Matt Cardwell used to be the Web Marketing Director at Quicken Loans. Not any more.
He came across a post of mine called Who cares about your job title – tell me what you DO! and was inspired to kill of all the traditional job titles.
He explained it further in an email to employees:
If you are concerned about someone not recognizing how important you are because you no longer have a standard title, then here’s your chance to create a title for yourself that will convey exactly how important you are. And because you are creating it, it will be all yours. No one else will have that title. Think of the conversations your new title will start with complete strangers. Think of the opportunities it can create for you in terms of expressing who you are, not what someone CALLS you.
“But what if I don’t like my description in three months …” you ask? What if what I do CHANGES? Well, then you can change your description. It’s that simple. No one ever stays the same … we are all growing … so let your “title” do the same when it’s time.
Here’s your chance. You have until the end of the day to let us all know who you are. Have fun, be creative, be humorous, but above all, be real and true. Remember, this will be on your e-mail signature, so please be aware of that.
I can’t wait to see what all of you come up with.
DEATH TO TITLES!
So what titles did people come up with? Well, as I said, Matt is no longer the Web Marketing Director. He’s now the Idea Salesman, Energy Focuser and People Unleasher. Some other new titles are:
- Royal Storyteller & Propaganda Minister
- Supreme Challenger of the Status Quo & Wicked Web Site Innovator
- Innovation Maven and Revenue Raiser
- Mastermind of Possibilities, Visual Linguist, and Czar of the High Fiber Revolution
- Art Juggler
- Flasher
- Idea Launcher
- Conceptologist
- Head Brother In Charge of Chat
- Reality Check Provider
- Sentence-smoother-outer with an Ad Girl twist
- Pixelardo da Vinci
Woo-hooooo!!
I know the whole choose-your-own-wacky-job-title things has been done before, most notably during the dotcom days, but I still love it. And I still marvel at the fun, creative titles people come up with.
Death to business titles, indeed!
A great big thank you to Kelly LaVaute for blogging about this!
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