Yesterday, I blogged on employee invented designations helping them with emotional stresses. During the day after I posted, I started to think more on the subject and it dawned on me whether these titles would indeed sound official.
Some of the designations that I discussed in my earlier post were CEO as the Fairy Godmother of Wishes, COO as Minister of Dollars and Sense; public relation officers as Magic Messengers or Heralders of Happy News. Apart from these, other quirky designations in use are data detectives at IBM, director of chaos at Berkshire Hathaway and Director of First Impressions for receptionists.
These designations sounds fun, energetic and one can sense the enthusiasm flowing out of it. But, how would you feel if the CEO of Apple called himself as the White Whale Maker. What does it do to the image of the company?
How about the competition between employees? The creative ones will find themselves on top, whether or not they are top performers and have the capabilities to suit the designations they come up with. If I call my designation as Superman, then I need to have the capacity to fly and fight villains from another planet. If I don’t, firstly, I will be in a false world, claiming to be something that I am not. Secondly, the company may encourage you with your made-up designation and fatten your ego, thereby eventually destroying your career when you actually step out into the job market.
For the research conducted by Adam Grant, the organization in question, Make-A-Wish foundation can fly with inventive designations but not for the Apples and Microsofts. Also, the research findings is based on a very small sample, and there is no way of knowing how the emotional pulse would have played had the employees kept onto their official designations. There are a lot of unanswered questions with this research.
