Luck isn’t a good business plan.

While this isn’t a surprise, we’ve all been guilty of relying on it at one point or another. And the results are seldom pleasant.

Nowhere is this more apparent then when putting together a management plan to support your firm’s transformation strategy.

In these situations, businesses are undergoing a deep organizational change, complete with a refocused vision and new strategy for growth.

What makes this type of situation so unique is the sense of urgency with which the business must act to implement its turnaround plan. Even if revenues are steady, your stock could be listless, you could be facing an erosion of your core business, and your stakeholders could be demanding that you better align the firm’s assets against where they can have a greater impact.

Time is of the essence, and the most enlightened leaders realize this urgency and don’t wait to get lucky. The stakes are too high, and what, when and how executives communicate during a turnaround are critical to the success of any change process and its outcomes.

You need a strategic, purposeful plan that speaks to all of your stakeholders, engages employees and communicates a strong narrative about the future of the company.

With this in mind, here are three key elements that have proven essential to us when crafting effective change management plans for our clients:

1) Try to focus more on conversation rather than communication. Communication to employees and stakeholders should be viewed as an opportunity to encourage conversation. Successful business transformation needs the support of its employees. Engaging them in the conversation and letting them become part of the solution will create greater engagement and, in turn, loyalty. And remember to be honest. Telling it like it is opens the channels of communication, and there is nothing more inspiring than authentic leadership. This means you celebrate the small wins, but also share the bad news too. Be honest and you’ll gain the respect and support you need to help turn your business around.

Case in point: when Starbucks had undergone its latest successful transformation, Chairman Howard Schultz reached out to each of the firm’s core stakeholders – senior executives, store managers, employees, customers, press, shareholders and analysts – and engaged them in conversations where he presented the case for change or a particular decision. He wrote internal memos, staged interactive presentations and multimedia displays at Starbucks conventions, made careful pitches to analysts, and invested time into real conversations where he evangelized his transformation narrative across all lines of Starbucks business.

2) Define the competitive advantage. A transformation will live or die on the basis of your ability to define your company’s competitive advantage, which should form the core narrative of your strategy. So, what is a competitive advantage exactly? It’s that distinct advantage or niche the company owns in the market. It’s the reason your customers choose your company over its competitors.

Case in point: Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini successfully created a powerful narrative as he transformed the company from a fee-for-service reimbursement model to value-based care, which has effectively changed the nature of health care insurance. Instead of simply explaining how this new approach would change Aetna’s bottom line, Bertolini built a narrative around the company’s new competitive advantages, in particular, the new skills on offer to help consumers make better health choices.

3) Connect with the influencers in your company. In other words, who do people look up to in the company, whose views do they listen to, who do they respect? Having these informal influencers evangelize the need for change – and the sincerity behind your intent to change the company – will allow you to more readily align management and staff with your vision. This alignment will help keep your narrative consistent throughout the organization, whether it’s identifying the former practices you want to eliminate or encouraging the new ones you want to implement.

Case in point: Following its recent acquisition of Jet.com, Wal-Mart is undergoing a significant business transformation. Once a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, Wal-Mart is making major changes to become more digitally competitive with Amazon. As a result, Wal-Mart’s president and CEO Doug McMillon has integrated leadership teams across the entire business that now cater to both online and offline customers. And he’s effectively been using these team leaders – informal influencers – to herald this new narrative: that more integrated operational divisions, and less separation between physical and web retail, is the blueprint for Wal-Mart’s future.

Here are the key take-a-ways: actively manage your communications both internally and externally; engage key influencers to sell your vision; and bring employees along with you. These are essential to enabling your business transformation to flow better than ever.

And if you still want to rely on your lucky rabbit’s foot, just remember that it didn’t work out too well for the rabbit.