Think Like an Owner: Pursue Customer Success, Not Titles
Billy: "Vice-President! That means like if the President dies you get to take over for him?"
Josh (Tom Hanks): "Naw, they got a hundred of 'em."
The Name on the Front
We held out against titles as long as possible at our company, and most of us still don't have them on our business cards. You can't sum up the value/role of our best people with a simple label. We find a title to be more limiting than empowering.
When our people introduce themselves in customer meetings, they typically state how many years they have worked at our company. That is valued more than a title.
Along with longevity, employees gain status within our organization by establishing a successful track record with customers.
But occasionally, we have someone who embarks on the empty pursuit of a title.
Challenge Accepted
Several years ago, a terrific long-time employee (John) asked how he could help more, said that he was ready for something bigger. I thanked him, said it sounded great, and that I would brainstorm some ideas.
John continued to hound me over the next several weeks. Finally, he caught me on a day when I was frustrated with one of our team's responsiveness. I said, "You know how you could help? Fix this," as I pointed at my monitor.
"I keep seeing items missed during web site launches. It's brutal. That shouldn't happen. I feel like if I don't take charge and intervene, these critical issues will continue falling through the cracks and customers will suffer. It's not your job, but now that I think about it, you will be great at it.”
John smiled and accepted the assignment.
Making an Impact
I explained the change to the leader of our project management team, that I wanted to see if John could help things run smoother.
I invited John to more team meetings and kept pushing for his involvement. I forwarded him tickets and email strings that concerned me, pointing out the situations where I most needed his help.
I saw immediate success - John quickly improved the quality of our site launches. My uneasiness about our project managers missing final checklist items went away. I started getting unsolicited positive feedback about John.
John ingratiated himself with the project managers by simplifying the final quality control checklist. He created nicknames for everyone and built a great rapport with the team.
I set up a standing meeting with John every other Monday to get feedback. After a couple of months in the new role, John told me he was near 150% utilization. I said, "Wow, yeah, we need to do something about that."
He held his hands up and said, "Hey, it's not a big deal. I knew this could happen when I asked you how I could help. We will figure it out."
You Want to Be Called What?
Several weeks later, John asked to go to lunch with the owner of our company (Charlie) and brought up some ideas. John sent a follow-up email later that afternoon. Early the next week, John cornered Charlie in the hallway, asking him if he had thought about their talk only a few days before (Charlie had not).
Charlie forwarded John's email to me and called to explain the situation. He couldn't believe that John was pushing to get a response so quickly. Charlie said he would be out of town on business the rest of the week and asked me to follow up with John on his open issues.
I pulled up John's email, and there it was - he wanted a title change. Now I understood the urgency.
John wanted to change his title from "Technical Quality Control Director" to "Director of Technical Quality Control." When I saw his request, my first thought was of Dwight and Jim on "The Office" fighting about whether his title was "Assistant Regional Manager" or "Assistant to the Regional Manager."
I called John and walked through his points, eventually getting to his request for a title change.
I said, "Sorry, I am horrible at this. But I don't understand the request or how changing around the words means anything."
John said he needed a new title so that the team would respect him. He told me I didn't understand because I was the CTO (Chief Technology Officer).
Now I was pissed. "So the only reason why the team listens to me is because of my title? I'm sorry, but I hope I have earned their respect because I have worked hard for the company for 30 years. That, when there is a major issue, I am on the front lines with them, pulling an all-nighter if necessary."
"John, you become a leader by doing exactly what you have done for the last six months. You do it by streamlining operations for our project managers during the hectic, final stages of their projects, by improving the quality of our web site launches for our customers.”
“By making this minor title change, you will likely alienate some of the very people you have been working so hard to gain trust with. I can think of one guy off the top of my head that this will piss off. And it will upset 2-3 other people I'm not even considering. If the goal is to make things easier for me, this won't."
I told him that I had mentioned his name in a meeting the previous day. I said that we needed more "grease guys" like John—people who could make things work well between the various teams. I couldn’t think of a greater compliment than that.
But, my honest response wasn't good enough for John as he quickly circled back to our owner, Charlie, to discuss different ideas for his new title.
As I expected, Charlie told John he didn't care about titles either.
The Final Word
A couple of weeks went by without me knowing if the matter had been resolved. My main hope was that John would return his focus to the work and keeping our customers happy.
I finally confirmed his title change by checking his LinkedIn page.
Nowadays, it is only official until you post it on social media and start collecting likes.
Image credit: Alamy