Replace Titles with Roles to Bring Focus to Competencies

Because self-management relies on hierarchies of expertise, traditional job titles are often abandoned in favour of roles, with one person assuming multiple roles. This makes everything implicit in what they do, and ultimately what the organization does, explicit. While legal titles like “first chair” and “second chair” are understood to connote a difference in experience or expertise, they also suggest a power differential. The shift from titles to roles effectively surfaces all that power that isn’t grounded in competency models.  With so much status wrapped up in titles, it’s perhaps daunting to move toward more functional descriptors, but doing so is essential to dismantling the layered hierarchy and bringing clarity to competencies.

<< Back to The Future of Work