Many senior managers today are aggressively trying to transform their companies, seeking radically to improve performance by changing behavior and capabilities throughout the organization. Unfortunately, most leadership groups lack a proven way of thinking about the challenge.

Ask your management team what a good business plan looks like, and you will probably find close agreement. But ask them—especially in the middle of a major change effort—what a good change plan should include, and opinions will vary all over the map. A CFO will insist on creating new financial measures; an operations VP, on installing a quality program; an HR specialist, on revising compensation and training; a marketing executive, on getting everyone to be more customer focused. And all these managers will have handfuls of articles to wave—and mantras of buzzwords to invoke—to defend their choices.

The chaos of opinion created by hype and buzzwords is doubly unfortunate. Most obviously, if left unresolved, it can easily turn a desire for bold, systemic change into a rag-tag collection of discrete, ad hoc initiatives. Less obviously, but perhaps more troublingly, it can also prevent the kind of meaningful discussion that keeps a management group pulling together toward a common end. The CEO...