The sheer size of the organization and the old structure it has can crush your ideals. Maybe not immediately, but it may grind you down. Not every department welcomes fresh ideas, not every manager will be grateful for your input and not all coworkers will appreciate your initiative. It’s a place where you very much will do what’s in your job description, and you will do that every day. Proactive behavior may be interpreted as invading someone else’s turf and you may have to deal with information that is being transported behind your back. Strangely enough, even though I perceived Rotary not as an organization where you can earn a career as managers and directors firmly sit in their spaces, many people in lower positions feel there is a career to be earned by fighting their coworkers. Given authority by title is something that is very important at Rotary, from elected officials, executive staff, mid-level management, all the way down to specialists. If a start-up company has the philosophy of breaking down hierarchies, Rotary is the organization that keep hierarchies it alive. You’ll always know where you stand by the way you are treated. It is very difficult to keep your motivation alive for more than a few months, until you realize you can bring in change.
