[slackingoff2017]

What I've learned after a lot of pain is that you can't convince anyone of anything. I've poured years of my life into shitty organizations to try to "fix" them and gotten nowhere.

The people that disagree with you will find ways to slowly peel back all your achievements. In a badly run organization the problem isn't the outdated machines and processes or the shitty products. Those are symptoms of shitty people and management.

If you want to fix an organization the surest way is to fire everyone in management. If you can't do that the best thing you can do for yourself is leave immediately.

[cjcenizal]

You sound disillusioned, and I can empathize. Based on similar experiences, I've come to the understand that we're not trying to change individuals, we're trying to change culture. And cultures have inertia. All we can do to change a culture is to simply exist within it. It's not reasonable to have any expectations because we're just single points of influence among hundreds -- too many factors beyond our control. But by lowering expectations perhaps we can find satisfaction in making a small impact on one or two individuals around us. Celebrate the small wins.

[slackingoff2017]

Definitely jaded. I have been in charge of a couple smaller organizations and worked with some smart people for years to turn them around. In the most memorable case there were simply too many of the "old guard" left when I departed victorious and within a year they had it running just as badly as before. My biggest mistake was not getting rid of all the people that made it bad in the first place. I promoted and shifted them into places where they couldn't screw anything up but they stepped out of the caves the day I left town.

Even years of increasing membership, better benefits, virtually every metric increasing steadily was not enough to convince these people that the changes happening were positive. They wanted to do things "their way".

When I came back a year later I saw our shiny new equipment collecting dust in the corner. A few of the old guard were in the middle of a demonstration on how to pretend that it's still the 17th century. The smart new managers I brought in were gone.

Watching that place boomerang so fast struck a chord in me. The only time I'll agree to run anything now is when I have total control of what happens beneath me. Build little slices of heaven surrounded by towers of corporate bullshit. My long term goal is to build my own company but meager attempts so far haven't worked out.

I couldn't change people's opinions even with years of bulletproof evidence that they were wrong. Maybe a few of them individually, but a very small percentage of the group. They simply went along with things until they had an opportunity to change then back to how they liked them. I now 100% understand why management is gutted when a company changes hands.