I have recently relocated from the UK to the US to help influence the culture of a relatively recent acquisition (2020, done mid-Covid so not really able to influence from a distance). My role is commercially focused, looking after existing clients and focused on winning repeat orders and scouting for new opportunities. I’ve worked at my company for 10 years, and actually enjoy working there. I have a reasonably high profile job with exposure to all of the Exec team, however I am not classed as being in the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and have no direct reports. I regularly bring in multi-million dollars worth of business each year.
The US site has a pretty poor work culture I think from its previous owners (massive blame culture, excessive micromanagement, emails expected out of hours, excessively long workdays, everything is a priority, no transparency to our customers, zero communication between SLT and staff, etc). About half of the SLT have been at the site for a long time. The site head is the very epitome of the site culture, and sits in the Executive Team so appears to be untouchable. He gate-keeps multiple things and does not delegate.
Our parent company has a very different culture; open and transparent communication internally and externally, job role autonomy, expert to expert communication encouraged, bigger picture frequently discussed, basic trust, etc. Hence my move to the US site, to try and encourage these behaviours and introduce them to my value adding specialist role that they have not had at the site before.
In short, after 8 months I am getting nowhere and appear to have little support from the site SLT or my UK colleagues. Advice from my line manager is “get stuck in”. Helpful /s. Nothing is changing, and there appears to be no appetite to change. I am being funnelled into a different role from my original role because of “site needs”, which I was essentially told “suck it up” when I mentioned the additional admin tasks I was having to do that aren’t my job distracting from me building customer trust and winning more business for the site.
Has anyone else managed to encourage and implement what is effectively a massive culture change whilst still having to work in their regular roles (plus extras)? How do I go about securing help without it sounding like I’m moaning?
Is this just how Corporate America is? Do I have a hope in hell of changing things, or should I just wait out my tenure and keep getting paid to do my normal job and maintain my own personal boundaries?