Corporate VIPs a Dime a Dozen
Jordana Willner
Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, January 28, 2001
IT'S OFFICIAL. As of today, I've kissed my last corporate butt.
Correction. With some 50 years left in my career, I may still find future occasion to pucker and flatter in the workplace. But as of close of business this evening, my criteria has changed.
No longer will a high title and fancy perch on the org chart dictate the degree of my reverence. It was a lucrative business while I was in it, but lately there are simply too many VIPs (very important professionals) clogging the Bay Area for a climber like me to continue a campaign of indiscriminate homage without applying some process of elimination.
It wasn’t always this way. There was a time, even in my short professional memory, when VIPs were special people with remarkable histories and noteworthy credentials. When a CEO was a person of lengthy career and impressive achievement. When a vice president had combined education and a slow steady climb to achieve a respectable rank of second-in-command. When officers had once provided service and directors had once been directed.
Such VIPS deserved respect just like elders and educators, because they had done time and earned stripes. They were industry leaders with wisdom to share and opportunities to provide. The right kind of people to know if you were young, hungry, and on the lookout for a good mentor.
But now, after the somewhat anticlimactic Next Generation workplace revolution, it seems that every working stiff has an executive rank. Managers, directors, vice presidents, chiefs, leaders, specialists and experts sit in seats still warm from when they were known as interns, entry-levelers and assistants. Count the VIPs spewing forth from every corporate doorway, and it becomes painfully evident that housing and technology stocks are not the only things we've overvalued in the Bay Area. Title inflation is through the roof.
It's easy to see how it happened. Start-ups with little money used oversized titles to attract talent. Small companies with one-person departments offered prestigious titles to represent the brave-but-questionably qualified solo artists they hired. As the job market swelled along with the egos of hotly pursued candidates, swanky titles became as essential a part of the offer package as stock options and commission schedule. And naturally, as has been the case since forever, budding entrepreneurs filled their key seats with friends and acquaintances.
But while cronies used to be college pals and after-work golfing buddies, many new executives are too inexperienced to have built any professional foundations together; their technical expertise has made their rise meteoric without the usual need for long-term experience or proven results. Powerful positions are often diluted by incompetence, but the case of many new VIPs is one of pre-competence. Their titles simply precede their abilities.
Even in traditional work environments, older companies began recognizing the importance of keeping up with technology and elevated their technical talent to positions of exaggerated importance and title. The contagion of the Bay Area's love affair with young workers and casual appearances infected them too, making older executives appear outdated and unnecessary, leaving their positions open to new interpretation.
As a result, the new corporate landscape reads like a who's who of high-speed ladder vaulting, while professionals in traditional industries, such as health care and publishing, remain entrenched in the classic hierarchies and related nomenclature that make them appear, in comparison to their loftily- titled friends, like low-level clerks.
It's a shame. For hiring managers and recruiters who can't rely on titles to accurately depict the experience and level of a potential candidate. For job seekers, whose skills might be advanced but whose titles subordinate them next to more aptly named competitors. For the overtitled individuals who, in future jobs, may be embarrassed and accused of misrepresentation if their skills fall short of their previous titles or who may have difficulty even finding jobs that match their accustomed titles and salaries. And for scruffy little brown nosers like me who like to rub shoulders with the knowledgeable, connected bigwigs but who resent wasting a single batted lash on so-called executives who have neither the skills nor experience to lead.
Fact is, I'm simply exhausted from seeking guidance and instead finding lacking experience and nonexistent professionalism. Trying to find a true grown-up in this corporate landscape is a crapshoot. Therefore, from this day forward, title is no object. I'm abandoning preconceived expectations associated with names and am embarking on a one-woman substance-seeking mission. My goal: to distinguish true leaders from those with truly leader-like titles.
Henceforth, VIPs must actually prove themselves to win my respect. They must demonstrate actual knowledge. Draw from experience and cite some precedent. Lead people and projects with skill and authority. Solve problems according to proven methodology, not just deadline-driven instinct. Teach skills and best practices that they have tested for real-world success. Advise people and guide careers based on substantive information, not armchair impulses.
It's a meaty list, but a fair and necessary one. If I don't demand some genuine greatness from the titled gentry in our local corporate culture, I will have to face the unthinkable alternative. And even I am neither ambitious nor motivated enough to continue kissing the butt of every fool who calls himself president.
--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001
******************************************************
See also: "Why Go Home When The Workplace Beckons" (January 30, 2000), as quoted in the book Married to the Job: Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do About It by Ilene Philipson, page 133.
Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, January 28, 2001
IT'S OFFICIAL. As of today, I've kissed my last corporate butt.
Correction. With some 50 years left in my career, I may still find future occasion to pucker and flatter in the workplace. But as of close of business this evening, my criteria has changed.
No longer will a high title and fancy perch on the org chart dictate the degree of my reverence. It was a lucrative business while I was in it, but lately there are simply too many VIPs (very important professionals) clogging the Bay Area for a climber like me to continue a campaign of indiscriminate homage without applying some process of elimination.
It wasn’t always this way. There was a time, even in my short professional memory, when VIPs were special people with remarkable histories and noteworthy credentials. When a CEO was a person of lengthy career and impressive achievement. When a vice president had combined education and a slow steady climb to achieve a respectable rank of second-in-command. When officers had once provided service and directors had once been directed.
Such VIPS deserved respect just like elders and educators, because they had done time and earned stripes. They were industry leaders with wisdom to share and opportunities to provide. The right kind of people to know if you were young, hungry, and on the lookout for a good mentor.
But now, after the somewhat anticlimactic Next Generation workplace revolution, it seems that every working stiff has an executive rank. Managers, directors, vice presidents, chiefs, leaders, specialists and experts sit in seats still warm from when they were known as interns, entry-levelers and assistants. Count the VIPs spewing forth from every corporate doorway, and it becomes painfully evident that housing and technology stocks are not the only things we've overvalued in the Bay Area. Title inflation is through the roof.
It's easy to see how it happened. Start-ups with little money used oversized titles to attract talent. Small companies with one-person departments offered prestigious titles to represent the brave-but-questionably qualified solo artists they hired. As the job market swelled along with the egos of hotly pursued candidates, swanky titles became as essential a part of the offer package as stock options and commission schedule. And naturally, as has been the case since forever, budding entrepreneurs filled their key seats with friends and acquaintances.
But while cronies used to be college pals and after-work golfing buddies, many new executives are too inexperienced to have built any professional foundations together; their technical expertise has made their rise meteoric without the usual need for long-term experience or proven results. Powerful positions are often diluted by incompetence, but the case of many new VIPs is one of pre-competence. Their titles simply precede their abilities.
Even in traditional work environments, older companies began recognizing the importance of keeping up with technology and elevated their technical talent to positions of exaggerated importance and title. The contagion of the Bay Area's love affair with young workers and casual appearances infected them too, making older executives appear outdated and unnecessary, leaving their positions open to new interpretation.
As a result, the new corporate landscape reads like a who's who of high-speed ladder vaulting, while professionals in traditional industries, such as health care and publishing, remain entrenched in the classic hierarchies and related nomenclature that make them appear, in comparison to their loftily- titled friends, like low-level clerks.
It's a shame. For hiring managers and recruiters who can't rely on titles to accurately depict the experience and level of a potential candidate. For job seekers, whose skills might be advanced but whose titles subordinate them next to more aptly named competitors. For the overtitled individuals who, in future jobs, may be embarrassed and accused of misrepresentation if their skills fall short of their previous titles or who may have difficulty even finding jobs that match their accustomed titles and salaries. And for scruffy little brown nosers like me who like to rub shoulders with the knowledgeable, connected bigwigs but who resent wasting a single batted lash on so-called executives who have neither the skills nor experience to lead.
Fact is, I'm simply exhausted from seeking guidance and instead finding lacking experience and nonexistent professionalism. Trying to find a true grown-up in this corporate landscape is a crapshoot. Therefore, from this day forward, title is no object. I'm abandoning preconceived expectations associated with names and am embarking on a one-woman substance-seeking mission. My goal: to distinguish true leaders from those with truly leader-like titles.
Henceforth, VIPs must actually prove themselves to win my respect. They must demonstrate actual knowledge. Draw from experience and cite some precedent. Lead people and projects with skill and authority. Solve problems according to proven methodology, not just deadline-driven instinct. Teach skills and best practices that they have tested for real-world success. Advise people and guide careers based on substantive information, not armchair impulses.
It's a meaty list, but a fair and necessary one. If I don't demand some genuine greatness from the titled gentry in our local corporate culture, I will have to face the unthinkable alternative. And even I am neither ambitious nor motivated enough to continue kissing the butt of every fool who calls himself president.
--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001
******************************************************
See also: "Why Go Home When The Workplace Beckons" (January 30, 2000), as quoted in the book Married to the Job: Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do About It by Ilene Philipson, page 133.
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