Cameron Herold explains how title inflation over the past ~25 years creates real costs and mismatches between job titles, responsibilities, and compensation. He contrasts true C‑level expectations (strategic insight, P&L authority, autonomy) with inflated titles, recounts a case where he retitled a company of 600 people after rapid growth, and notes the cultural and communication challenges of that process.
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Quite often now. We've had a lot of title inflation over the last 25 years and CEOs or entrepreneurs kind of said, oh, it doesn't matter what people's titles are. Yeah, it does, because that COO or that CFO or CMO goes on Google. They go on chatgpt. They go on. Indeed. And they do salary comp reviews and they looked at, wow, a COO is supposed to be making 350. Why are you paying me 130? I'm paying you 130 because you're actually a director. Well. Well then why did you call me a COO if I'm actually a director? The COO role is one of the top seven traditional C level titles that's been in existence for the last 50 years. The COO role really is one of the originals. To be a true C level of any functional area, you have to come in with a lot of strategic insight that the CEO doesn't normally have. You have to come in with enough P and L responsibility and the ability to run and manage cash flow and budgets and balance sheets and, and really manage the P and L side of the business. You have to actually be able to handle the functional areas of the business that the CEO is not that great at. You tend to come into the company with people following you and partners following you, and then you tend to be the one who's deciding what needs to be done. You're not having much delegated to you. If you're more of a frontline director or a manager level in a functional area, the CEO is usually telling you what to do, or a VP is telling you what to do. If you're a vp, you're usually deciding with your support who you're at, what you're going to be doing. And the C level is usually deciding and letting the CEO know what's happening. So they come in with a little bit more autonomy than normal as well. What tends to happen as well is quite often now we've had a lot of title inflation over the last 25 years, and I think prior to the Internet really kind of growing around 97, 98, to be a traditional C level, you had to be a major player at a major company. But all of a sudden when emails came about, we recognized that the title was a door opener. So companies starting with the banks started giving away vice president titles early. I Remember back in 98, a friend of mine, 24 years old, had a vice president title at the bank and he goes, yeah, but I'm seven layers below the CEO. And that's when it kind of dawned on me. So that title inflation began to happen and CEOs or entrepreneurs kind of said, oh, it doesn't matter what people's titles are. Yeah it does. Because that COO or that CFO or CMO goes on Google. They go on ChatGPT. They go on indeed. And they do salary comp reviews and they looked at, wow, a COO is supposed to be making 350. Why are you paying me 130? I'm paying you 130 because you're actually a director. Well then why did you call me a COO if I'm actually a director? So you really have to put the title in place that matches the roles and responsibilities, the comp that you're willing to give people as well as those kind of first five criteria that we laid out. If you're the COO or second command to the CEO of a company doing minimum 2 million in revenue, come check us out@cooalliance.com and welcome home. About six years ago, I was coaching a company that went on to become the number one company to work for in the state of Florida. And I coached them from about 40 people up to 600 over four years. And when they got to about the 500, 600 mark, we realized we had to retitle almost everyone in the organization because there were early stage vice presidents that by the time we got to 600 people, they were really more of a director. And then we had other people that probably could have become more senior. So on a single day we put all the employees into a spreadsheet and we retitled every single person. We literally ripped off the band aid. Some people got to keep the same title, some got an elevation, some got a drop. And we had to explain to everybody why it was being done. It was a very painful process. But yeah, the titles do have a cost to it. They do have an implication. We really managed the internal comms and the culture of the company was so strong. Right. It just ranked as the number one company to work for in the state of Florida. It had also just ranked as the entrepreneur of the year by Ernst and Young. So it was such a strong cult like environment, it's called Blue Grace Logistics, that I don't think anybody wanted to leave because they knew that there was nowhere really to go. But we had to really manage the expectations and explain that it really wasn't to do with them. They hadn't done anything wrong. It was just us getting the company into the right stage. For the next stage of growth because we'd gone through this very rapid hyper growth from 40 people up to 600 in four years. It was just kind of part of that thing that had to happen.
