Why Good Systems Get Rejected in Broken Organizations

A first-person look at what really stops companies from embracing efficiency — and what to do about it.

Day one at my new job.

Fear. Panic. Existential dread.

I hadn’t worked in an office in almost a decade, and the thought of submitting to the daily 9-to-5 grind had me spiraling.

My neurodivergence was in full swing — the grey cubicles, constant keyboard clacking, and soulless hum of fluorescent lights overwhelmed me, a harsh contrast to the cozy silence of my home office. I spent that first lunch break crying in my car, but held onto one hope: At least the work would be interesting.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

The Reality Check

I was hired as a Senior Copywriter. In my mind, that meant website content, sales enablement pieces, maybe the occasional landing page. You know, actual marketing.

Instead, I was handed a queue of resident notices to write. The kind you post in an apartment lobby about elevator repairs or garbage pickup delays:

“Please be advised that the elevator will be undergoing maintenance from July 4–16.”

Or:

“This is a reminder that smoking is not permitted within 3 meters of any building entrance.”

But even more frustrating than the mundane writing was the clunky, manual process behind it:

• A property manager fills out a form requesting a notice
• That gets manually logged into a spreadsheet
• Someone manually emails me the form results
• I write the notice
• Two people (!) proofread it
• Then I email it back to the original requester

Every. Single. Time.

The Solution Nobody Wanted

After a week of this, I thought: This is absurd. I can automate 90% of this in an afternoon.

And I did. Using a couple of Zaps and OpenAI’s API, I built a workflow that could take the form data, generate a polished notice, and send it out — automatically.

It worked. It saved time. It freed me up to do higher-value work.

So I pitched it to my boss.

He wasn’t just uninterested — he was actively resistant. “It won’t work,” he said. “Each notice is different.”

I explained that the system accounted for that. That it was customizable. That it actually did work.

Still, he shut it down.

A week later, I brought it up again in a meeting with two others, hoping for more openness. But once again, the idea got squashed.

It Wasn’t the Automation. It Was the Mirror.

At first, I thought the resistance was about the technology. Maybe Zapier sounded too complicated, or people didn’t trust AI-generated writing. Those would be understandable concerns — after all, quality control matters, and not every edge case can be handled automatically.

But as I reflected on this experience more broadly, I began to see that this wasn’t about the technology at all. It was about what the automation represented.

Because when you automate a task that two people are manually managing, what you’re really doing is holding up a mirror to the entire system. And the reflection in the mirror is far from flattering.

It says:

“This didn’t need to be this slow.”

“This could have been fixed months ago.”

“This isn’t as complex as you’ve made it seem.”

“This isn’t a two-person, multi-approval job. It’s a form and a Zap.”

That’s uncomfortable. Especially in organizations where entire roles have been built around managing inefficiency. Where there are layers of approval for low-stakes tasks, entire workflows built on forwarding emails, and managers whose biggest contribution is… checking things twice.

In places like that, automation doesn’t feel like help. It feels like exposure. And even if no one says it out loud, there’s an unspoken fear: If this part is redundant, what else might be?

The Organizational Psychology Behind Resistance

In many organizations, inefficiency isn’t just tolerated — it’s structural. It’s what keeps headcounts up, makes people feel needed, and justifies promotions. The org chart itself becomes a precarious house of cards — each inefficient layer propping up the next. Streamline just one process, and you risk triggering the gust of wind that brings the whole thing down.

From a management perspective, there are legitimate reasons to move cautiously with automation. Ensuring consistency, handling exceptions, and maintaining quality standards all matter. But often, the resistance goes deeper than practical concerns.

In certain companies, especially ones looking to impress investors or position themselves for acquisition, headcount is used as a proxy for growth. The more people they can say they’ve hired, the more it looks like things are scaling. In that environment, efficiency becomes a liability.

And while your automation might be great for operations, it’s inconvenient for the narrative. If you reduce the need for bodies, you raise uncomfortable questions: Are we overstaffed? Are we bloated? Are we actually growing, or just inflating?

And it’s not always a calculated move. Sometimes, the people resisting your automation aren’t the ones pulling strings. They’ve learned not to question the system or rock the boat. They’re doing what’s expected, not what’s optimal.

That’s what makes this problem so hard to fix. It’s not just about one person saying no. It’s about an entire culture that rewards staying quiet rather than speaking up.

How to Actually Get Buy-In

So what do you do when you’ve built something that works, and no one wants to use it?

You don’t bulldoze your way through. You play the long game. You build trust, speak their language, and learn how to sell the solution without making anyone feel exposed.

Here’s how:

Lead with the outcome, not the tool: Don’t pitch Zapier or AI. Pitch saved hours, reduced back-and-forth, or faster turnaround for residents. For example: “We could respond to requests 75% faster with this approach.”

Prototype it first: Don’t ask permission to build. Just build it. Show it working with real inputs. Let people see the value before they have the chance to shut it down out of habit. I created side-by-side comparisons of AI-generated notices next to manually crafted ones to demonstrate the quality.

Find one internal champion: Look for someone — anyone — who gets it. Loop them in early. Bring them to the meeting.

Tie it to metrics leadership already cares about: If your automation speeds up output, reduces error rates, or improves team efficiency, connect the dots to broader KPIs. I showed how faster notice creation directly improved our response time metrics.

Run it in parallel to build trust: Offer to run your automation side-by-side with the manual process for a week. Let them compare results. Let the numbers speak for themselves.

So What Happened?

After my initial rejection, I didn’t give up completely. I continued using my automation tool privately, generating first drafts for myself that I would then review before submitting them through the official channels. Eventually I moved from using Zapier to creating a custom-built web application, allowing notices to be immediately generated and downloaded as a Word document using our company letterhead.

Eventually, a new director joined our department and I had another opportunity to present my solution — this time with months of successful usage data behind it.

And while I wasn’t given the green light for the full automation, I was told that I could roll out a “hybrid model” that incorporated some of my efficiency improvements. And then a week later, I was let go. Apparently I was no longer a “good culture fit”.

I have to say, I agree.

Keep Building Anyway

Automation often threatens more than just a workflow. It threatens ego. Identity. Structure. Control. And those things don’t go down easily.

But don’t let that stop you from building. Keep chipping away at the systems that waste time and energy.

Because the truth is, organizations don’t change because someone at the top makes a big speech about innovation. They change because someone saw a better way and quietly made it real.

So build it anyway. Show them what’s possible.

And when they finally ask “Wait, how did you do that?”, you can just smile and say, “It’s already done.”