Progress, by it's very definition, involves change, Things can't get better if everything remains the same. Nothing can be done differently if someone doesn't try something different.

Let's imagine the opposite extreme. Everyone thought the same, acted the same and lived the same. Progress clearly wouldn't be possible, because no one would think or try anything new. Now, of course, that isn't the case, people have a range of attitudes, actions and ideas, and that range, that diversity, means that new things will be tried, some of them will work, people will emulate the ideas that work, and that's called progress.

Every step of progress that's ever been made was made by someone stepping out of the way things have always been done. This is not always obvious or simple, but that's the only ways it's even possible for things to change.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw