Forced to spend eternity encased in ISE

Just had an awful day. My company bought ISE before I was hired and the vendors really oversold them. The vendor actually gave them a two week plan to get to enforcement mode. No really.

Now they have decided that I "have to make it work" and everything is on hold until some random aspects of ISE are put in place to satisfy management.

I was too technical in describing ISE and was scolded for this. I agree. Simultaneously, I'm forced to walk a thin line when management says "we were told we would have visibility into the whole network, so why aren't there alerts? " how to explain that to them when they were never told about actually profiling devices or even setting up dot1x? They think it was finished when the vendor went home.

I'm probably not the only person here who feels like management can't be trusted to make a decision for the company before their own careers. But the way this meeting went today, I feel like I need to learn how to communicate about the network better. My point never gets across.

I'm willing to do pretty much anything to change. Advice, books to read, anything productive is very welcome. Currently studying to pass CCNP exam before Feb. Feel like pure technical isn't the issue.