|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Revised: 07/28/2005
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
What's In A Name? Having never been a very pretentious or title conscience person, my own title has always been of relative little importance to me. Naturally, however, not everyone feels the same way. To some, a title means a great deal. And in many situations a title is required for legal clarity. For a long time Dun & Bradstreet automatically assigned the title "Chief Executive" to anyone who headed a company, regardless of the actual title they held. This was long before the title "Chief Executive Officer" was "in vogue." On most of my business cards I always left the space for title blank. However, as I moved away from the initial circle of clients and customers who knew me, to prospective new ones who didn't, I would sometimes acquiesce and carry a business card with the title: "President." Before the 1990s President was probably the most common title for the head of a small business, and for large ones as well. In the early 1990s both a number of clients as well as a close associate suggested that I adopt the title "Architect," since this most accurately described my role. [Though I still retain the ability to sit at a keyboard and pound out code, my greatest strengths, and therefore my greatest value, lies in my design ability. I am most at home and at my happiest when I'm engineering a solution to some impossible problem. That's often the hardest part, but still easily what I enjoy best.] So, I adopted the very accurate title: "Senior Architect." Unfortunately, in the mid 1990s few people outside of Silicon Valley realized that "architect" was one of the job descriptions within High Tech. One woman, after asking me for my business card, exclaimed: "You are just the person I need to talk to because I am getting ready to build a new home!" Like many people outside of the World of High Tech she had only heard the term architect used to describe those who design buildings and other structures such as bridges! Finally, when in the late 1990s the President of one of the largest food manufacturing companies in the country expressed similar concerns I felt that I had no choice but to find a more "user friendly" title. As the 1990s wore on the title CEO was all the rage, though, as I mentioned earlier, titles have never really meant much to me personally. However, realizing that the term CEO was universally understood, and since D&B had listed me as "Chief Executive" since 1979 as they do automatically by default anyway, I reluctantly adopted the title "CEO" in the late 1990s. Not long after, as if to add irony and insult to injury, Microsoft's Bill Gates changed his title for the very reasons that I had changed my own title to begin with: because the term "Architect" really best describes what we actually do! Bill Gates new title? "Chief Software Architect!" The difference, of course, is that Bill Gates has a lot more clout and name recognition than I do, or just about anyone else for that matter. It's pretty unlikely that since he changed his title he has had anyone confuse him with the type of architect who constructs buildings and bridges! Everyone knows the name Bill Gates, and everyone knows that Bill Gates runs a High Tech software company. What was someone like me who doesn't have that luxury to do? I finally arrived at the title: "CCO (Chief Creative Officer)." While not a common title, though I'm not the first to use it, it is at least fairly self explanatory. CCO gives people enough information to know that I'm very involved with the creative aspects of the company, and that at the same time I am also an officer of the company. Then came the dot-com bust, Enron, Arthur Andersen, ImClone Systems, and all the rest. Last year in 2002 the CFO of one of the nation's largest store chains couldn't help but ask me if I'd dropped CEO for CCO because CEO suddenly wasn't such a darling term anymore, at which point I conveyed to him the story above that I've now put into writing here. I guess sometimes you just can't win for losing! Additionally, as self explanatory as I thought Chief Creative Officer was, there were still a few who were confused by the title. All of this brings us to a new year, 2003, and the ultimate, and I hope final, solution to the naming game: "Chief Creative Officer and CEO." I spell out Chief Creative Officer since many won't know what CCO means, and use the short version of Chief Executive Officer since everyone knows what CEO means. Of course, you can always just call me Phil!
Send mail to with questions or
comments about this web site.
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
