There are many times in business where I watch "best practices" being repeated (and cringe). In change that happens when the practitioners get together to decide what works. The process of coming to that decision is much like the one they would use for “readiness assessments” usually based on a resistance model. If the stakeholders they ask say they resisted less as a result of the model or approach then the practitioners feel they have a best practice. And so the loop feeds itself.
If you start with one assumption- in this case a resistance model- and that assumption is wrong you can never have a best practice.
As a client look at your practitioners’, internal and external, assumptions. Question them and hire appropriately. You will then be ahead of the executive next door and free of “the loop”.