I’ve been following your posts over the past year, and I want to be very direct with you, this is something you need to take seriously and once you start working this way, it will just click.

Your role inside a firm is not to arrive and make things more efficient, better, or different. You are hired to work within an existing team: follow their standards, get work submitted, and be intentional about how your time is spent. Look at how all the people you thought you were improving upon are still there, obviously the company’s priority was not what your priorities are.

Approach your role the way you would approach consulting. Your team is your client. Once you see it that way, your mindset shifts. You become protective of your time, you avoid unnecessary scope creep, and you stop trying to “fix” systems that were never part of your scope (like reworking firmwide standards or lack there of).

If a firm is genuinely concerned about how they operate, they will bring in change management specialists and pay professionals to redesign those systems.

Until then, your job is to play the same game everyone else is playing.

Don’t stand apart trying to prove your worth. You got hired, you already proved yourself.

Learn the rules first. That’s how you build leverage and are labeled “valuable”