I feel sorry for those few souls who keep thinking they are safe because of this or that. Sometimes I want to shake them and ask them where have they been for the past few years. Your head needs to be firmly stuck in the sand not to realize that there's no such thing as safe here anymore.
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Fine, but the org you are describing can only do exactly what it's doing today. It's stagnant and doomed. If you want the company to aspire to better, the people in it have to do the same.
"Nice post about reaching for better, but it's easier to complain about being expendable than to make myself valuable, so... 'No thanks'."
If you have free time in your to put your hand up for new opportunities or can step away from your job for a week to attend training, you're probably the problem. The handful of doers left are being crushed between the weight of the 'Chiefs' peacockingbon Yammer and the incompetent outsourced resources below them. If enough of the great thinkers get on the damn bus, it should be driven off a cliff.
That's fine, but if you truly internalize that, you place all the power in the hands of other people. That's not a good way to run your career or your life.
You are as expendable as you permit yourself to become. If your value proposition is only good for the exact role you inhabit, that's your fault. You should be actively working on broadening what you have to offer.
As an example, don't wait to learn how to be a supervisor until you're made a supervisor. That's the best way to fail. Investigate a management certificate program. Take some courses on contracts, financial statements, economics. Get into every training course that crosses your path - coaching, negotiation, all the ENBU stuff.
Put your hand up every time you have the opportunity - especially if what they need is slightly outside of your skillset. And especially if it's outside of your zone of responsibility. If you are highly adaptable, you are less expendable.
https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/first-who-then-what.html
Every leader you're likely to cross paths with has read the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. In it, he describes the concept of filling your bus with the right people before deciding where it's going.
"First Who, Then What—get the right people on the bus—is a concept developed in the book Good to Great. Those who build great organizations make sure they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus. They always think first about who and then about what. When facing chaos and uncertainty, and you cannot possibly predict what's coming around the corner, your best "strategy" is to have a busload of people who can adapt to and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next. Great vision without great people is irrelevant."
Isn't this true anywhere or any company? If you want to mitigate that 100%, you have to be your own business owner.