The new C-suite titles – stop sniggering at the back!

By Neil Patrick

Over the last few years, there have been lots of stories about a spate of new senior job titles, which evoked great mirth or at least a little derision.

Last week I was discussing this trend with my good friend, Marcia LaReau, President of Forward Motion Careers. We both felt that the sniping was wide of the mark and obscured the reality of what's really happening.

In a Forbes article in 2012, C Is For Silly: The New C-Suite Titles, Jeanne Goudreau noted that many large organizations have adopted new and often amusing titles at the top executive level. A quick search revealed the following firms and titles:

Kodak and Dell — Chief Listener
Facebook — Chief Privacy Officer
Microsoft — Chief People Officer
AOL - Digital Prophet
Zappos - Chief Happiness Officer

Nearly every department head has been knighted with new, inventive ‘chief’ titles likely dreamt up by the marketing team in collusion with HR.

The detractors were quick to criticize. “It is all corporate Kindergarten playtime title-making,” said Mark Stevens, author of Your Marketing Sucks. “It’s a puppet show. These people have absolutely no power. Most of these vanity titles don’t even report to the CEO.”

Mark felt  this trend was “too much idle time and interest in making the company sound “cool.”

Peter Cappelli, management professor at the University of Pennsylvania, commented that the new titles are meant to signal—internally, to customers or to governments—that a particular function or task is important and that the people at the top are listening. They may also be a form of ego appeasing and identifying who the important senior people are. Peter said, “The main question is whether there’s any real substance behind them.”

All this misses the point

I’m not entirely in agreement with these commentators. Yes some of these titles sound a bit odd after decades of us being used to senior job titles changing very little. And yes they may not always carry the power that the title infers. We all knew what was what and who was who in the ‘old’ hierarchy. It was easy to understand.

The reason I think these comments are missing the mark is that they assume it’s simply vanity and corporate posturing at work. Sure, there is always some of this going on, but this isn't what’s really at the root of these changes.

What is really happening is that the most developed organisations have recognized that in the new era of super-connected consumers and business, the old hierarchies which reflected the analogue world are no longer very helpful in addressing the challenges of the digital economy.

IBM carried out 17 studies over ten years, and conducted 23,000 face-to-face executive interviews to obtain insights into how private and public sector leaders think. They explored how the C-suite is evolving in the digital era and how they are working together in support of the enterprise.

Collaboration trumps competition in the digital age

Whereas competition, power struggles and silos were characteristics of the analogue world, the digital world demands cross-functional collaboration. Many of today’s most senior people climbed their career ladders when competition and winning at all costs was the name of the game. But today, sophisticated employers recognize that silos, power struggles and internal rivalries destroy value and sap the strength of the organisation. Leaders that cannot easily foster collaboration across the disciplines face a rapid decline to obsolescence.

The IBM study reported:

“ The most collaborative leaders are self-aware, emotionally intelligent, good at listening and building relationships. They lead by inspiring others. But as everyone knows, we get the behavior we reward. And the qualities for which business executives are usually rewarded – ambition, assertiveness, a goal-orientated attitude and so forth – aren't directly associated with the ability to collaborate.”

What you call something or somebody is important. It sets expectations for both the job holder and those around them about what they are there to do. This is a further reason why the adoption of new senior job titles is helpful to everyone and not just a vanity play or attempt to appear ‘cool’.

Ann Morton, chief operating officer of Maine-based advertising firm The VIA Agency said, “We adopted Chief Knowledge Officer because we feel it’s a better representation of what’s really needed to be an effective advertising agency today. It’s about bringing wisdom to our clients, not just information.” 

The agency’s “CKO” oversees strategy, planning, analytics and research capabilities. She conceded, however, that as more unique titles crop up, leaders should be careful that the title reflects the job and the person’s experience. Using the word “ninja” in a job title isn't big or clever…

Whilst important sounding titles proliferate, in reality, the C-suite is shrinking

Just as technology is stripping out jobs at all levels of the organisation, the C-suite is being impacted too.

This evolution of structures is leading to the blurring or even merging of senior leadership roles. In the analogue world, the Marketing Director headed up all the activities delivering customers to the business, identifying and satisfying his or her needs. Their key skills base was around things like market research, product development, packaging, promotion, media planning, and customer retention. Data and insights were slow in coming and often expensive to obtain. But today, a marketing director obtains immediate and actionable insights from a flood of digital data.

This might be electronic point of sale information, social media reactions, website traffic tracking, or any other number of digital information streams. And because most marketing directors earned their spurs in the analogue age, many are feeling a tad uncomfortable as their world has undergone such a rapid and radical transformation.

One outcome is that some organisations are merging the CMO and CIO role or at least requiring that the Marketing Chief knows as much about IT and digital as they do about the more traditional marketing skills sets. Suddenly being just a marketing or just an IT expert is no longer enough.

You can enjoy the joke by all means, but it’s not corporate vanity or silliness that is behind what’s happening. It’s a very real attempt to adapt to the nature of a digital economy.