In 2007, I was interviewing with a later stage stealth startup in Boston. During my conversation with one of the co-founders, I asked about her title. Her answer has stuck with me to this day. She said: “if you are in a startup and have a title, you are not doing enough work“! This sentiment resonated with me and made me think about why big titles are so dangerous.
I have worked for several very innovative “flat hierarchy” companies, where titles were irrelevant, that had rapid growth fueled by passionate employees who always went above and beyond to make customers happy. It is no surprise that at one company we had a 95% customer referral rate and the most loyal customers I have seen in my entire career. I also made the mistake of joining several companies that developed org-charts before they fully figured out what their customers wanted. The result was an environment of heavy office politics, innovation-squashing dictatorships, and clients leaving not too long after discovering the dysfunction. No amount of effort could turn these companies around and two out of the three went out of business.
So why are big titles so dangerous?
I’ve recently been thinking about how I can further help the readers of this blog and earn even more good “business Karma”. Several of you have mentioned that you’d like a broader range of topics covered on this blog, so I have decided to take LeanStartups.com to the next level by expanding it and adding guest bloggers to my team. As we like to say in the world of startups – time to pivot.
Since an article I wrote in June of 2009 called “
Apolinaras is a business operations leader with 12-year track record of building scalable and capital-efficient operations for technology and professional services companies.