Bureaucracy, success and the status quo
Every organization or project that succeeds begins to erect a bureaucracy around that success, because keeping success from going away is a basic need.
When you show up offering change, understand that the status quo isn't the enemy of the bureaucracy, it is their entire reason for being.
At some point, successful organizations stay successful by fighting off their instinct to support the bureaucracy. But far more often, people associate the bureaucracy with the organization's success, as though they are one and the same, and work overtime to protect it from anything that feels threatening.