What if your job title described what you really do?

Chattanooga, Tennessee has the fastest internet in the U.S.

I did not know that. Did you?

“The government and city are really, really pro entrepreneur and social media and all those things...they have a very big entrepreneurial and tech hub—a lot of goodness going on.”

That's what Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer for Vaynermedia, a full service digital agency doing creative social digital strategy for a lot of Fortune 50 brands, shared with me when I interviewed her on The Disrupt Yourself Podcast.

We weren’t really talking about Tennessee—or fast internet, for that matter. We were talking about that title she bears—Chief Heart Officer. I’m an advocate for reimagining job titles to better reflect what we do in the day-to-day so Silver was an obvious target for investigation. How did the title come about and what is it that she actually does?

First, a little background. Silver has enjoyed an accomplished career with a number of name-brand agencies. She was with JWT in San Francisco, running the digital department at the beginning of 2009, when the economy was crumbling.

“I got a phone call from a very posh sounding British gentleman on the other end of the phone [it was the CEO of Publicis, London], and he said, ‘I understand we need someone with your skillsets.’ I was confident enough—by the hair of my chinny chin chin—to not say, ‘What skills do you mean?’ I said, ‘Great, when do you need me there?’ I packed up my bags; I put my stuff into storage on the heel of my 40th [birthday] and moved to London.”

After two years she moved back to San Francisco and then her boss from JWT moved to Publicis, London and hired her back—she was like a yo-yo performing around-the-world.

Then a close friend introduced her to Gary Vaynerchuk, co-Founder and CEO of Vaynermedia. They clicked; “You could tell there was chemistry on the phone call...You know when you feel that chemistry with someone and that you are going to raise the vibration on this planet in some way, shape or form—with people, with purpose.”

Silver came on board as an SVP at Vaynermedia. The business was young; employees were few. She built a team, not just in size but in esprit de corps. “At team meetings we would do everything from show-and-tell to reading poetry; it was that special. Team is extremely, extremely important to me. Extremely. I think of myself as a servant leader and so everything is about team.”

A year in Silver realized that though she was having a wonderful time growing and developing this team, overall she was dissatisfied.

“I wasn’t living my purpose...My purpose is to be of joyful service and I wasn’t doing that full time. I was still having to educate clients...or talk to clients about what their brand equity pyramid was all about and all of those things that are super, super important in marketing and I had a wonderful career of doing it as a strategist, but it no longer fed me.”

Life has its seasons, and so do the various roles we assume in our careers. For Silver, that season was past. “I politely resigned.” She told Vaynerchuk, “I’m done with this portion of my life. I only care about the heartbeat of this place. I only care about the people.”

In the fullness of time, Vaynerchuk created the position of Chief Heart Officer for Silver to “spread the empathetic blanket.” She manages and changes the corporate culture of Vaynermedia by spending time with every single employee.

The title, Silver says, “fits my personality to a tee. If there is ever another person I’m sure that they would morph into their own version of a CHO, but it works very well for me and I wear it with pride. Sometimes people think I say Chief Art Officer, or Heart, like, ‘Oh, isn’t that sweet,’ not really realizing the magnitude of 800 people.”

Vaynermedia isn’t brand new and tiny anymore. It employees a lot of hearts for Claude Silver to look after. She claims that “ninety-five percent of the decisions we make are based around people rather than finances.”

One of the key points to be made about this unconventional title and the unconventional corporate culture that it represents is that it appears to be very successful. Vaynermedia isn’t looking out for people at the expense of profit; they look out for people and that watch-care strengthens the bottom line. They are growing fast.

“We have a full suite of media services here. We are the real deal. We compete with [all of the big agencies]. Speed is our Number One KPI. Everything we do is to basically surround our people with EQ, with empathy, with passion, emotion, self-awareness, so that at the end of the day it really results in loyalty, longevity, resilience and speed.”

Whether working in corporate headquarters in New York City or Chattanooga, Tennessee in the sultry south, or the other Vaynermedia outlets in Los Angeles, Denver, and London, every employee is on Silver’s radar. She has strategies for identifying her people’s pain points, figuring out who’s suffering, who needs to be swarmed by the people in their ecosystem and setting that swarm in motion. She acknowledges birthdays, anniversaries and other significant events. In ways large and small she keeps a finger on the pulse of employee well-being. “We surround them with as much goodness as we can.”

Learn more about Claude Silver and the life of a Chief Heart officer by listening to the Disrupt Yourself Podcast.

Ready for a content upgrade?

I'm trying an experiment with this week's podcast. I've created a content upgrade with takeaways from my conversation with Claude, as well as some questions you might want to ask about the culture in your workplace - especially if you are in a position to influence it. Click here to get the content upgrade.