The first step for effective Change Management is to define the End State.
Always knowing what the change will look like, feel like and be effective for underlies the whole change process.
You will have many different versions catered to different stakeholders and stakeholder groups. Keeping this in mind, the key to successful roll out of change is to work back from those definitions. Once you have a clear idea of the End State then you can determine why the change makes sense, where the effects of the process might land, who will need to be involved and at what level of participation, what needs to happen, how and when it will take place.
Look at your current change initiatives. Odds are this step was skipped to save time and money. Soon you will be forced to insert it somehow costing time and money. When Vision to Work is brought in to an initiative in the middle the primary reason is that no one, including the executive owner, seems to know what this change will look like when it is done.
The next step in the downward spiral is the loss of “why”. That is typically when the consultants are sent home and things slowly revert back-dooming your next change initiative.