I think that many of these seemingly change-resistant folks actually would have loved to embrace new stuff. The problem, in many places, is that they're in dep

I think that many of these seemingly change-resistant folks actually would have loved to embrace new stuff. The problem, in many places, is that they're in departments like operations that value "convergent" work. This means they're stuck with their noses to the grindstone at all times and judged on volume and consistency of work. If they want to change something, they need to go through an onerous process designed to keep mistakes from happening at all costs. There is NO experimenting in such places and the workload is such that it's hard even to get some interstitial time to explore new ideas, of course forget about conferences and 20% time. The way they end-up canned or otherwise scattered to the wind is when someone way higher up in org see's that there's a better way and brings in someone from the outside to implement much needed change. It usually never occurs to these folks (the managers bringing in consultants) that they would not have had to do that in the first place if there was some value placed on innovation.