Here A Chief, There A Chief

Entrepreneur, Nov, 2000 by Mark Henricks

They're everywhere these days. Could there be more to a title than meets the eye?

Let's Talk Business Network Inc. has within its ranks a chief support officer, a chief edutainment officer and a chief focus officer in addition to a chief community officer, which is the role filled by company co-founder and president Larry Kesslin. The firm has seven employees. That's right: The 6-year-old New York City-based operator of entrepreneur peer groups has only three employees who aren't chiefs of something.

"Why do we have so many chiefs?" Kesslin, 37, asks. "Because everybody needs to feel important and in control of their own future, and that they get to make decisions. This way, they have a tide they feel energized by."

Kesslin isn't the only entrepreneur handing out "chief" titles with abandon these days. Roger Herman, CEO of the Herman Group in Greensboro, North Carolina, is a futurist specializing in work-force and workplace issues, and has identified a slew of new chiefs who are making their appearance on the scene in companies of all sizes. Chief marketing officers, chief knowledge officers, chief development officers, chief training officers--the list of new chiefs seems to go on forever. "Everybody can be a chief," says Herman.

CHIEFMANSHIP

Chief executive officers were the first chiefs. These top managers are the ones who report directly to the board of directors. Chief operating officers are probably the next-oldest chiefs. COOs, like CEOs, often carry the additional title of president, and they're the primary people responsible for the daily operations of their companies. At some point, treasurers and vice presidents of finance became chief financial officers. And that's the way things remained for many years. "They were the big three, the ones that ran the company," explains John Challenger, CEO of Chicago executive outplacement company Challenger Gray and Christmas Inc.

Then, a few years ago, companies started labeling the people who ran their computer systems "chief technology officer," "chief information officer" and the like. About the same time, organization charts began displaying chief knowledge officers, who had the job of making sure that good ideas were encouraged to percolate everywhere throughout the company. Those changes opened the gates, and now there is a deluge of chiefs.

Chief proliferation is driven in part by the desire to reward employees with non-financial incentives such as recognition. "We're recognizing people," says Herman. "We're giving people individual status."

Chiefs aren't necessarily paid more than nonchiefs, it turns out, so giving someone a new title can be a particularly inexpensive way to recognize them. "That may be one of the forces behind it," Challenger says. "Companies have been under pressure to keep wages down, and it's a lot easier to give people a title than to give them a raise."

Offering lofty-sounding titles to job candidates is also something firms are doing to entice prospective employees. For instance, Herman recently hired someone to be in charge of finding students for a new training venture. "He's actually a salesperson," reflects Herman. "But what's his title? It's director of admissions. He was associate director of admissions at a college before, so he got a promotion."

What that new employee's title points to, though, is that not all elevated-sounding job names have "chief" in them. Innovative titles may include such appellations as "concierge," "guru," "crusader" and "evangelist." Many nonprofit organizations have executives with titles such as "marketing chairman," drawn, perhaps, from the fact that such groups are often run by committees whose titular heads are usually called chairmen.

The proliferation of chiefs in the business world also has reasons for being, one of which is that businesses and jobs are changing, says Joel M. Koblentz, managing partner of executive search firm Egon Zehnder International in Atlanta. The creation of new business models, such as online retailers, and the requirements of dealing with vastly increased information flow in less time mean that changing job titles are hardly keeping pace with changing duties. "If you took a job description from six months ago for an emerging company and that individual is still in that same job, he's not doing the same job," Koblentz maintains. "The little boxes that have people's titles on them no longer apply."

Of course, you don't need a chief for every person or in every situation. Kesslin presents himself as the president and not the chief community officer when dealing with executives of more buttoned-down corporations. "They wouldn't have any idea what a chief community officer is," says Kesslin. "So I have two business cards."

Herman has two titles as well, and for similar reasons. He is CEO of the Herman Group and the chief creative officer of PeopleLearn.com, his new training venture. Herman explains: At PeopleLearn, he comes up with the ideas, a duty that his title adequately reflects. "One of the reasons I hold the title of CEO of the Herman Group is that once in a while I have to sign some papers that require a signature from someone with that title," he says.