Making a change is easy. Working through the transition is the hard part.

We can distinguish the change itself from transition required to make the change effective and embed it:

• The change itself is the day the new activity commences or the change event takes place.
• Transition encompasses all the people, process, system and customer impacts that need to be identified, thought through, planned for and managed –before and after the change date – in order that the change works.

Transition activities start many months before the date the change happens, and often continue many months afterwards to embed the change and sustain new practices.

The Tiger Woods scenario provides a good example of the difference between the two.

The date of change for Tiger was the day he crashed his car, and gave the world a glimpse into his private affairs. What has happened since then  – his team’s media silence, rehabilitation, and then the apology – are example of the transition. These represent an effort to understand the impacts of the change, who is affected, and what needs to be done to miminise risk adn ensure a successful future.

Of course the comparison with organisational change stops there. Tiger did no pre-planning for this change, whereas in organisations we spend time thinking through consequences and impacts before the change occurs. Tiger did no analysis of how his downfall might affect his sponsors, his family, his colleagues or the sport of golf. In organisations we spend time on stakeholder analysis, we spend time on deciding who needs to be on board before we start, we spend hours lining up te right leaders to get behind the change.

The point is, the actual change is the easy part. If you want to bang in a new process, yes – you can go ahead and do it without really doing anything else. But if you want people to adopt the new process, you will need to consider the transition. Most companies fail to do enough work on the transition. They under prepare, or assume the job is done once the change is effective.