Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.  ~Cavett Robert

This time of year there’s no shortage of articles telling us why new year’s resolutions don’t stick and what we can do about it.  In fact, almost all—92%—of people who set new year’s resolutions don’t succeed, according to University of Scranton research.  But I know that won’t stop me from making resolutions, yet again.

I scanned a few articles about making resolutions stick and most didn’t tell me anything new, except for one idea I found intriguing.  Carolyn Gregiore, Senior Health & Science Writer from the Huffington Post said to ask, don’t tell.

This suggestion was based on a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology that explored the “question behavior effect.”  “They found that when people were asking a question about a new habit they’d like to adopt – such as, “Will you start meditating?”  or “Will you run every morning?” – those people were 14% more likely to follow through on that behavior.

We could write down our resolutions in question form, maybe leave a post-it note with a question about our resolutions on the fridge or bathroom mirror.

I’d like to take this idea one step further and ask leaders to consider applying it to your organization’s strategic goals.  Strategic plans aren’t exactly new year’s resolutions, but there are certainly similarities.  They both tend to be a vision of the future we want to create, they both typically have measurable goals, and they are time bound.  So maybe it’s not surprising that according to author Daniel Prosser, 87% of organizations fail to execute their strategy each year.

87%, 92%, both percentages do not bode well for our ability to execute on goals or strategies we’ve put before ourselves.

What might it look like if leaders applied this psychology of questions to strategic plans?  Here’s a simplified attempt to add the words “will we” before goal statements and change them to questions.

Statement: Reduce expenses.

Question: Will we reduce expenses?

Statement:  Increase employee retention.

Question:  Will we increase employee retention?

Given our waning collective track record for achieving goals, a shift of 14% follow through if leaders put goals into question form seems fairly substantial.  So what do say, will you achieve your goals in 2016?