What could help you stay sane is to recast how you view your job. Here is one way to think about it: your job is to help establish a culture of improved relia

What could help you stay sane is to recast how you view your job. Here is one way to think about it: your job is to help establish a culture of improved reliability. You are accountable for improving the process but you don't have the authority to decide the process. A large part of being successful in this role is sales. There is a pattern that works fairly well at starting a new engagement. Initially, the main goal is not to fix things; instead you need to focus on building trust. As you've found out, without trust, you won't have success. The easiest way to build trust is to find a problem that the team acknowledges and is small. Tell them how you will solve the problem and have them agree. Solve the problem. Then repeat with another problem until you have some trust. A good indication that you have enough credibility is when they stay asking for your input. Now, you need to find a problem that they are blind to or have given up on solving. Convince them it's a problem worth solving. Metrics are your friend here. Then get buy-in for your proposed solution. Keep visibility add the work is solved. Sacrifice overall speed for immediate partial wins. At this point, hopefully you've reached a credibility tipping point and established a good working relationship. I also had advice for dealing with change resistance, but that is not your problem. Your problem is building your personal credibility by delivering something the team cares about and wants solved. Try not feel insulted. It's not possible. They're only human. :)