Ive become a big fan of Umair Haques blog. (If you havent added his to your RSS feeds, I hope you will.) Over the last couple weeks Umair has been leading a lively discussion about hacking an industry in other words, rethinking all the fundamental assumptions upon which the industry is built from the ground up.

Recently, Ive been thinking a lot about redesigning our organizations I guess Umair might call this hacking the enterprise because I dont think incremental change is the answer. We need to question some of the fundamental assumptions upon which our organizations are built.

Ive already written about one big rethink the need to switch from defining jobs in terms of hours or time to task-based definitions. For those of you who would like to think about the application of this concept further in your business, check out a newly released book by two people who have tried it, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke--the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific. The authors, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, were the architects of a switch to task, not time at Best Buy.

Now, heres another hack idea: do we really need titles?

Today titles serve two purposes one is to identify to others (customers, colleagues within the organization) to whom they should look for specific actions or decisions. The other is to recognize our progress up the organization.

The first purpose, I think, is vitally important in a next generation organization actually increasingly so. One of the key findings of the research weve done on collaboration is that collaboration occurs when responsibilities and roles are clearly defined. A key job of leaders is to sort out who is responsible for what. Leaving this to the group to sort out for themselves, or having loosely overlapping roles while it seems to many that it would promote collaboration is in fact highly detrimental. Function-based titles editor of the company newsletter, manager of the sales team, accountant for the west coast operations are more essential than ever.

But titles that recognize our progress up an organization need to be re-thought hacked.

Lets start with up. Many of the employee-related principles in todays organizations are predicated on the assumption that the employee population is a numerical pyramid a small number of older people, a medium number of middle-age people, and a large number of younger people. This was an accurate description of the workforce throughout the Twentieth Century. But, the shape is changing rapidly, moving toward a rectangle an almost equal number of older and younger people in the workforce. As this change occurs, it will become increasingly impossible to move people up often enough to provide enough variety and opportunity for increased compensation.

In addition, as weve discussed in the past, many younger employees arent particularly interested in up they prefer challenge and variety, but dont care much about managerial responsibility. Up is out.

Now, with regard to recognize lets be real, in many cases, this translates to cements. Giving people titles that correspond to organizational levels serves to lock corporations and individuals in to levels of compensation and assumed prestige and prevents us from doing some of the things that organizations need and many people want. Moving out of high pressure roles, decelerating at points throughout ones career. Trying something new that is technically lateral. Next generation enterprises need to provide the flexibility for people to step up, step back, move sideways, and try new things for the good both of the organization and the individual.

Similarly, what is progress? Today many people want to define that for themselves in terms of what they are learning, how much theyre enjoying the journey, or the vision they have for where theyd like to end up. A path of progress defined by the organization is a presumption that everyone would like to follow a similar route.

Bottom line: I suggest we define names for tasks, but recognize that individuals will move from task to task, without carrying an organizational title on their backs.

What do you think? Can you imagine this working in your organization? Why or why not?

And what other deeply embedded assumptions do we have about organizations that need to be questioned? What shall we hack next?