Global Heads?

Reminds me of the big shake-up we once had in job titles. A few lucky people ended up with business cards identifying them as "Center Head", which sounds like something you'd call someone in an eighth-grade schoolyard fight.

Others became various kinds of "Leader": there were "Relationship Leaders" (called RLs), "Team Leaders" (TLs), and "Operations Leaders" (who got giggled at when we mentioned them to our colleagues in Japan, where "OL" is a longstanding abbreviation for "Office Lady" and refers to someone who gets the coffee and runs other errands).

I observed at the time that "leader" can also be defined as "the piece of blank tape at the beginning of a cassette that you can't record anything on".

A "center head" is also part of a combination square set, used to find centers, mark diameters, etc., of circular objects.

While I certainly appreciate the difference you point out, Glenn, I think that, somehow, the term "Global Head of Sales" makes more sense. I think we in the U.S. have some kind of default response that interprets most things as inherently domestic, excluding other nations. Thus "Global Head of Sales" connotes a person who is "Head of Sales" for the entire globe, whereas "Head of Global Sales" connotes a person who is in charge of sales around the globe, but excluding the domestic sales market. And I think this is a natural, sort of tribalist response to what we hear — we hear ourselves as implied in some things. I think it becomes clearer if you were to substitute "International" for "Global": "International Head of Sales" seems to immediately mean something different from "Head of International Sales."

Maybe it is an idiosyncrasy of mine, but I can't get rid of that image of a bulbous cranium. I will recognize it as a personal quirk and move on.

Thanks all.