The Power of Titles

A few Mr. Obvious facts about titling and how they affect people.

The idea for this post came up the day I interviewed with the CEO of a well known agency in NYC back in 2012. From the privacy of his office, he went on and on about the fact that he didn’t care about titles and that his agency had a flat structure because they all sat together in the same room. What should have sounded well to me in theory actually had the opposite effect, I couldn’t believe how ironic the situation was and that somehow got stuck in my memory.

Since then I’ve had countless conversations about titles at work and with friends over the years. It’s a topic we all deal with when we join a company, or when we hope to get promoted, and even when we manage someone’s promotion or structure a team from scratch. We deal with this subject often and still somehow there is a fair amount of lack of clarity and secrecy around it.

Here are some general facts I believe are true and I hope can help those in the process of changing jobs, recruiters and hiring managers.

Titles Matter.

Let’s start with the basics; a title articulates what your job is about, the seniority and your responsibilities. Titles are ultimately translated into $$$ in your bank account so hell yeah they matter.

The only people that I’ve heard say the opposite are those in a position of power or those trying to benefit from their absence or lack of clarity. Be suspicious of managers and recruiters that describe a company or agency structure as flat. There is no such thing as “flat” when you get more than 5 people in a room and, if there is, it sounds like a hot mess to me anyway.

Titles can empower but also hinder your progress.

Some people see titles as permission to extend their influence to other areas of the work. While this is true, it’s not really a requirement. In fact the best people you can work with are those that care beyond their responsibilities about what others are doing to influence a given project.

It sounds cliche but in most cases, as long as you are not changing your discipline and you have the right maturity, you don’t need a promotion to behave and perform like the title you think you deserve. Pretend you have it and enjoy the confidence boost.

However if all you are looking for is a promotion to start caring about a given aspect of the job, it’s possible that your title is hindering your success. Don’t let your title stop you from going above and beyond a given task.

Titles mean different things at different companies.

Title parity between companies is hard. Tech companies have good parameters to manage people jumping from one to another but agencies are a different beast. For example an agency Design Director leads visual designers and work alongside a UX Director but In-house Design Directors often lead the whole design department and report to a studio manager.

Agencies tend to inflate titles and established product companies tend to simplify them. It’s not strange to see an ECD or VP at an agency transition to a product company as a UX Manager. The opposite is true as well for small startups vs big agencies. I’ve met Chief Design Officers at startups that manage a design department of 3 people and Chief Design Officers at agencies representing teams of hundreds. It’s a mess. Job titles need to be understood in context so make sure that’s extremely clear if you are exploring new opportunities.

Ultimately you will define the flavor of your title.

No two ADs are alike. Same thing with designers, creative directors and any other title you can think of. You have the opportunity to define what your own flavor of a title is with your day-to-day tasks and your natural inclination to pay more attention to one aspect of it vs another.

At some point titles don’t matter.

They don’t. I know, what a twist! 🤯

I find it normal to fixate on titles at a specific point in someone’s career and then totally let it go at a later stage. At the end of the day what matters is that you feel happy with the responsibilities and compensation of your job. It’s not unusual for managers to eventually step down and get closer to the work.

There are tons of biz models out there that allow for experienced people to be hands on instead of feeling like they have to keep their VP or CxO level title.

Ultimately the ladder is not that long so it’s better to enjoy what you do and keep getting good at it than worry too much about where you think you should be at this point in life.

End.

Thanks for reading my ramblings. If you want more check out my medium profile or some of the work and talks at guglieri.com.