Excellent post.  I think leaders often underestimate the amount of work they need to manage to give any major change effort a real chance of success.  Disconnects stand out or cynicism grows if the organization doesn't see something about what's very different with "this" change effort or if they are not involved in designing the approach so they feel part of the process.

A well-designed change effort often needs connected to purpose, vision, values / behaviors, strategies, goals, measures, involvement, communication, motivation and a clear management system to track progress and make adjustments.  Kotter wrote that leaders often under-communicate the change vision by a factor of 10, 100 or even 1000X.  They then become frustrated that some people in the organization don't just get it when they really just touched the surface of what it takes to make a major change effort successful.