A few days back my cousin came home and asked me what I actually do as an AGM.

He said it casually.

“So what do you really do? How is that different from a manager? Sounds fancy.”

He wasn’t mocking.

He was curious.

But the question stayed with me.

Not because he asked what an AGM does.

But because of what the question revealed.

Why are we in India so obsessed with titles?

The Title Reflex

In our society, designation is social currency.

At weddings.
At family gatherings.
On LinkedIn.
Even on biodata.

We introduce people by rank.

“He is an IAS.”
“She is a VP.”
“He is only an executive.”

Only.

That one word exposes everything.

We don’t ask what problems they solve.
We ask what label they carry.

And psychologically, it makes sense.

In a country of 1.4 billion people, we need shortcuts.

Titles become heuristics. Mental filters.

They help us quickly sort who seems important.

But shortcuts are not truth.

They are convenience.

And convenience distorts judgment.

What an AGM Actually Does!

Since my cousin asked, let me answer clearly.

An Executive delivers assigned work.

A Manager ensures a team delivers work.

An AGM owns outcomes across functions. Budget, risk, performance, decisions.

Executives execute.
Managers coordinate.
AGMs carry accountability.

But here is the real point.

None of these titles automatically make someone intelligent.

They define scope.

Not substance.

Title Inflation Is Real

Here is the 2026 twist.

Titles are getting cheaper.

Startups hand out “VP” to 26 year olds. 😀
Companies inflate designations to compensate for lower pay.
LinkedIn bios grow faster than real skill.

Meanwhile, actual skill depth is becoming expensive.

AI, analytics, product thinking, capital allocation, negotiation, strategic clarity these are rare.

So we are living in a strange time.

Designations are inflating.
Competence is deflating.
And people are still chasing labels.

The Cost of Title Chasing

This is where it becomes dangerous.

People choose “Director” at a stagnant company over “Individual Contributor” at a high growth firm.

Why?

Because the title feels bigger.

Five years later, the market realizes something brutal.

The individual contributor at the rocket ship company built real leverage.

The Director built ego.

Title-first thinking creates career stagnation.

Because it optimizes for how you look.

Not for what you are becoming.

The Copy-Paste Career Problem

There is another layer.

We do not just compare titles.

We replicate stories.

Someone cleared UPSC.
Suddenly that becomes the template.

Someone joined Big 4.
That becomes the dream.

Someone moved abroad.
Now that becomes success.

But you cannot copy context.

You cannot copy timing.
You cannot copy someone’s risk tolerance.
You cannot copy their hunger.

When you copy someone’s path blindly, you inherit their strategy without their psychology.

That rarely works.

What Is Happening To Us?

Two extremes are visible.

We over-respect hierarchy.
And we under-respect substance.

A young founder generating real revenue might get less social validation than a mid-level officer with a stable title.

At the same time, a 45 year old executive level professional gets dismissed as “just an executive.”

Dignity should not depend on designation.

Character does not come with pay bands.

Intelligence does not scale with hierarchy.
The Shift We Need

The fix is not to pretend titles do not matter.

They do.

They signal scope. They signal responsibility. They help organizations function.

But they should not be doing our thinking for us.

When my cousin asked what an AGM does, I realized something uncomfortable.

If my answer was only about hierarchy, I had already lost.

The real answer was not about where I sit in the org chart.

It was about the weight I carry. The decisions I am accountable for. The consequences that land on my table.

That is the shift we need.

Your designation is the platform you’ve been given.

It is not the performer.

We have to stop scanning LinkedIn headlines like price tags and start paying attention to thinking quality.

How does this person behave in uncertainty?
How do they treat someone who cannot benefit them?
How do they respond when things break?

That is substance.

When you quietly focus on becoming difficult to replace instead of impressive to announce, something interesting happens.

Titles start becoming outcomes.

Not goals.

And we need to stop treating other people’s careers as blueprints.

Use them as references.

Extract patterns.

But do not inherit their ambitions blindly.

Because a Senior Director title at the wrong place can shrink you faster than an Individual Contributor role at the right place can grow you.

Final Thought

My cousin asked a simple question.

But it exposed something bigger.

We have built a system where we rank each other before we understand each other.

We admire prefixes.
We ignore depth.

Ask yourself something uncomfortable.

If your company disappeared tomorrow, what would remain?

Your skill.
Your judgment.
Your network.
Your reputation.
Your ability to solve problems.

A designation is a lease.

Substance is your legacy.

One is borrowed from the company.

The other is owned by you.

Build the person.

Not the prefix.

What is one title you chased that, in hindsight, did not change your life?

Mayank Kulshrestha