The Deep Draft

I recently decided to dive into LinkedIn. About 10 years ago, I tried Facebook but I left it behind. To me, it felt like a place where socially lonely people were trying to prove something they weren’t even sure of. Since then, I’ve stayed away from social media altogether. Stepping into LinkedIn now feels like entering a parallel universe where everyone is a strategic leader, a visionary innovator, and apparently a problem solver. Which makes me wonder… all these years, have I actually been a problem creator?

For most of my career, my profile picture showed me in a boiler suit, the classic uniform of a seafarer. My headline, posted more than a decade ago, was “Part-time sailor, full-time husband.” Honest, simple, and with a dash of cheek. It even got some likes back then… and amusingly, a few of today’s self-proclaimed Thought Leaders seem to have borrowed it. Can’t lie, it gave me a feel-good moment. Fast-forward to today: I’ve swapped in a coat and a sly smile. My headline now reads something like this:

Master Mariner | 25 Years at Sea | 12 Years in Command | Trainer | Freelancer

I’ve stepped onto the LinkedIn “stage,” and quickly realized that it’s less of a professional network and more of a buzzword jungle gym.

The Buzzword Jungle

Scroll for five minutes, and you’ll be bombarded with corporate catchphrases. My favorites include:

• Strategic Leadership  – Because plain “leadership” apparently lacks pizzazz.
• Visionary Innovator – Spotting the obvious is so 2010. Predicting the future… or at least next quarter’s KPIs.
• Change Agent  – Corporate superhero, minus the cape, plus a PowerPoint nobody asked for.
• Operational Excellence  –  Implies everyone else is napping in the break room. Efficiency: their alleged superpower.
• Dynamic Professional  – Static professionals need not apply. Basically, corporate acrobats.
• Thought Leader  – Orwell’s dystopia called; they want their hashtag back. Leading thoughts, one vague post at a time.
• Results-Oriented Professional - As opposed to the “results-averse” crowd? Congrats on doing your job.
• Transformation Leader  – Big title, small change. Most transformations stop at the logo.
• Blockchain Evangelist - “I manage crypto spreadsheets”. Preaching the gospel of decentralized jargon instead.
• Chief Happiness Officer  – Paid to force smiles in Zoom meetings. Headshot game: flawless.
• Synergy  - Collaboration’s cooler cousin. Meetings now breed innovation.
• Disruptive  – So overused it’s now just background noise. Everyone’s disrupting… clarity.
• Growth Hacking  – Marketing, but faster, louder, and with more buzzwords. “Strategy” is too mainstream.
• Content Is King - Everyone shouts it; most posts are recycled TED Talk quotes.
• Sustainability - Talking the talk, but walking the walk? Not so much..
• Woke  – Once a movement, now a corporate badge. “I read half a DEI article” vibes.
• Digital Nomad Guru  – Works from a beach, brags about Wi-Fi speed. Productivity? Questionable.
• Serial Entrepreneur - Started 17 ventures, none you’ve heard of. Hustle is their brand.
• AI-Powered, Future-Proofing, Go-To-Market Strategy, Big Data, Sustainability -Modern filler phrases to sound cutting-edge, even when the substance is thin.

Some headlines are so stuffed with “dynamic,” “strategic,” and “innovative” that you start to suspect their keyboards only have two keys: buzzword and synergy. One particularly exuberant headline made me put down my coffee:

“Driving cross-functional synergy through visionary strategic leadership while optimizing dynamic operational excellence in a global paradigm-shifting ecosystem.”

I had to ask myself: do they actually do anything, or just string together buzzwords to sound impressive?

Enter Orwell

And then there’s Thought Leader. Every time I see it, I think of Orwell’s 1984. In the fiction, Orwell had Thought Police; in reality we have Thought Leaders. Same obsession with controlling what people think, only with polished headshots, newsletters, and grand promises to “disrupt paradigms.” If you haven’t read the book yet, I highly recommend it. It’s a brilliant reminder of how language, titles, and narratives can shape thought.

The irony? Gather 300 LinkedIn Thought Leaders in a virtual room, and you’d get 300 solemn nods… and zero agreement on anything. As Orwell wrote:

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

It’s the corporate version of a dystopia: all signals, no substance.

Back on Deck

As a Master Mariner, when the phone rings at 2 a.m., you have minutes to reach the bridge, adjust to near-dark conditions, assess the situation, and make a decision. On a VLCC, a single mistake can have catastrophic consequences…enough that I won’t even attempt to describe them here.

Deck officers, chief officers, and captains operate as a team. Every decision, every maneuver, every alert, every order has real-world consequences. There’s no need to announce that you’re a dynamic change agent of operational excellence; the work speaks for itself.

LinkedIn, by contrast, often feels half-resume, half-theater. Some people genuinely achieve remarkable things. Others craft meticulously polished mythologies, piling buzzwords like frosting on a cake that doesn’t exist. It’s a stark contrast between real responsibility at sea and curated performance online.

So What’s My Title?

Having swapped my boiler suit for something sharper, I might as well play along. Perhaps:

• Strategic Thought Leader of Dynamic Operational Excellence
• Visionary Agent of Paradigm-Shifting Change
• Master Mariner & Captain of Synergistic Team Happiness
• Problem Creator, First Class, my personal favorite

This highlights a curious trend: the longer and more abstract your headline, the more “senior” it appears. Titles like “Senior Vice President of Strategic Excellence and Innovation” look impressive. And that’s usually enough. Nobody actually asks what you do, the title does all the talking.

Final Thoughts

LinkedIn is like the ocean. Some people chart real courses. Others rearrange the bosun’s stores but do it strategically, dynamically, and with operational excellence.

Me? I’m still a sailor at heart. Just sporting a crisp suit and sly grin. Every now and then, I sprinkle wit and authenticity into my headline. Because in a galaxy full of Strategic Thought Leaders, the rarest title is the one that still sounds human, without needing a buzzword glossary.