Judging from what you’ve written here and in your post from last November, you’re working for a company with a deeply embedded culture that doesn’t appreciate or understand good design, effective marketing or how to manage creative talent.
Unfortunately, you can’t change this. It’s an inherent part of the company’s personality. The company might be great at its core business and highly successful for all I know, despite its deeply rooted incompetence in other areas.
I’ve spent much of my career bouncing around to various companies and fighting against recalcitrant and inept managers and corporate cultures. Incremental success with them is possible, but it’s like pushing up against an insurmountable foam rubber wall. Making dents in the wall is easy, but as soon as you relax the pressure, the wall rebounds to its previous shape.
The people who succeed in these types of companies are those whose mindsets best fit the company. As a result, the entire company and everyone in it have the same inept approaches, assumptions, and personalities. As I said, you’re not in a position to change the company’s culture or the people working there.
As I see it, you have three choices.
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Continue as you have been while fighting a losing battle against the existing situation. You’ll continue to be frustrated, and all you’ll likely accomplish are temporary incremental gains. You’ll take home a paycheck at the expense of never-ending frustration.
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You can accept the current situation and learn not to care as much. You can concentrate on those projects where you have some control but bang out the other stuff without getting stressed. You can speak your mind, but in the end, do the unpleasant part of the work and smile about how you’re getting paid to produce garbage. In other words, you play into the system, superficially adopt their mentality, and take home your paycheck.
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If you’re like me, neither of those options is palatable, bringing us to the third option: do whatever you can to find a job that fits your personality and appreciates what you offer.
The most fun and rewarding jobs I’ve had were in-house creative director roles where the CEO deferred to me on decisions within my area of expertise. Whether or not the CEOs knew anything about design or marketing didn’t matter. What did matter was that they hired me, supported me, and trusted me to do things they knew they weren’t qualified to do themselves. Those kinds of CEOs are rare since they typically have oversized egos and believe their judgment on all issues is infallible. However, if you look hard enough, you can find companies with leaders who are smarter than that.