Experts (and comic) offer advice for 2017 worklife

I like to wrap up each year by handing the column reins to some of the fine folks I’ve interviewed over the past 12 months and letting them share forward-looking advice.

My sincere thanks to all of them and to the many others who helped me navigate workplace issues in 2016.

And I thank all of you for reading, for tolerating my silliness and for helping me continue this conversation of work and life and, often, ice cream.

I wish everyone the very best in 2017, at work and everywhere else.

Here are some thoughts to get you started on the right foot:

■ Robert Beezat, management consultant and author of “Character Based Management: A Key to More Productive & Effective Organizations”

One important element in being a person of good character is to do what you say you are going to do. Usually, we think of that in terms of how we follow through on what we promise other people. And that is a very important part of being a good manager.

But doing what we say we are going to do also applies to how we follow through on what we promise ourselves.

If we want to improve our character, having good ideas and good intentions is a start but does not get the job done.

You need to pick out one or two specific things to do which will improve your character and work on them for a month, consciously and conscientiously. See how that helps you be a better manager with a more productive and effective organization, increasing your job satisfaction and the job satisfaction of the people who work for you. Then pick another area of self-improvement and repeat the process, ad infinitum.

We will never be perfect, but we can always get better.

■ B r i a n Fe t h e r s t o n - haugh, author of “The Long View: Career Strategies to Start Strong, Reach High and Go Far”

Take stock of the year past and the year ahead. Ask yourself the four essential career questions:

Am I learning? What new skills, experiences and relationships did you acquire on the job in the past year?

Am I having impact? Do you feel like you made a difference to your team, your organization, perhaps even to society at large?

Am I having fun? When you go to work, do you feel energy and anticipation — or a state of dread?

Am I f a i rly re warded? When you look at the full package (base pay plus benefits plus incentives plus workplace flexibility, etc.) are you fairly rewarded for your contribution?

Once you’ve answered the four big career questions, turn your focus to the year ahead. What action can you take to improve some of the lower ratings? Do you need a new assignment, some added training, a different boss or perhaps a whole new path? Always look first to see if you can make the change within your current organization.

If there is not much hope for improvement inside, then it’s time to start a search on the outside. Be patient and s t ay s t r at e gi c — s eek t he options that give you the most of what you need: Learning, Impact, Fun or Reward.

■ Blake Vapes, aka Ur Boi Blake Vapes, a social media character created by Los Angeles comedian Aristotle Georgeson

(A translation by Georgeson follows Blake’s comments)

DID YOU KILL THE GAME THIS PAST YEAR!?!? HONESTLY IT DOESNT EVEN MAT TER CUZ THE NEW Y E A R I S HERE A ND I T S A BRAND NEW CHANCE T O K I L L T H E G A M E ! ! ! ! STRAIGHT UP YOU CANT FOCUS ON THE PAST CUZ THE PAST DOESNT EXIST ANYMORE, YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON WHATS NEXT FOR YOU TO KILL THE GAME THE BEST WAY YOU KNOW HOW TO KILL THE GAME!!!!

A LOT OF YOU ARE PROBABLY READING THIS LIKE H OW D O I E V E N K I L L THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!

THE ANSWER IS DEFS SIMPLE, YOU GOTTA FOCUS ON WHAT U LOVE THEN DO WHATEVER YOU GOTTA DO TO BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE AT THAT THING AND THEN EVENTUALLY YOU WILL BE KILLIN’ THE GAME AT THAT THING!!! THE MAJOR KEY IS DEFS TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT THEN JUST DONT STOP UNTIL YOU GET IT!!!! FORGET ABOUT HATERS OR THE DOUBTERS OR YOUR COMPETITION!!! YOU ARE YOUR ONLY COMPETITION AND ONLY YOU CAN DEFEAT YOURSELF OR MAKE YOURSELF THE GAME KILLER THAT YOU TRULY ARE!!!!! Translation: Did you have a good year? In all honesty at this point, it’s best to look forward to the coming year, which brings with it new opportunities for happiness and success. One cannot focus on the past because the past has already occurred in a time that is no longer and thus you must look at what’s to come. You must look at what opportunities lay on the horizon for you and how those opportunities can shape your success and happiness, however you may define those terms.

You may be wondering, “How can I find success and happiness when I’m not even sure how to define what those terms mean to me?”

The answer must come from within and it can be found at the core of what you love to do. If you spend your time doing what you love to do, you will find happiness. If you get great at the thing you love to do, you will find success.

The defining fac tor for long-term happiness and continued success is to understand what it is that you want from life and then doing what you must to achieve it, while never giving in to your selfdoubt. Forget about the people who say you can’t; only you can stop you and only you can achieve that which you truly desire. NOW GO DO IT!!!! 2017 IS YOUR YEAR!!!!

■ D o r o t hy L e o n a r d , Harvard Business School professor emerita and author of the book, “Critical Knowledge Transfer”

Let’s stop feeding ourselves brain candy. You know, the news item or email with a message that shoots straight to the pleasure spot in our brain. As scientists viewing our brains in action have demonstrated, we love hearing news that confirms what we already believe. It’s as pleasurable as alcohol or candy. To heck with being rational, our brain tells us when we hear “news” that confirms our likes and dislikes. “Yum!” our brain says when we hear something nasty about an opponent. And there are people making a fortune out of the resulting dopamine surges by creating false “news.”

There are several relatively painless ways to check our brain candy:

1) Consider the source, and ask for it when your colleague passes along what you are pretty sure is false. Know who is making money off our gullibility.

2) Expose yourself to legitimate opposing news sources, whether television stations, blogs, newspapers or magazines.

3) Acquaint yourself with nonpartisan fact-checking websites such as PolitiFact and Factcheck, not just to validate, but to challenge some of your own beliefs.

4) (This one is the most fun). Ask people to wager real money that the “fact” they promote is demonstrably true. (Often they realize that they aren’t that sure after all!)

If in 2017, we consumed a bit less brain candy, our national mental health could improve considerably.

■ James Sudakow, talent management consultant and author of the book, “Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit ... and Other Stupid Stuff We Say in the Corporate World”

We hurled around a lot of gibberish-like business buzzwords in 2016. Some of them were all too familiar. We made a lot of paradigm shifts, continued to try to think outside the box, socialized new ideas, set up change networks with change agents but still seemed to struggle to get our ducks in a row.

We talked a lot about ecosystems (and we weren’t referencing global warming). We were borderline disruptive with how much we talked about disruptive technology.

Then there were thought leaders and social media influencers. I still have no idea what those two things are even though my PR team has told me that I am aspiring to be both.

Last but not least, there was the pivot, which used to be a basketball move back in my day. In 2016, it became fully entrenched in the business world. We pivoted all over the place from business strategy pivots to career pivots to meeting topic pivots.

What does any of this have to do with New Year’s resolutions?

What if each of us took one buzzword we overuse and just replaced it with, well, a normal word?

This might help us feel more sane at work and communicate better.

The buzzword I’m going to dump into a deep hole in my backyard is “leverage.” I’m officially done leveraging the buzzword leverage. OK, that just happened. This might be a little harder than I thought, but I’ll give it a shot if you do.