What title is on your business card?

Business cards are an important part of personal marketing. As shown above, the Star Wars character Darth Vader’s is Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet. No contact information is supplied since he will call you.

At W. L. Gore and Associates there is a flat, lattice-like organizational structure where everyone’s official title just is Associate. But to impress outsiders they can put another title they like on their cards. Sara Clifton picked Supreme Commander, as was described in a Management Review article back in August 1985, What’s in a title?

In Shark Tank at Computerworld there was an article on July 20, 2020 titled Memory-Lane Monday: It’s in the cards. When a person began a position at a company owned and run by a wealthy but quirky financial trader, he initially was given the title Manager of Unix Operations. His boss had refused to pay for printing business cards. So the new person got some card stock, and printed his own at ten per page. But the first time he got introduced to a big client the boss instead referred to him as the Director of Software Development. He took some card stock, and printed cards with that title.

Not long after that, in a meeting with another client, the boss referred to him as the Vice President of Software Development. Then he took some more card stock, and printed cards with that latest title. As a gag he also printed some titled Master of All Computational Knowledge. Naturally one of those accidentally got handed to a vendor who had a good laugh, and would not give it back.

There was another article by John Rentoul in The Independent on July 12, 2020 titled Top 10... grand titles that in reality diminish the holder. He said Editor-in-Chief is less powerful than just The Editor. And Deputy Chief Sub-Editor is a roller coaster.

If you don’t understand the hierarchy in an organization, then you may not be properly impressed by a title. For example, as shown above, a Captain (O6) in the U.S. Navy is way more impressive than a Captain (O3) in the U.S. Army. (The five-star O11 ranks were last used way back in World War II).

My first job was in the Ann Arbor lab of the Climax Molybdenum Company as a Senior Research Associate. Their job titles started with Research Associate, followed by Senior Research Associate, Research Metallurgist (or Chemist), and Senior Research Metallurgist (or Chemist). Then I worked for a while at an Exxon lab in Houston as a Senior Research Engineer, where Research Associate instead was the title for a very much higher rank.   

At TV Tropes there is a web page titled Try to fit THAT on a Business Card, which gives a Game of Thrones example:

“You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains.”

Wow! In the 1977 comedy film Oh, God! George Burns (God) instead handed John Denver (Jerry Landers) a card with only one word on it – God.

My version of Darth Vader’s card uses a Death Star balloon image by Adam B. Morgan from Wikimedia Commons.