Draft/Staff titles

This page intends to give a short summary of the meaning of staff titles in general - to make the staff environment better insightful to those who are not as familiar with the relevant terminology. Staff members get a title based on their job description, usually consisting of a general title followed by a specific (section of a) department.

The general titles being used are:


 * Executive Director (ED): There is one Executive Director, and this is the highest ranking staff member, equivalent to CEOs in other organizational systems. The ED reports directly to the Board of Trustees and forms together with the Deputy Director the executive branch.
 * Deputy Director (DD): There is one deputy director.  . This position reports to the Executive Director.
 * Chief (C): Chiefs (including General Counsel) lead different departments within the organization and report directly to the Executive Director. The current Chief roles include: Chief Community Officer, Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Chief Global Development Officer, Chief of Finance and Administration, and General Counsel. Chiefs have anywhere from a handful to a significant chunk of the organization reporting to them. In general, they have the widest span of control.
 * Deputy General Counsel (DGC): There is one Deputy General Counsel, and is the principle second-in-command to the General Counsel and who reports to the General Counsel. Within WMF, Deputies can act in lieu of their chiefs when necessary. Other counsel in the organization report to the DGC
 * Controller (CT): There is one Controller, and the title is specific to Finance organizations. The Controller oversees accounting and implementing and monitoring internal controls, independently of the CFO and reporting to the CFO. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller
 * Director (D): There are roughly Y directors, sometimes also called .  
 * Head of (H): "Head of" designates a leadership position approximately equivalent to "Director" but with a slightly narrower, deeper scope in regards to the area that they are head of. For example, "Head of Communications" has a pretty deep focus on communications. They tend to have less than a handful of people reporting to them.
 * Manager (M): This is the general designation for people who manage or oversee the work of other people and contractors.
 * Lead (L):

Other Terms:
 * Senior: Senior is a respectful nod to advanced skills or years of experience in a specialization area. It may mean that they're paid more because of said experience. This doesn't imply that they manage other people.
 * Consultant: WMF hires a number of contractors to support us in getting work done in specific areas. Contractors and consultants are pretty interchangeable at the moment, though we are looking at greater differentiation as we're discovering different types of contract work.
 * Contractor vs staff: The difference between contractors and staff has to do with the length of their employment contracts, whether we hire them indefinitely or we hire them (as contractors) for short-term, specific contracts.
 * Associate
 * Coordinator
 * Legal Interns: We have legal interns, specifically law school students who spend some time working in our legal department on specific projects.
 * Storyteller: This is a WMF specific title referring to...
 * Assistant (and Executive Assistant):
 * Counsel: The term used to refer to our lawyers.
 * Liaison:

to include somewhere: how much independent decision making goes with which role generally. Budget relevant practices (who sets budgets for their department). Departments that are different?


 * note, Gayle Young is working on a new staff page with a hierarchy of sorts so that it is easy to see who reports to whom, colloborating with her here would be a good idea. :) -- The   Helpful   One
 * I set up this page on Gayle's suggestion and sent the link to her. You might be pleased to know that especially the "blah" part was her suggestion ;-) Effeietsanders 11:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I apologize for how long it's taken me to start working on this page. We've been in process of kicking off our annual planning and budgeting process, so this is very relevant. Thank you!

Would it perhaps make sense to make 'deputy XYZ' a more general description? We have several deputy descriptions in the sheet now - and it would be nice if we could make it a bit more simple to grasp. Effeietsanders 10:17, 12 May 2012 (UTC)