Patterns / 6. Fight, Fold, or Leave
Pattern 6.3
Change Your Patron Before Your Employer
When the system won’t move, try the cheaper ways out before leaving: change your goal, then your role, then your patron, and only then your employer.
In This Context
You’ve done the diagnosis, worked within the system, and reframed your case, and the levers still won’t move. You see signs of an unwinnable system: an overmighty patron whose focus keeps shifting, a buried report, managers waiting for the push to pass, or a change that needs a patron nobody can reach. Staying means more years of the same fight. Leaving means giving up what you know about this organization, and the next one may have the same money flows. The choice tends to be framed as stay or quit, when there are options in between that cost less.
Therefore
Work through the options from cheapest to most expensive:
- change your goal;
- change your role;
- change your patron, by moving under a different budget or sponsor;
- change your employer.
Set yourself a deadline, and treat the years already spent as a sunk cost.
Consequently
- You leave, or stay, on purpose rather than in frustration.
- Changing patron is often within reach of a team or a person, even when changing the organization’s patrons isn’t.
- Some of the cheaper options mean giving up the change you came to make.
Seen In
ch18_plan.asciidoc (“Recognizing an Unwinnable System,” “Pivot or Exit,” and the author’s “Carving Out a Role” story); Theresa in Chapter 5.