Apoptosis (from Ancient Greek ἀπόπτωσις “falling off”) is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, chromosomal DNA fragmentation, and global mRNA decay. The average adult human loses between 50 and 70 billion cells each day due to apoptosis. For an average human child between the ages of 8 to 14 years old approximately 20 to 30 billion cells die per day.
In contrast to necrosis, which is a form of traumatic cell death that results from acute cellular injury, apoptosis is a highly regulated and controlled process that confers advantages during an organism’s life cycle.
I got the above definition from Wikipedia, as (although being personally familiar with the term) I found it very informative and worth copying in its totality.
Although many people are dreaded of the phenomenon, thinking that it brings them a step closer to death, the fact of the matter is that this is a controlled process, necessary for keeping an organism alive and well. (As dead cells give way to new ones.) What is effectively killing us isn’t so much the process of apoptosis itself, but rather, our inability to generate enough new cells as the years roll by.
We often hear that businesses are just like living organisms, but how often have you noticed a business that is so stuck in the past that it is like having a caveman living in the modern age? This is what happens when a business (just like many humans) is misinterpreting apoptosis for being something bad, instead of embracing it.
“Change” is the business counterpart of “apoptosis” for people. Just like people are changing their cells as the years roll by, so should a business change its processes and principles to remain relevant. The best way to implement change is to follow the principles of apoptosis: regulated and controlled. Failure to implement these in your business, is to risk falling victim to a term that is as related to apoptosis, as it is harmful: Necrosis – the uncontrolled death of a cell resulting from injury.
When comparing the alternatives, voluntary, predictive and controlled change doesn’t look nearly as bad as many people think.