Project Disappointment

I recently took over maintenance of an old internal tool we use in my department. It's been around forever and has had its fair share of bugs, but it gets the job done for our team’s basic needs. I thought to myself, 'I can do better than this,' so I started making suggestions for improvements and new features. To be clear, I am not a manager here, just an engineer like everyone else. But I felt that someone had to step up and make the case for modernizing our workflows. After presenting my ideas at our weekly meeting, something interesting happened: nobody really seemed interested in pursuing them. It wasn’t outright rejection, more of an apathy. I started wondering if I was out of touch with what my colleagues actually needed from this tool. Were they happy enough to stick with the status quo? Maybe they didn’t see value in what I proposed, or perhaps it was just too much change at once for everyone to process. Regardless, I ended up feeling pretty dejected after that meeting. Since then, there’s been a bit of an ice barrier between me and my team members, nothing overt, but more like they view me as the engineer who tried to shake things up without really connecting with their needs. I can’t help but feel a little resentful toward them for not being receptive or supportive. But on the other hand, maybe it was unfair of me to expect anyone else to share my vision. At this point, I’ve decided to just stick with maintaining what’s there now and focus less on trying to change things. It might be the right thing to do, but it sure doesn’t feel like a satisfying way forward.