Of names and colours....
Yes yes! it's been a long long while since we contributed to this blog. Kindly excuse us but we have been swamped with work many times over than anticipated. It's been a lot of fun nonetheless though and I am sure will be in the future.
The last couple of days, the three of us have had some discussions on the management structure of the company and the titles that we will hold. Now, I will not try to bore you with the mundane details of what we spoke about but this got me thinking - "How important are these titles for an organization, any kind of organization from a startup to a multi-billion enterprise"?
And this though took me back to a book I read a long time ago. 'Maverick' was written by the CEO of Semler S.A., Ricardo Semler. Semler S.A. is a company in Brazil that during the 1980s manufactured ship-building products under Semler Sr. It was only towards the beginning of the '90s that Ricardo Semler took over the organization and the book is about how he took the organization in unexpected directions (the company started manufacturing meat-slicers, employees decided their working hours, employees even decided their remuneration!) and how in 6 years the company went from USD 35mn to USD 215mn in revenues! This during the worst of times for the Brazilian economy.
Part of Ricardo's work at Semler S.A. dealt with flattening the organizational structure to the extent where there were just three levels of management and people were free to decide their own titles. The book states how once this was announced, several people got new business cards printed saying, ‘Sultan of Operations’ (for an operations guy), ‘Sheikh’ (for a finance guy) etc. It just made the entire hierarchical setup redundant with use of such ‘lame’ titles. And it conveyed a message to all the stakeholders – that titles didn’t mean squat when it came to running an organization successfully (as proven).
So how important are titles in an organization. I believe they are relevant for one reason – for employees who gauge the success of their professional careers by the title below their name on the business card, these titles can make such employees feel happy about their role in a particular organization and keep them with the company longer. But then the question that begs to ask itself is this – “should an organization with its vision set on high aims and objectives be tied down by the whims of such people?” And let me clarify, by employees I mean the entire bunch of people working in an organization from the CEO right down to the other end.
I personally vote for titles that don’t make any sense at all ‘cause they don’t need to. I would personally like to be introduced as the ‘Marketing Maverick’ of a so-and-so company rather than ‘Marketing Director’! Gives it that nice touch, don’t you think? And I also vote for the board of directors to be called the ‘Sultans of Swing’!
But alas, we will have to wait and see what Kashyap and Navneet have to say about this. Will keep you all updated.
-Sushant
The last couple of days, the three of us have had some discussions on the management structure of the company and the titles that we will hold. Now, I will not try to bore you with the mundane details of what we spoke about but this got me thinking - "How important are these titles for an organization, any kind of organization from a startup to a multi-billion enterprise"?
And this though took me back to a book I read a long time ago. 'Maverick' was written by the CEO of Semler S.A., Ricardo Semler. Semler S.A. is a company in Brazil that during the 1980s manufactured ship-building products under Semler Sr. It was only towards the beginning of the '90s that Ricardo Semler took over the organization and the book is about how he took the organization in unexpected directions (the company started manufacturing meat-slicers, employees decided their working hours, employees even decided their remuneration!) and how in 6 years the company went from USD 35mn to USD 215mn in revenues! This during the worst of times for the Brazilian economy.
Part of Ricardo's work at Semler S.A. dealt with flattening the organizational structure to the extent where there were just three levels of management and people were free to decide their own titles. The book states how once this was announced, several people got new business cards printed saying, ‘Sultan of Operations’ (for an operations guy), ‘Sheikh’ (for a finance guy) etc. It just made the entire hierarchical setup redundant with use of such ‘lame’ titles. And it conveyed a message to all the stakeholders – that titles didn’t mean squat when it came to running an organization successfully (as proven).
So how important are titles in an organization. I believe they are relevant for one reason – for employees who gauge the success of their professional careers by the title below their name on the business card, these titles can make such employees feel happy about their role in a particular organization and keep them with the company longer. But then the question that begs to ask itself is this – “should an organization with its vision set on high aims and objectives be tied down by the whims of such people?” And let me clarify, by employees I mean the entire bunch of people working in an organization from the CEO right down to the other end.
I personally vote for titles that don’t make any sense at all ‘cause they don’t need to. I would personally like to be introduced as the ‘Marketing Maverick’ of a so-and-so company rather than ‘Marketing Director’! Gives it that nice touch, don’t you think? And I also vote for the board of directors to be called the ‘Sultans of Swing’!
But alas, we will have to wait and see what Kashyap and Navneet have to say about this. Will keep you all updated.
-Sushant
Labels: entrepreneur, startup, titles
posted by Inkfruit! at
17:30
1 Comments:
Swanky names are cool. They add a lot of life into the organisation and color to a dull corporate environment.
At the bottom of this though, the roles remain the same. Whether called a marketing maverick or a marketing director, his role remains the same. Whether called an Operations Maharaja or Director Operations, his role remains the same.
Therefore we need to distinguish between a cool name for a position and the position not being there at all.
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