You have to remember the mentality of an IT group that still uses COBOL.
The obviously are not amiable to change of any kind and are totally risk averse.
The first change to be made are get rid of those assholes. Then you may get some good ideas.
The decision to run COBOL and the like an not modernizing is usually an upper management decision, not the IT group.
This. I’ll add “and/or they enjoy getting paid to do effectively nothing, while convincing management they’re essential”.