The Job That Ate the Dictionary

Portfolio Scope:

"The CIMO leads the organisation’s impact and movement portfolio. This means catalising systems transformation beyond businesses’ adoption of core products - orchestrating movement building and collective action, strategic partnerships and fundraising, brand and communications leadership, policy and advocacy, and programmes that demonstrate systemic change. By combining external influence with internal narrative, the CIMO ensures the organisation shows up in the world as both a credible standards organisation and a catalyst for economic transformation that creates the conditions for an economy that works for people and the planet."

I occasionally read job adverts for entertainment. Not because I am looking for work, you understand. More because every so often you stumble across a masterpiece of modern language, the kind where each sentence appears to mean something until you actually try to translate it into English.

This one begins by announcing responsibility for an “impact and movement portfolio”. I confess that at this point I pictured a sort of leather briefcase containing several carefully organised movements. Perhaps climate in the left pocket, economic transformation in the right, and a spare systemic change tucked under the flap in case the first two misfire.

The successful applicant will apparently “catalise systems transformation”. Now catalysts are very useful things in chemistry, but they normally work because someone has built a reactor, assembled the chemicals and applied some heat. Here the catalytic process appears to involve strategic partnerships, internal narrative and the organisation “showing up in the world”, which sounds less like chemistry and more like a motivational poster in a co working space.

Then comes the job scope. Brand leadership, communications, fundraising, policy, advocacy, partnerships and programmes demonstrating systemic change. In most places that would describe half the executive team. Here it is rolled together into one heroic figure who will presumably stride through the corridors each morning transforming entire economic systems before coffee.

My favourite line is the bit about “combining external influence with internal narrative”. In ordinary language that means making sure the story the organisation tells about itself matches the story it tells everyone else. Which, when you strip away the incense and chanting, is more or less what every marketing department has done since the invention of the leaflet.

The whole thing has a faintly theatrical feel to it. One imagines a meeting where someone says, “What we really need is someone to run partnerships and communications,” and another person replies, “Yes, but could we frame that as catalising global systems transformation?” After which everyone nods thoughtfully and reaches for the oat milk lattes.

Of course there probably is a real job buried somewhere under all this. Most likely it involves raising money, talking to politicians, managing some NGOs and ensuring the organisation appears in enough conferences and press releases to remain visible. Perfectly respectable work, if described plainly.

But that would never do. You cannot advertise for someone to run partnerships and communications when you could instead recruit a Chief Impact and Movement Officer responsible for redesigning the global economy.

Still, it does make one wonder what the Monday morning briefing looks like.

“Right then. Before lunch we’ll catalise systemic economic transformation. After that we’ll orchestrate a bit of collective action. And if there’s time before tea, we’ll make sure the organisation shows up in the world.”