William Bridges, who has contributed significantly to research about how change affects us, tells a story about his early days as a university professor. In the 1960s it was common to have Saturday classes. Students attended classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Most students hated Saturday classes and so did most professors, so Bridges thought it would be a really easy thing to change. His solution was to have longer classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so there was no need for classes on Saturday.

However, it was not a simple change to make. Although they knew that almost everyone hated Saturday classes, some professors wanted the percentages. Several of them argued strenuously to retain Saturday classes; they had taken Saturday classes themselves and it had not hurt them. Finally one professor said, “But if we change from three classes to two, I will have to rewrite all my lecture notes.” The other professors agreed, and the change was voted down. Bridges did not think the professors were selfish, lazy, or stupid, but nobody had addressed how the changes would affect them. They were struggling to protect what was familiar, and many of us would have done the same thing.

We all have a personal connection to how we work, so it takes work to do this. Bridges says, “It isn’t the changes that do you in. It’s the transition.”

Change is the situation: the move to a new building, a retirement, or renovating a house. Transition, on the other hand, is a three-phase process people go through as they come to terms with the new situation that change has brought.

Change is about doing things differently, seeing things in a new way, adjusting to surprises, and adapting to ideas with new twists.