How about a Chief Haha Officer (CHO)

I want a job title change,” I told my bureau chief. “After all, I am doing fairly different things compared to the others. So, needed, a more exciting designation.”

“Certainly,” he said, “how about Chief Dogsbody or Gunga Din?”

Oh, well, I thought glumly, when it comes to job titles and bloated hierarchies, the media industry is still out of the game. It should take a lead from the IT and telecom industry.

Organisations are growing flatter and flatter these days, but job designations are growing fancier and fancier. Recently, when we met Nokia India's Managing Director, D. Shiva Kumar, he let drop that there were only six designations between him and the junior-most employee in his company.

Or, maybe that's the reason the titles are getting so creative — after all, when so many people get stuck in the same horizontal line, you need to create some bumps and troughs to break the monotony.

That's why, according to Wharton, there's a major ‘title inflation' going on.

Indians no slouches

A recent PTI report says that there are new designations cropping up such as Chief Fun Officer, Chief Happiness Officer and even a Cost Kill Analyst. In this paper, we have recently reported how the Future Group has appointed a Chief Belief Officer.

I still remember the good old days when I was a cub reporter and went to meet a company's Managing Director and his Vice-Presidents. Then, one fine day we were meeting the Chief Executive Officer. Soon the V-P (Operations) became COO — the Chief Operating Officer. And after that it didn't take long for the finance head to become CFO and the IT head to become CIO, the marketing honcho to become CMO, and so on.

It's the IT sector which appears to be driving these nomenclature changes the most. I suppose as a people-driven, intensive industry, it needs to show HR innovation. Which is why, before one could blink, the CIO, who you thought was the information officer, had suddenly morphed into the Chief Innovation Officer.

When companies felt the need for training, along came the Chief Learning Officer. And, of course, given the knowledge era we are in, the Chief Knowledge Officer was not far behind in development. Some companies have been two steps ahead on the naming curve.

Bangalore-based Mind Tree, for instance, has a Chief Gardener. Mr Subroto Bagchi is by all accounts a great nurturer and great at tending to talent — but, dear me, it does seem a bit off to compare an office to a garden.

There's also the new sensitivity issue that is making organisations take a hard look at the titles and names. Sapient Nitro, for instance, refuses to call its Human Resources that. It calls employees people.

Other than the idea of minding sensitivities and keeping everybody happy, these designations also seem to be cropping up because ever newer job functions are getting created at the drop of a hat.

For instance, the PTI story talks about companies now putting in place chief blogging officers and chief tweeting officers. And Future Group's Chief Belief Officer Devdutt Pattnaik's job is to show employees the “alternative path” to doing business.

Okay, new jobs new titles — that's completely understandable — but the tinkering around with names for the same old job functions defies understanding.

I reminded a human resource head of what Shakespeare had said, that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

How else can you explain organisations are toying with the idea of calling their receptionists First Impression Officers!