Too many chiefs

Well, I'm finally getting Change Magic ready for release to the reviewers, so I thought I'd share a short chapter with you.

Years ago, we used to hear the phrase that a top heavy organisation had “too many Chiefs and not enough Indians”, referring to the hierarchy of a tribe of native American Indians.

I just had a funny thought, and it doesn’t really have a message for you, but I thought I’d share it with you just to brighten your day.

You know, being a Change Magician sometimes means that you think of brightening someone’s day, just because you can.

Anyway, I was looking at some company information and it struck me that companies used to have Managing Directors, and then a few years ago we seemed to be invaded by job titles such as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Finance Officer, Chief Operations Officer, and so on. And it suddenly struck me. Get out an organisation chart – yours if you have one – and count the Chiefs.

Now on the same organisation chart, count the number of job titles with the word “Indian” in them.

So after all of these years of business re-engineering, we finally have too many Chiefs and not enough Indians!