I don’t like it either, but I can’t really do much about it. If you realise you’re in a difficult organisation, you can at least start to take action, or take a different tact (or leave). Being annoyed about the situation is probably just going to make you more and more unhappy because the system won’t (or can’t) change in your desired timeframe.
What's funny is that the guy agreed with everything I thought, he saw the problems that were hamstringing me (and everyone else), he had complete authority to fix the problems.. and so far as I can tell, he wasn't having any luck with it
The best fix seems to be to tell people to quit being jerks to each other and focus on making good products and making customers happy, but good luck getting that to happen.
One of the main criteria for performance reviews was suddenly something along the lines of "Teamwork" that captured what a non-toxic, non-Ballmerized good person you were. Of course, all that happened is that the best backstabbers and the weaseliest scumbags manipulated their way into high "Teamwork" scores, and anyone who sat down and focused on productive work/helping others got screwed on that score just like everything else.
The pity is often how the most qualified talent for resolving poor behaviour is so often subordinated into slopping out the pigsty. There needs to be a foundational next step.
Edit: since Fairchild we've been scared of merely assembling raw talent under a thin layer of management capabilities and from this is developed the pseudo matrix management system that e.g. Microsoft operates.