Thomas,
The old bait and switch works in gca offices, too, if you listen to associates. Anyone working for a big firm has stories about purposely placing a few "Easter Eggs" for the boss to find and throw out. Their goal is to minimize his participation of course, and hope the boss is happy making a few obvious changes.
I have generally steered away from a lot of club work. I have both gotten and lost jobs by trying to hold the ego in, and work within their parameters as well as being the iconoclast and telling them we were going to be different.
BTW, it really isn't all or nothing, in most cases. Yes, they may want to modernize a classic course, or totally re-route a nice routing, for example, but there are still a lot of decisions in just how to make the best of being on a track you are not comfortable with.
The stories of greens committees making bad decisions are legendary in gca circles, from a meeting where they started throwing chairs, to one where the club president voted down the greens chair proposals repeatedly, finally admitting it was because he had an affair with his wife, to just plain, dumb stuff.
Two examples of those - called to a local club, they said only one thing was sacred, the pond on 15. Turns out a well respected member had donated it, but is looked like a wading pool, painted light blue, one foot deep, etc. I said it had to go, lost the job.
Another great club said the sacred item was the Cottonwood by the 4th green, which it turned out had roots in the green, was on the SE side and shaded the green, etc. Asked if I could save it, I replied, "Sure, just tell me where you want the logs stacked."
I didn't get that job either.