Having done transformation work for the last 4 years I can tell you...the individual employee will almost certainly literally die of exhaustion before they see meaningful change.
Yup. I haven't done that type of work, but I feel like to make change at a large company you need to be okay with imperfection all around you first and then find one or two things that could actually make a huge impact. Trying to fix little things here and there is just an exercise in futility.
I can commiserate with this attitude but still find myself disagreeing. I have worked in the type of role where I was expected to lead a transformational change when it seems like the incentives at every level are aligned against it.
I do personally feel an obligation to keep trying because if I didn't I'm not doing my job. Throwing up my hands in exasperation means I'm collecting a pay check just to keep the status quo. That makes me part of the problem as well as resigning myself to be miserable. I think we owe it to ourselves and the organization to move on if we get to that point.
I think the saying is “frustration is a failure to manage expectations”.
I think often we get into organizations overestimating the impact we’ll have. It seems our impact can be inversely proportional to the size of the company. But that may be an artifact of how we define “meaningful change”
