Agreed. I've often found that those who are resistant to any amount of (reasonable) formal process are those (usually long timers) who were most empowered by the implicit process and rules. In the end, they're also saying "nothing should change unless I say so".

This and the parent comment describe exactly what happened at the company I just left. I wonder if the newly hired TPM will ever have any real power there.

Very insightful.

I can totally identify with this. I joined a company that had grown from 2-3 people in a shed to 40-50, providing global B2C, B2B and company Intranet design and development (A Drupal house). I was tasked with providing some structure and process to (initially) the support team in order for the company to be in a position to cope with expanding workload and look 'corporate' to chase larger accounts. When I joined, the company was pretty much firefighting all the time and diverting people from project to project according to which customer shouted the loudest at the time.

Every change I proposed was questioned to death and generally dismissed, I was micro-managed within an inch of my life, and I found the two key Directors just could not let-go of any control of their 'baby' (the company), to a point where any tasks I tried to assign to team members were met with pushback because the Directors had already assigned them other things, told them to work on other projects or asked them to report back before accepting any work from me.

One time when I was asked to work on a proposal to take over the migration, management and support of the Intranet for a large local University, I completed the initial RFP document and reported back to the Directors with a plan for a meetup with the potential customer because some key points needed elaboration, and some of the SLA terms could not be met without additional team resource, but they told me they had already phoned the Uni and agreed to go ahead 'as is'.

I left after 9 months.