It's that time again, when we start thinking about turning over a new leaf and resolve to do something different in the New Year – whether in our personal or professional lives. I read an interesting article on this very topic in The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 22, "How to Keep a Resolution." It discussed the psychology of keeping a New Year's resolution.

After reading the article, I couldn't help but think about how similar keeping a New Year's resolution is to executing your organization's business strategy. The article said that relying on willpower alone is the wrong approach to successfully implementing a resolution.

In my previous blog post, I shared some stories from Dan Pink's book Drive on the new science of motivation. This book has been highly influential in causing many organizational leaders to re-evaluate their ideas about the best ways to motivate people.

In companies and organizations that thrive on creative thinking and innovative solutions, financial rewards and external "carrots and sticks" are being replaced with a new management doctrine of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

But do these ideas really work? What are some real-life examples of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, and how can your organization adopt these ideas in your workplace?

For most of the 20th century, the quintessential American job was in a factory. Workers earned good incomes and middle-class lifestyles by doing repetitive, high-volume tasks. The way to motivate workers at these jobs was simple: "carrots and sticks." Pay people more money for doing more work, and punish people for breaking the rules.

Today, in the 21st century, the best organizations must act less like factories and more like think-tanks. The winners of the 21st century workplace will not be the ones who make the most widgets, but who can create and incubate the most creative and game-changing ideas.

If you have wanted to tell the federal government what to do here is your chance. The White House and OMB are seeking your feedback on an approach by which they can receive your expertise and input to the challenges on which the government is focused.

Typically, organizations can identify hundreds of projects that "need" to be completed. Most of these projects address a problem, usually someone feels burdened to implement them, but oftentimes the leadership team has not identified, defined, or actively managed those projects for maximum strategic impact.

Without discipline from the top, hundreds of projects continue to go unfinished and over budget without any real impact on the organization's mission.

Perhaps it's time to try a new approach.