Change is hard, employees resist change, blah blah blah. Yes, we have heard it all before, and no, it is not all true.

Yes, change can be hard, and people can be very resistant. If your company is going from producing cars to producing cabinets, you are going to need some pretty major adaptation in your operations, and the local unions will probably be a little uptight about it. But there are different kinds of change, they require different kinds of management and skills, and they do not always have to be painful.

Evolutionary change is always happening. These involve changes in the way we do business, rather than changes in what business we do. Very often, this is related to efficiency. HR policies change, maybe you merge a couple of teams, perhaps you get some new technology. Essentially, we are doing the same things, we are just doing them differently.

Revolutionary change, on the other hand, occurs when some new operating environment emerges and the business we do actually changes. In many cases, we either adapt to this new reality or we go out of business. 20 years ago, a company that said “we produce VCRs” would either change its mission to “we produce DVD players,” or maybe “we produce devices that help viewers watch movies,” or it would get left behind. With a revolutionary change you are not just making changes to your products or services, you are actually providing something new. This often requires a whole new strategy, a new structure, and even a new culture for your firm.

It sounds like evolutionary change is simple while revolutionary change is complicated, but that does not mean evolutionary changes are easy. When we say “change is hard” we are not just talking about the revolutionary changes. The problem with evolutionary change is that, depending on your industry, it can seem like a pretty continuous thing, and that makes life difficult for your employees. If you do not know what is going to be expected of you tomorrow, if it feels like there is no consistency in the policies you follow or the way you work, it becomes difficult to look much beyond tomorrow. And if you are always in classes to train you on the newest, greatest thing, you will not be spending a lot of time actually doing the revenue-creating work.

It is important to recognize different types of change, the impact they can have on your work and on your employees, and the ways you can prepare for them. The kind of flexibility you need for seemingly smaller, but more frequent changes, is different from what you need to retool your entire firm when what you do is not so relevant anymore. Your ability to deal with change depends in part on the type of change with which you are dealing, so learn to tell the difference and be prepared to respond accordingly.