When I was younger I played the game of fitting in. I remember one time at a company this guy wanted to improve our process (process improvement and Lean was a big buzzword at the company at the time) by introducing automated testing to augment our completely manual and inefficient way we were doing testing. He fought the good fight but was eventually labeled a black sheep and got "managed out". I learned a lot about what companies say they want and what they actually want from that experience.