Title-less Empowerment

Why not getting promoted was the best thing that ever happened to me

“Ascribing your self-worth to a title someone else gives you is like asking for permission to matter.”

— Author Unknown —

Prior to RiverNorth, I gave importance to climbing the corporate ladder: making partner by 35 felt somehow critical to my happiness. I tried to “play the game,” including vapid conversations with the bosses where I complimented their golf swings or finished their sentences to show we were in sync. And don’t get me wrong, I played the game really well — until I didn’t.

You know that inner voice that yearns for authenticity? Well, mine was more like a scream and she tended to come out in the most inopportune times. Like the time I asked a CEO publicly if he was being “penny wise and pound foolish” (which was true, just not tactful). Or the time I interrupted a room full of partners who were airing a co-worker’s’ personnel file by screaming, “ENOUGH!” It seems that no matter my ambition, my instinct to kiss down and kick up always won.

Although I still managed to climb the ladder, it was never as fast as I deserved (or maybe as I wanted). And with each missed or delayed promotion came self-doubt, defeat, and disengagement.

One evening over dinner with a friend, I was lamenting another missed promotion. He looked me dead in the eye and told me what only a true friend could: my self-worth was coupled -- nay, tangled -- with my title and it was not serving me well. I had allowed someone else’s judgments of me to determine my judgments of myself. This conversation changed my life, quite literally. It was at that moment that I began exploring concepts of title-less organizational structures with books like Reinventing Organizations and Holacracy. I became obsessed with the concept that if you strip away titles, what is left is true leadership, power, and value. It is on these principles that RiverNorth was eventually created.

Traditional corporate hierarchies (even ones that are self-proclaimed “flat” organizations) have several unavoidable truths. 

• Higher-ranking members (even benevolent ones) require deference because they determine the fate and rank of all other members. We’ve all sat through meetings where the egomaniac is allowed to take credit for all of your work simply because they are outrank you. 

• Titles imply experience and knowledge, regardless of capabilities. I become a professional eye-roller, cringing at inaccuracies masquerading as truth in the name of decorum.   

• Peers compete rather than collaborate. I once had a co-worker flat out lie about me punching her in the breakroom to try to get me out of her promotion-seeking path.  

The result of these truths is prioritizing transaction-based relationships over trust-based relationships; silenced voices at the bottom and a reticence to admit knowledge gaps at the top; and never truly knowing the value of your co-workers’ skills. 

This is why RiverNorth has taken title out of the equation. 

There are obvious tactical benefits: no more awkward performance evaluations from bosses, no more seating order at the conference table, no single person determining your pay raise. 

But beyond that, there are serious implications to self-worth. Without fear of repercussion, you speak up when you have the knowledge, experience, and skills to do so. Your value is measured by the number of people who follow your lead, not because they have to but because they are inspired to. Your job responsibilities are defined by the tasks you are capable of and enjoy, not by a predetermined job description written by HR. The core competencies you’re expected to exhibit are translated into universal principles of being a good person, not an arbitrary checklist of progressively more arrogant behaviors as your rank grows. In fact, rank at all is a foreign concept or at least a fleeting one, as your value is defined by interactions with colleagues instead of the intrinsic power of a title. 

Ricardo Semler, author and pioneering businessman, says it best:

“Bureaucracies are built by and for people who busy themselves proving they are necessary, especially when they suspect they aren’t.”

Corporate hierarchies are easy to create. What is harder is trusting your co-workers to make the right decisions when they have no company-given power. When everyone is valued equally, everyone is powerful and therefore responsible for earning the worth that is ascribed to them. 

After dinner with my friend, I spent three years on a quest to define what made me valuable beyond my title. I now define my self worth by the way I treat my co-workers with respect and empathy. By the smart insights I share openly without fear of reprisal. By the opportunities I seize to help others find their own power. And by the titles I’ve chosen for myself: mommy, wife, friend, and entrepreneur.