This is long and maybe self indulgent. I know no one can give me "the answer" but I'm interested in hearing different perspectives because I'm just going round the same loops thinking about it.
On paper my current role is in a great place. I recently got moved into a new team into a role basically created for me. I've been tasked with establishing some new ways of working in our department in something I'm both experienced doing and passionate about, and I've got buy in from my manager and her manager to come up with a proposal for a new job family in which I'd be a leader.
But our c-suite lead has brought in new leads for several of the departments under him. They are working on the same things I am at a higher level and it's clear they see this function sitting elsewhere. I'm expecting them to engage a consultancy to put together a strategy for them. I've told my manager a few times I think I'm on a collision path and we need to get what I'm doing folded in but she says their big plans won't work so I should just keep plugging away at what I'm doing. I have spoken to these lead individually to be transparent that I'm also working on this and I'd like to join up, but they are basically saying "we got this, we don't need to speak to your area to make decisions about how you will work thanks".
I've also got some immediate project work alongside the strategic work which is sucking my time. Between project work, relationship building and research i'm working 10+ hours a day of which 6 to 8 hours are meetings. On the one hand my boss says to be patient and not try to push change too fast, but on the other she's sending people to me to follow processes I haven't launched or even got proper buy in for yet, and this constantly giving ad hoc advice and working out how to fit it into both where we want to be and what's realistic right now is sucking away time I should be using to get it launched properly.
I am passionate about what I'm doing but it's taking so much out of me - I feel like I'm burning my soul to generate enough power to make this change.
A role has come up in another part of the company in a team forming around a new area of the industry. It's a lower grade but I would keep my current salary. I'll be hands on in a much smaller role in a group that's entirely separate from my current c-suite's reporting lines. I'll learn a whole new part of the industry and where the current job feels like they are still talking about how to solve the same problems we've been talking about for 10 years, this will be new and uncharted territory with actual new problems to solve. If it's successful it will grow and my role will grow with it. If it's not successful I'll have gained perspectives and relationships I would not otherwise have.
But - I feel like I've done this a few times in my career - proved myself in delivery, built a profile as an SME, been the de-facto lead but not the official lead, got to the point I'm bumping along just below the boundary between individual contributor and leadership, got frustrated with the lack of progress and the political layer and left to start the same cycle somewhere else. So a part of me thinks am I just doing the same thing again - should I just go all-in with the role I already have?
I should say another option is to go to the leads of the other areas and ask if they can find a role for me and I'm pretty sure they would. But I don't really believe in the way they are approaching this and I'd feel that I was betraying my current colleagues by signing up to a model that I know won't work for them.
If you got this far well done! I'd appreciate any thoughts you have or experiences you can share.