Titles Are Nothing More than Fancy Labels

I’ve talked about this topic before, but it appears there is a major corporation that is doubling down on the whole “meaningless titles” issue that causes me to laugh each time I see it happen.

Whether a person is a CEO (a title I hold now that has absolutely no actual meaning) or a vice president of household services (a housewife or househusband), there seems to be a trend during my lifetime to give people fancy titles for no reason other than to pay one more person to do next to nothing.

The Oklahoma City Thunder announced this week that Rob Hennigan would be rejoining the team after a stint in Orlando as the general manager. Hennigan’s title is Vice President of Insight and Foresight. Yes, you read that right.

I have been lauded for a lot of things that include insight and foresight. All that really means is that I am not only a thinker, but a forward thinker. Apparently the guy best known for giving the Thunder the pieces they used to trade for Paul George is good at things I am also good at doing. My guess is most people can boast about their insight and foresight abilities.

In the same announcement, the Thunder also announced Will Dawkins was being promoted to Vice President of Identification and Intelligence. Something tells me he isn’t the guy in charge of handing out gate passes to the players, but I can’t say for sure based on his title. Again, we seem to have a title that allows someone to get a promotion and – maybe – new job duties.

This probably shouldn’t concern you unless you are a taxpayer in the Oklahoma City area, since your tax dollars literally allow for the funding of these types of jobs. But that is a blog for another day.

I’m sure Hennigan and Dawkins are thrilled to have these new titles. Hennigan had been fired by the Magic earlier this year and Dawkins – well, let’s just say Dawkins isn’t a household name as far as I can tell.

Whether they are vice presidents of operations or communications or something else doesn’t really matter. They have titles that don’t really tell us anything, and I’m sure they were much less concerned about that than the salary package. But, as I’ve said before, we have too many employers throwing around ridiculous titles as if they mean something. They don’t. And we are on to you.