Job titles, acronymns and the corporate boa constrictor

So we’re having a meeting the other day and my friend was a little upset. 

He’d just been promoted in the bank to become the Director of Digital Payments, Innovation and Strategy.  We all noted that he was now the lead for DPIS and congratulated him for taking DPIS.  For some reason he took offence. 

It might have been because he was reporting to two people he had little respect for: the Senior Head of Innovation Technologies and the Chief of Re-engineering Augmented Processes, both of whom were playing a role in the new matrix structure.

I could understand this, but it’s not nearly as bad as the offence my female counterparty took to being made Veep of Asian Growth.

It almost reminded me of the day when I was promoted to be Head of Professional Services, or PS Head as my business card displayed.  Similar to the fact that when I left that role I accidentally became the Senior President of Vice when I should have been the Senior Vice President.

This led to all sorts of confusion and name calling, as more and more roles became notable within the organisation.  For example, as PS Head, I created a couple of key team roles. The first was for a Third-party Workers and Alliances Team leader and the second a Data and Innovation Centre Knowledge Head.   For some reason, neither role got many applicants.

I complained about this to my colleague involved in Asia Growth, but she was too concerned about reporting to the Master of Intelligent Networking Growth Experiences.  I empathised, and explained that my new boss was the Associate Senior Strategist for Human Organisational and Leadership Experiences, a newly created role within HR that seemed to have no point in life apart from annoying folks like me.

We all then agreed that the whole thing should be given to the Business Intelligence Network to try to see if any of this was worthwhile.