A word from the Executive Vice-President of Word-Processing Initiatives

I sometimes have fantasies about what the killer title to have on my business card would be. Most of us do this, usually in the context of imagining bumping into an odious former boss, or the girl who used to pick on us on the school bus when we were five. "How am I doing? Oh, fine, here's my card, we must have lunch together".... and with a samurai flash of card displaying a title that left no room for doubt as to your importance and wealth, you would completely destroy their self-worth.

The problem is that very few titles actually pass muster. There is something rather laughable about being Chairman and Founder of a company that only includes yourself. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, I met someone yesterday who introduced himself as Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives for the Industry Business Line.

He had recently been promoted and was clearly extremely pleased with himself. I didn't like to point out that:

1) Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives implies there is likely to be a president, a senior vice-president or even an executive vice-president also in charge of strategic initiatives. That sounds like a lot of people in charge of some initiatives.

2) What are strategic initiatives anyway? They sound pretty lame. A strategy has oomph. A programme at least sounds concrete. Initiatives sound like lots of people sitting around in a room talking about whether or not something is a good idea, which, let's face it, if there are three vice-presidents in charge of the same thing is likely to be true.

The golden rule is that no title should be longer than three words, otherwise it isn't a proper job. Chief Executive - only two words. Chairman - even better, only one. (Marketing & Communications Director is just about ok, but only if you cheat and don't count the ampersand).

Of course this is heresy to most senior company executives, or indeed Americans, who are all senior vice-president of something. There is also a theory that in a recession, companies can't give people pay rises so they try fobbing them off with fancy titles instead. My advice is, don't fall for the trick. Demand the extra cash.

And if you do want to argue a title change, go simple. My absolute favourite is the head of the National Theatre. He's simply called The Director. What else do you need?