The secret to refactoring code in baby steps

I've used a couple of the refactoring approaches mentioned in the article over the last 10 years in our current project. The biggest mess comes from partially executed parallel changes. You go from one bad solution to one bad solution + a better solution, ending up with a bigger mess than you started with halfway through. And when that mess becomes visible/a problem again, nobody wants to finish the initial refactoring, they create another parallel change, not finishing that either, etc etc.