The What’s My Line panel would have been baffled by some of the job titles in common use today: data controller, head of compliance, sustainability director and anything connected to the digital world. More new titles will appear in our fast changing world. Most of the jobs that will be done in 20 years’ time have yet to be invented.

Colleagues care about what their job is called. It’s the answer to that regular question: “What do you do?” It’s asked at nearly every first meeting at parties, in a pub, at the golf club and on holiday. People feel more important if they can claim to be a sales manager or, even better, a sales director. In a lot of organisations, you don’t have to reach the top to be called a director. Indeed, I’ve come across one big business that employs 70 managing directors. Why not if it makes people feel better?

Giving a job a name can occasionally become very expensive – like when the top team starts drawing a new management chart, with every function fully covered. They then populate every box with a name. But this is the wrong way round. The better answer is found by starting with the people, deciding what they all should do and then creating a structure that puts them all together.

You don’t have to fill every empty box; we have survived without a marketing department for more than 30 years and, as a result, have saved a fortune on display material, advertising and market research. 

Then there’s the problem of the extra box that no one needs, with a strange title that no one understands. If you see “forward strategy coordinator” or “corporate plan delivery controller”, it will almost certainly be someone sidelined in a management reshuffle.

Too much time can be spent on defining every role. Job titles matter, but they don’t matter nearly as much as picking the right person for every job.

Sir John Timpson is chairman of the high-street services provider, Timpson.

Send him a question at askjohn@telegraph.co.uk and read more answers from his Ask John column here