If transitions are turning points then clearly some are more redirecting than others. At one extreme, transitions can be the changes that keep one on a steady course, like the adjustments a driver has to make to keep on the road or the budgetry changes a household initiates to maintain a steady state in the quality of life. Alternatively transitions may be junctures at which the entire balance and direction of the life-course shifts. Our interest veers toward the latter, though it is important to recognize that such far reaching effects may not always be immediately visible to the person undergoing the change. Fundamental life changes may initially only be apprehended as small movements; the significance of a change may not be appreciated for some time; successive minor developments may accumulate into major new branches of growth, and so only be perceptible as turning points when one is looking back over a lengthy period of time.

The theory of transitions we considered in Chapter 5 illustrates how a number of different outcomes may flow from the adjustment process, and we have seen how role innovation is a fairly constant adaptive strategy in managers' work lives. But we have also seen how the job changes managers experience are, more often than not, radical in the altered situations they represent and the new demands they make.