> The one good thing about this is it's taught me just how patient and restrained I can be, which is a lot more than I thought, but please, please tell me that this eventually changes?
It might not, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Personally speaking, I've been on both sides of this conversation. A number of years ago, I joined a company and I tried to shake things up with fixes. My initial ideas lacked the context, I didn't understand the constraints, and I certainly trivialized some important aspects of what was going on. Some people were patient with me and focused on explaining the unique context and constraints. Fortunately for me, I took the time to listen to them and I was in a much better position to offer up fixes.
Some of my fixes were good and well received, and others not so much. Typically, I found my ability to create positive change was strongly correlated to me taking the time to ask people questions, heeding their warnings, leveraging their unique insights and giving their contrasting opinions credit.
When I hired a technical lead for my team, the shoe was on the other foot and when he joined. He offered a lot of very good ideas to shake things up and fix things. When he asked for permission to do these things, I made it a point to never say no, but to take the time to explain the context and constraints. His first few months weren't tremendously productive because we subjected him to the pain of the thing he was going to eventually automate. Eventually, I was given the opportunity to let him loose and give him the freedom to do what he thought was important. I'm glad we did, because he ultimately created some really good tools. More importantly, he was able to prove me wrong about some of the problems I thought were unique to us.
I guess what I learned from it was the importance of directing people's energy. As you already know, it requires the patience to continuously engage in conversations to make sure that self-drive isn't wasted. These days, I'm a lot more appreciate of someone joining the team has a strong locus of control.
If you really want him to become part of the team, try distributing the task by encouraging other team members to help him. He'll be a lot more receptive to listening to your unique constraints if it's coming from people who are trying to help him.