Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Iconoclast Insights, the podcast where we challenge the assumptions you've been taught to accept—and we do it sharply, professionally, and without apology.
Let me ask you something: when someone asks "What do you do?" how do you answer?
I'm willing to bet you respond with a title. A job title. Maybe even one with "Senior" or "Lead" in front of it.
And here's what bothers me about that: somehow we managed to take the most complex thing in the world—human identity—and compress it into one line on a business card.
Think about that for a moment.
The older I get, the more absurd that becomes. Because titles aren't identity. They're theater. They're shortcuts. Sometimes they're even distractions.
And yet most people cling to them as if their entire sense of self is printed right next to the company logo.
Today, I want to challenge that assumption. Because what I've discovered is that this confusion between titles and identity isn't just annoying—it's destroying careers, breaking hiring processes, and leaving talented people feeling empty when their label disappears.
CONTEXT
Today we're talking about something that affects every single person listening: the dangerous confusion between who you are and what your business card says.
This topic started with a LinkedIn post about the collapse of the Scrum Master job market. The author made a compelling case: companies recruited people with minimal experience, treated a two-day certification as mastery, and then acted shocked when the whole thing fell apart.
But what caught my attention wasn't the Scrum Master role specifically. It was the pattern underneath it. The blind trust in the title itself.
A title became the identity. A title became the expectation. A title became the hiring filter.
And real people—complex, skilled, multifaceted people—were squeezed into that shortcut.
So let's talk about why that's a problem. And more importantly, what we can do about it.
THE IDENTITY TRAP
There's a bigger phenomenon happening here. We've fused professional identity with job titles so tightly that removing the title feels like removing the self.
Watch what happens at any networking event:
"What do you do?"
"I'm a Senior Something."
"I'm a Lead Something Else."
"I'm a Vice President of Whatever."
The moment you answer, the other person thinks they understand you. And you think you've explained yourself.
But neither is true. You've simply exchanged labels—not meaning.
This is why job advertisements fail. This is why hiring fails. This is why careers feel so fragile.
Companies hire titles, not capabilities. Candidates apply with titles, not identities. And halfway through the first month, both sides realize they were talking about completely different things.
Here's what really bothers me: when someone asks, "Are you a Scrum Master?" the only possible answers are yes or no. Identity becomes binary. Capability becomes binary. Understanding becomes binary.
There's no room for "It depends on what problem you're trying to solve." There's no space for "There are many ways to facilitate flow and adaptation." There's no conversation about "Here's how I actually create value."
The title stops the real conversation before it even starts.
MY IBM STORY
Let me make this concrete with a story from my own career.
When I worked at IBM, I moved from project to project without ever hitting what we called "the bench"—that waiting zone between assignments where consultants sit idle. I delivered. I moved forward. I kept producing value.
At some point, I asked for a raise.
And do you know what I got offered?
A title.
A nice, shiny, impressive-sounding title. One that looks fantastic on LinkedIn. One that wins debates at family gatherings.
But here's the thing: titles don't pay rent. Titles don't buy groceries. Titles don't add value to your bank account.
When I pushed back and asked again, I was told about "the system." You only get a raise every second turn. In between turns, you get a title. First the title, then—eventually, if you're patient—the money.
I remember thinking: "So if I have to sit and wait anyway, why should I keep producing value project after project?"
I noticed something interesting: junior colleagues cared deeply about titles. They equated titles with identity, with belonging, with career progress. Seniors? They were far less impressed.
And then there was the marketing theater.
My business card said "Managing Consultant." Sounds important, right?
Until I met someone from Reuters whose card read "Senior Executive." I thought, "Wow, this must be someone high up in the organization."
At lunch, he laughed and told me the truth: "Executive is what we call new hires. They're the ones who execute tasks. It's nowhere near an Executive Officer, but it sounds really impressive."
Titles as branding. Titles as costume design. Titles as illusions.
That conversation was another brick in the wall for me—pushing me further away from seeing titles as meaningful indicators of anything real.
WHY TITLES FAIL US
Titles are designed to simplify, but simplification becomes dangerous when it replaces understanding.
This shows up clearly in the Scrum Master example. Companies said, "We need a Scrum Master," as if the title itself described capability. It didn't. It couldn't.
The result? A collapsed job market. Disillusioned practitioners. Organizations that realized they hired the label, not the competencies behind it.
Identity suffers the same fate. When your title changes, you feel lost. When a title disappears from your industry, people feel empty. When you cling to a label, you stop exploring who you actually are.
Modern careers are fluid, dynamic, unstable. When identity is glued to something so temporary, it collapses right along with it.
And here's the cruel irony: in a world that's becoming genuinely more complex, we respond by oversimplifying even harder. We compress human capability into a single word. We reduce problem-solving into a job title. We pretend that understanding someone's value is as simple as reading their email signature.
It's intellectual laziness dressed up as efficiency.
WHAT'S ON MY BUSINESS CARD NOW
You might be wondering: after all these experiences, what's on my business card today?
After IBM, after the Reuters encounter, after years of watching titles mislead more than they clarify, I decided to do something different.
I put "Strategic Opposition Coach" on my card. That's what I actually do. It's not a hierarchy signal. It's not a corporate rank. It's a description of how I challenge people to think differently.
But I knew that alone wouldn't spark the right conversations. It needed context. It needed meaning.
So I added: "Your Thinking Creates Your Limits."
That line stops people. It makes them pause. It makes them ask, "What does that mean?"
Now the conversation is about meaning, not marketing. About identity, not labels. About what I actually do, not what box I fit into.
Does that mean I've solved the title problem? No. But it means I'm no longer reduced to corporate shorthand. It means the conversation starts from a different place—a more honest place.
THE REAL PROBLEM TO SOLVE
Here's what organizations need to understand: you should hire by stating problems to be solved, not titles to be filled.
Imagine if job postings said this instead:
"We need someone who can help teams navigate conflict and find sustainable working rhythms. We need someone who can spot dysfunction before it becomes crisis. We need someone who can facilitate difficult conversations without imposing solutions."
Now candidates can respond with their real identity. Now they can say, "Here's how I've solved similar problems. Here's my approach. Here's the value I create."
That's a conversation worth having. That's hiring based on understanding, not assumption.
But when you post "Scrum Master wanted," what are you really asking for? A certification? A resume keyword? Someone who's held that exact title before?
You're not hiring a person. You're hiring a label. And labels don't solve problems. People do.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
Before you introduce yourself with a title, pause.
Before you judge someone by their business card, pause.
Before you hire based on a role name, pause.
Ask yourself—and others—the only questions that actually matter:
What is the real work behind the title?
Who are you beyond the label?
What problems do you solve, and how do you solve them?
Because identity is more than titles. It always has been. We just forgot.
We got lazy. We got comfortable with shortcuts. We started believing that complexity could be compressed into a single word without losing everything that matters.
I'm not saying I have this figured out. I'm not claiming my approach is perfect. But I am saying this: we need to stop pretending that titles are identity. We need to stop hiring labels and start hiring people. We need to stop introducing ourselves as what we're called and start explaining what we actually do.
The world is complicated. People are complicated. Value creation is complicated.
And no single title will ever capture that complexity.
So stop trying.
Closing
Thanks for listening to Iconoclast Insights, where we challenge the assumptions most people never question.
If today's episode made you rethink your own titles—or someone else's—then we're already creating the kind of meaningful friction that leads to clarity.
Until next time: think before you act.
