Most organisations prefer to die rather than to change

As a former Sociologist, I'm always very interested in the way organizations and societies are set up, how they are operating, how they are managing the change.

In fact change is by itself a subject of great matter for me, and regarding Societies and even individuals, it seems that the matter with change is much more the matter of resisting the change.

I do remember this quote from Wolfgang Langewiesche in "Stick and rudder" : "Most people prefer to die rather than to think", he was referring to pilots in a plane ...

Regarding societies, I should propose the following inflexion on Wolfgang insight : "Most organizations prefer to die rather than to change."

You may consider this assertion as rather paradoxical.

Take for example Information Technologies, isn't there a lot of changes ?
New things coming up every day or so ? How do I reconcile this with the above ?

Well, I see two main points :

• lot of so called changes are in fact "more and even more and more of the same thing", it's really increasing, not changing.
• lot of so called changes are not the fact of the human being will, they are the result of old organization's death, consequence of inertia.

Consider this last point (it was a real discovery for me) : a change, to be a change in its entire sense has to be the result of an intention, of a human will, otherwise it's only new facts mechanically taking place, out of your control. 

Dealing with this type of change means that you are behind the change, you are a spectator. What you should rather prefer is to originate it, purposely, to be an actor.

Right ? Tell me !

NB : "Stick an Rudder" "an explanation of the art of flying" Wolfgang Langewiesche - 1944 MC Graw Hill - Still selling : the best book I ever read on the subject, a must to read if you are a pilot or if you want to learn some fundamentals about flying.