ASSOCIATE VP OF ... WHAT?

Friends of the Blog were good enough to alert me to a message JFNA shared with its constituencies last week:

"This week's Shabbat Message is written by Shayna Kreisler, Senior Director of National Young Leadership Cabinet. Shayna is moving into a new role at JFNA as the Associate Vice President of Lay Leadership." (Emphasis added)

Perhaps JFNA, where budgets are stretched to the limit, is rewarding its professionals with titles instead of cash. One thing I'm certain of, confirmed by this announcement, is that JFNA employs an Associate Vice President of Titles. A very special talent is needed to constantly come up with titles like these.

I hearkened back to one of the organizations I once led where, in another time of austerity, I suggested that, in lieu of a raise, we promote our Chef to Senior Vice President of Lunch. (Of course, this left open the possibility, at the next review, of upping that position to SVP of Lunch and Dinner.) As I recall, in response to this offer our Chef left the organization.

Creative "titling" is not unique to JFNA; it permeates our communities as well. For example, there is now a proliferation of Chief Impact Officers in communities around the Continent. With a title that vague, how does one measure success? One Large City of which I'm familiar has a Chief Creative Officer who, at another time, another era might have been called the SVP Marketing and Communications (or perhaps not). That same Federation has a Senior Vice-President, Donor Relations f/k/a Campaign or Development Director but Campaign is, as we have learned, not something we like to highlight let alone talk about.

Some have suggested that these creative efforts are the ultimate victory of the bureaucracy, the technocracy over real, measured and measurable achievement. Distracted by bright, shiny objects, these organizations spew out their own sets of distractions.

After all, no matter the constancy of the pleas, so many federations continue to refuse to send on to JFNA current on-going FRD results. Clearly, it's not because the data aren't available; it's that either those communities which refuse to send them on to JFNA are either embarrassed by the interim and final totals or don't trust them with JFNA...or both. (In the UJA era and in the early years post-merger, the Campaign Department used to receive those reports as one way to identify communities that needed greater continental investment and became the focus of UJA/Campaign deployment of professional and lay leadership... needless to say, not any more.)

To me, the proliferation more and more creative titles is nothing more painting lipstick on that pig. BTW, Associate Vice-President of Lunch is still available.

Rwexler