capacity to consume an entire afternoon without improving the condition of a single customer. HR, which once recruited people, must now maintain something resembling the seating plan at a particularly insecure royal wedding.</p><p>Banking provided an early education in this absurdity. Your columnist remembers the contrast between Citibank, where an inexperienced youngster could be a Vice President and Hongkong Bank, where the Manager, North India managed a huge balance sheet and substantial asset exposures. The latter was chauffeured about in an S-Class Mercedes. His title suggested that he might help you open an account. His responsibilities suggested that you should be rather careful about asking him for an overdraft. The Citibank youngster had the more impressive designation. The Hongkong Bank manager had the exposure, the authority and considerably more reason to lie awake at night. Judging them by their visiting cards would have been like judging the size of a house by its doorbell. None of this is exclusively a youthful affliction. Senior people are perfectly capable of sulking over the omission of “Group”. Some will accept a smaller budget more readily than a shorter title. Introduce two chairmen at dinner and the host may need advice from the Ministry of External Affairs. Age does not cure vanity. It merely gives it an expense account.</p><p>Yet beneath the comedy lies a serious career mistake. Young executives often confuse being given a grander name with becoming more valuable. The two may coincide. They can also remain complete strangers for decades. Real importance comes from being able to do something that counts. Can you bring in business at a sensible margin? Keep a customer who has good reason to leave? Diagnose a problem before it becomes expensive? Take a difficult decision without first assembling enough colleagues to distribute the blame? A person who can be trusted with these things acquires authority even when the stationery department has failed to acknowledge it.</p><p> Judgement counts particularly heavily. The useful colleague can distinguish a genuine opportunity from an expensive enthusiasm. She knows when to persist, when to stop and when the boss’s brilliant idea needs a tactful funeral. This ability is rarely captured in a job description, although it can save considerably more money than the Chief Transformation Officer’s latest transformation. Then there is reliability, a quality so unfashionably plain that nobody announces it on LinkedIn. Doing what you promised; getting the numbers right; owning the mistake before somebody else discovers it. Over time, people give you important work because they can sleep after handing it over. That is a substantial professional achievement.</p><p> How you treat people matters too. Colleagues remember who shared the credit and who arrived for the photograph. Juniors know who helped them improve and who merely required an audience. Customers soon distinguish the person who fixes things from the one whose principal contribution is copying six senior people into an email. Consequently, employers should stop dispensing titles as cheap sedatives. Reward stronger performance with better pay, wider responsibility and opportunities to learn. Explain what advancement requires. Otherwise, a company eventually finds itself with fourteen Vice Presidents and nobody authorised to replace the printer cartridge. Ambitious young people should certainly want to rise. But they would do better to ask what they can handle, what they have learnt and whose confidence they have earned. A title may get you introduced with a flourish. The next ten minutes are entirely your responsibility.</p><p> And if you really want to know how important you are, go on holiday. Observe whether people need your judgement or merely your password. There is a difference and no amount of embossing will remove it.</p>
