Is Human Capital Improvement the answer?

Recently I met with an executive from a large Australian organisation to discuss progress of their Lean transformation. At some point during the conversation the executive said "Managers have only 3 things that they need to achieve, 1. their output, 2. the output of their people and 3. continuous improvement in both 1 and 2." If this is true then why is it that:

1. 70% of change initiatives fail (Kotter, 1995)
2. 67% of transformation efforts fail (McKinsey survey of 3199 execs.)
3. Only 30% of 1546 executives rate their initiative as successful (Keller and Aiken, 2008) even
4. 70% of mergers and acquisitions fail to achieve outcomes (Weber and Camerer, 2003) 

Maybe these initiatives are being driven in the wrong way. One thing is for certain something needs to change.

According to  The Conference Board CEO Challenge® 2014: People and Performance the number 1 challenge for CEO's in 2014 was Human capital (operational excellence was #3 tied with Innovation). As part of that challenge Leaderships ability to Lead change was cited as one of the top 5 attributes critical to a leaders success. "The conference board 2014" then goes on to present the CEO's ten strategies to improve on their human capital challenges:

1. Provide employee training and development
2. Raise employee engagement
3. Improve performance management processes and accountability
4. Increase efforts to retain critical talent
5. Improve leadership development programs
6. Focus on internally developed talent to fill key roles
7. Enhance effectiveness of the senior management team
8. Improve effectiveness of frontline supervisors and managers
9. Improve corporate brand and employee value proposition to attract talent
10. Improve succession planning for current and future needs.

Lean is, when done correctly, a transformation strategy and as such often falls foul of all of these issues. My second question then is:

What actions could you take to improve the situation of your organisations "human capital" (I detest the term) in each of the ten areas listed above?