328: Inspiring Actions and Movements with Jennifer Dulski

Pete Mockaitis
Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us here on How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Jennifer Dulski
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you currently serve as the Head of Groups and Community at Facebook. And I have to imagine you’ve encountered some interesting groups, in terms of names and the communities and people who are coming together. Could you enlighten us, inspire us? What are some of the most noteworthy, surprising or funny Facebook groups you’ve bumped into?

Jennifer Dulski
Sure. So one of my favorite things about Facebook groups is that there really is a group for everyone and everything you can imagine. And many of the groups are about those things that are kind of closest and most important to us in our lives – parenting and health and work. And then there’s also a group for everything that makes you feel like you might be different or unusual, and many of the times people come together around things like school orchestra teachers, is one of my favorites, or there’s one called “Mama Dragons”, just for moms of LGBTQ kids who are talking about how to help raise their kids in a competent, supportive way.
And then there are fun, interesting hobbies, like there are groups for beekeepers. There are groups for people who are on a health kick. One of my favorites there is a group called “The Missing Chins”, which is a group of men who run together and they’ve lost jointly many thousand pounds, so they have collectively removed many of their chins, as they say. And then another favorite of mine is called “The Very Old Skateboarders”, which is a group of women in their 60s and 70s who love to go skateboarding together. And they say things like, “When we’re alone, we feel different and maybe a little bit odd, but when we’re together we’re birds of a feather all in the same community.”

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. And how many very old skateboarders are there, per chance?

Jennifer Dulski
I don’t know the exact number, but there are many dozens of the very old skateboarders. Some of these groups are very large. There is a group that I was looking at the other day called “Planners Gone Wild”, which is for people who love to plan. They share their binders and their spiral notebooks, and so forth. That group has 50,000 people in it, so they really do range in size.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. So, I want to dig into your book Purposeful, and talk about some of those proactive pieces to be purposeful and inspire change and that kind of thing with a movement. But first, I’m sort of curious – in your role as the Head of Groups and Community at Facebook – what are the big things that you’re thinking through and working on day in and day out?

Jennifer Dulski
So, we’re trying to make sure that we can help everyone in the world find a community that is meaningful to them and adds value to their lives. And we announced a couple of months ago that we now have 200 million people who are in these very meaningful groups, and we see that being able to join a group like this actually helps people get a sense of belonging, feel connected, and it adds the ability to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. And so we’re working on growing that, helping everybody find the most relevant group for themselves.
And one of the challenges we think about is how do you help build empathy between people? We live in a world that’s very divided – increasingly so – and what we see happening in Facebook groups is that people come together over something they have in common. Maybe they love the same kind of dog, maybe they live in the same neighborhood, but they don’t necessarily always have the same political views, or have the same demographics. And we find that people can build really trusting relationships in these communities that’s helping bring our world closer together again.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool, because you have a certain affinity, like, “If this guy loves Yorkies, he can’t be all that bad.”

Jennifer Dulski
Right, it’s true. One of my personal favorite groups is called “Grown and Flown Parents”. It’s for people who have kids that are either teenagers or off to college. And this group is filled with hundreds of thousands of parents, all over the world in this case, and we all have something in common. We’re all talking about what do you put in your kid’s dorm room, or how do you pay for college tuition, or what did your kids wear to the prom? And yet, we have a lot of things that we might not see eye-to-eye on and it’s a lot easier to have those conversations once you build up that trust.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool, especially in a polarized, divided world. It’s like, “Okay, we both love Yorkies. We’ve hung out a few times. You seem intelligent and interesting, and sort of have a decent head on your shoulders.” So maybe I can say, “Why is it that you love Donald Trump? I don’t know anybody who does.” And then you can sort of go there and say, “Okay”, and then hear a lot of this sound bite animosity that’s out there.

Jennifer Dulski
It’s so true. We actually see some groups doing this directly. So there’s a group called “Make America Dinner Again”, which is doing exactly that – kind of hosting dinners with people who are willing to have these conversations. And it doesn’t necessarily mean they change their mind, but they build understanding of a different perspective. By the way, I looked it up, and “The Very Old Skateboarders” – I hugely underestimated it. Apparently there are nearly 3,000 very old skateboarders.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And we might have a couple listening to the show that are like, “Oh finally, a place I can go.” [laugh] So, share with us a little bit – your book Purposeful – what’s the big idea behind it?

Jennifer Dulski
So the big idea behind Purposeful is that we can all be movement starters. And I have been very fortunate in my career to be able to support and empower regular people who ignite extraordinary change in the world. I did this at Change.org, I now do it at Facebook, helping people who run communities. And what I’ve seen is that all kinds of people can do this. It’s teenagers, it’s grandparents, it’s stay-at-home moms, it’s veterans – anyone you can imagine has the power to start a movement, and that means all of us do.
And in Purposeful, I share the lessons that I have learned from working with and interviewing movement starters from all walks of life. There’s a young woman with Down syndrome who persuaded Congress to pass a new law for Americans with disabilities, there are two teenagers who helped redo the curriculum in the state where they live to add the concept of consent, there’s an entrepreneur who’s reinventing the way we think about personal nutrition. It’s basically activists and business people, all creating change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the word “movement” has some power behind it, which is bigger than just “Hey, help me with this thing I’m doing.” So what makes a movement a movement, and how could you turn a goal into a movement?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so a movement is anything that rallies people around a common purpose. The idea is that most movements are started by one individual or a small group of people, but they really aren’t a movement until they rally other people together around that cause. And the first step in starting any movement is to create a vision. And the people that I’ve seen are most successful at this, they have visions that have three parts. So the first part is a desired future for the world.
So the most successful visions all have three parts to them. The first part is a desired future for the world. What is it that you want the world to look like? And it may be your workplace or your neighborhood – so for instance, maybe you’re trying to get parental leave offered at your company. Your desired future would be, “I envision a world in which everyone at my organization is offered paid parental leave.”
The second part is a purpose, which is why that desired future matters to you personally. So you might say, “This matters to me because I want to make sure all new parents are able to have the time required to successfully raise their children and take care of them in these early first few months.”
And then the third part of a successful vision is a story that brings the vision to life. And so, here you might use a personal story or one from someone that you know that really resonates with this issue. So for instance, there’s a woman named Katie Bethell, who’s working on the issue of paid parental leave, and she brings up the stories of two women – one who’s a Republican, one who’s a Democrat. They each had newborn babies who died in accidents in their daycare, because the moms were not in jobs that gave them parental leave, and they had to put tiny infants into daycare, which led to horrible accidents. And so, that story brings a vision to life and makes even more people realize why the vision of paid parental leave is important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Yeah, that’s powerful. Okay, so if those are the ingredients – establishing the vision with those three bits, what are the first steps a person might take in order to translate what might seem like maybe a mundane goal into more of a vision that inspires? I don’t know, maybe they’re thinking that they need a new IT system, or they need to change one process or approach they’re using at work for another one.

Jennifer Dulski
Right. So the key thing, the very first, most important thing is to just get started. Taking that first step is the thing that makes all the difference. And I sometimes describe it like starting a standing ovation. So, have you ever been the first person to stand up and clap in a standing ovation?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I have.

Jennifer Dulski
Wow, that’s awesome! Most people have not. I’m not surprised, actually, to hear that you have. But sometimes I ask this in big audiences people, and you might get one or two hands. And most people don’t do it, because it’s kind of scary to be that first one who exposes yourself a little bit and you think, “What if nobody joins me?” But generally people do. You don’t see many examples of having one person stand up and nobody else, not a single other person joining them. And once those first few people stand up and join the first person who’s clapping, then all of a sudden you get a standing ovation.
And movements start the same way. So, the first step can be something really small, for instance for the examples that you shared – you want to change a new system in your workplace – sometimes it’s just writing up your own thoughts and an outline of what you’d like to see happen and why. Sometimes it might be emailing people you know to start asking for help. Sometimes if it’s beyond your company it might be starting a petition or starting a Facebook group or starting a fundraiser. There are many, many things that can act as a first step. The key thing is, you need a little bit of courage, you need to be a little bit vulnerable because you have to be willing to ask other people for help, and you need to be determined, because movements don’t happen overnight; they take a lot of determination.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, any pro tips for those who are feeling some of the not-so-courageous feelings about going there with the vulnerability and exposure? Is there any psychological perspective or a word of encouragement you offer such folks?

Jennifer Dulski
So, what I use is a very clunky acronym – I call it IICDTICDA, which stands for “If I Can Do This, I Can Do Anything”. And my advice is to try to do other things that scare you, and then what happens is that every new thing seems less scary in comparison. So for people who are afraid of public speaking, instead of just trying right away to go out and speak in front of a big audience, I might say, “Well, what’s something else that scares you? Are you afraid of heights, are you afraid of flying?”
One example in my own life – I used to be pretty nervous about flying, and so when I was in college I went with a friend in one of those glider planes, which is a plane without an engine, which might seem kind of crazy. But I said to myself, “Well, people do this every day and they live through it, so I’m just going to push myself to the edge of my comfort zone, try something.” I was quite scared, but when I landed I had that IICDTICDA feeling – this notion of, “Well, if I could do that, then I can probably do anything.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And it can be any number of things that you fear, even if it’s not directly related to the piece that you’re after. I’m thinking about, you might have fears associated with – I’m thinking about previous guests who talked about going for “No” and just seeing what gets liberated when you do that. Like at a store, you just ask them for a discount, like, “Would $4.50 work for you?”

Jennifer Dulski
That’s right. I love that. And I think the standing ovation is actually a good example too. You could just be the first to stand up and clap in the next show that you see. It would be scary, but it would show you that life goes on, even if the worst case scenario happens, which is no one stands up to join you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. I dig it. So, you’re starting to take some action, you’re pushing through that, finding the courage. And then, how do we go about getting other folks enrolled and engaged and interested in this?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so it’s true – the next step is to mobilize other people. And one of the things that I found works well here is a) again – you have to ask for help, but b) empowering those people who work with you to take on a role that allows them to make a real difference too. So, an example that I love here is a woman named Jennifer Cardenas – she started a Facebook group in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. She was evacuating her home outside of Houston, and she started a group with people to say, “Let’s just keep in touch to see where we’re all evacuating to, to see if we can help each other.”
She invited 50 of her friends, and within three days that group grew to 150,000 people. And what Jennifer did was as those people joined, she embraced them. It’s all about embracing those first followers and getting them involved. So she invited 80 of her first people who joined the community to become volunteer moderators for the group. And then what happened a couple of days later, Jennifer ended up losing Internet service because she went to a place that didn’t have access in the storm. And those people that she had embraced as early supporters were able to keep running the community even though she wasn’t there. And they ultimately ended up working with the Coast Guard and the National Guard to rescue 8,000 people from Hurricane Harvey.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Really cool. So you give them a specific role and they feel empowered and excited and they’ve got it going. And that’s helpful. And then, what about maybe even trying to enroll decision-makers who are maybe not the direct beneficiaries, in terms of you’re getting other folks on board and invested into your starter group?

Jennifer Dulski
That’s right. So, many movements, even once you’ve had the courage to get started and you’ve rallied other people behind you – in many cases if there’s something you want to change, you may not have the power to do it yourself. There may be a decision-maker, either a company executive or CEO or elected officials, politicians, who have the power to make the change you want. And the technique that I recommend here – there’s actually a whole chapter on this in Purposeful called Get to Know Goliath, because my belief is that it’s about understanding whom and what motivates the decision-maker that you’re trying to persuade that will make you most effective. So, I give an example of a woman named Luanne Calvert who used be the CMO of Virgin America. And she was trying to persuade the CEO of the company to say “Yes” to their new safety video, which I don’t know if you’ve flown Virgin America, but they have…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I did. With all the musical numbers. [singing]

Jennifer Dulski
Exactly, exactly. You could sing along to it. But before that they had an animated funny cartoon safety video that everybody loved. The loyal followers of their brand really loved this video. And it wasn’t FAA compliant, so she had to change it, and she was really nervous about that because she had to replace this very well-loved video. And so when she came up with the idea for this musical rhyming video, she wasn’t sure that it would be approved.
And she used a technique that I recommend called “influence mapping”, where she looked at the person she was trying to persuade and she said, “Who are all the people that may influence him?” And in this case, she went to the flight attendants, she went to loyal frequent flyers, she went to other Virgin America executives, and in the end when she was making the final pitch to the CEO, it was one of those people in that influence mapping process who helped her get the case sold into the CEO, who finally approved it. And as you know, the rest is history. It was very, very successful. Not only did people love it, but it has been viewed on YouTube 13 million times. Safety video for an airline, which is pretty crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is good. And so, when it comes to that influence mapping, how do you get that picture, in terms of who has the ear of the decision-maker?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so I recommend just looking at the situation and trying to talk to the people that you think are close to that person. So if it’s inside an organization, you can generally tell because you know who the close confidants of that person are. If let’s say you’re trying to persuade your city counselor or the mayor of your town, you may not know exactly who their influence map is. And so, in that case you can start asking people.
You can also do a technique that I call “Make it easy to say ‘Yes’”, which basically means in addition to thinking about who influences them, you think about what are the things that motivate that person? So for a politician, you can understand that it is issues like the budget that they have to manage, the voters that they have to persuade in case they’re running for reelection, the media that they have to be able to influence and they want to still look good in the media.
So, there’s a young woman who I feature in Purposeful named Amanda Nguyen, who has been fighting for the rights of sexual assault survivors. She herself is a rape survivor from when she was in college. And she found that the criminal justice system is just completely broken in this area. And she went to try to change these laws and she gathered a group of very passionate volunteers that had, as I said, a variety of skills – some were lawyers, some were financial analysts, some were engineers – and she worked with them to understand decision-makers, in this case Congress.
And she drafted a sample law working with attorneys, she analyzed all the budget implications working with the finance folks, and she found other people who could tell their personal stories to motivate the emotions of the members of Congress. And she was successful in actually getting this law passed unanimously by the United States Congress, which almost never happens, as you know. One of 21 bills since 1989.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome, thank you. You also talk about using criticism as an advantage. How does that work?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so the more successful you are in your effort to create a movement for change, the more criticism you are likely to be exposed to. It’s just true that the more public you get, people may have things to say about what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. And my view is that the people who are most successful here can both learn to separate the type of criticism that is perhaps outside of their control. So if people are criticizing you about your gender or your age or your appearance, generally I suggest people set that aside. And the rest of the criticism, which may be about exactly what you’re trying to do or how – then listening to it may have some value, in understanding other people’s perspectives.
And there’s a technique here I call “leveraging the naysayers”, where you can actually use that to your advantage. There’s a woman named Mary Lou Jepsen – she was starting an organization called One Laptop Per Child. They were trying to build these solar-powered, light, readable, very inexpensive laptops, which most people thought was not possible. And she took all the critics and used that as a way to debug her product.
She went and met with all the execs at a big tech company in Asia and they said, “There’s 23 reasons why this won’t work”, and she said, “Great. Let me take those back. I think I can solve 17 of them. And when I solve the rest, I’ll come back, see if you have any more criticism.” And she used that as a way to actually make her product work. So you can be tough enough to hear the criticism, sometimes it can make you better.

Pete Mockaitis
And you also talk about overcoming obstacles and failing well. How does that unfold?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, so there are likely to be a lot of obstacles in your path, which is true no matter what you’re trying to build or accomplish. I sometimes call it “the festival of failure”, if you can see your failures as something that not only do you want to learn from, but you can kind of shout them from the rooftop so that other people may learn from them too.
And I feature a story of two women founders of a company called Little Passports. This was a subscription product for kids to teach kids about global citizenship. So they would send a package in the mail every month with two characters, and each month they would go to a different country and kids would get a stamp for their passport and a sticker for the map and some souvenirs from the country, and information and so forth. But Amy and Stella, who founded this company had so many obstacles along the way.
Originally it was, they bootstrapped the whole thing, and then they hit some personal struggles. Amy ended up getting divorced while she was pregnant with one of her children. Her father ended up dying right as they were founding the company, and she just had such a tough time personally. Having a co-founder there in Stella to help support her through that journey helped them get through that first set of obstacles, and then every one that came after that. They had an issue where the warehouse almost took all their inventory, they had trouble raising money, they had one issue where something caught on fire in one of their products. They just took one obstacle after another and kept going with their vision at the core. And now they are a quite successful, profitable company. They’re doing about $30 million in revenue and they’re teaching kids all over the world to be better global citizens.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. So some of the actionable pieces there is one, having support – a co-founder, and others who are on your team. And what are some other things, in terms of how you bounce back and find that resilience?

Jennifer Dulski
I describe it sometimes like climbing a mountain. So the other key piece of advice here is to just expect that there will be obstacles. So, if you remember that taking any of these kinds of leadership roles is like climbing a mountain – some days will be sunny and you brought a picnic lunch and you’re halfway up and you can see the top, and other days will be stormy and you feel like you’re at the bottom and you’ll never take another step.
And the key is to expect and know that there will be both kinds of days, and that neither will last forever. And just to keep climbing each day. So, push yourself on those cloudy days to keep taking another step and know it will get sunny again. And remember not to stop for the picnic lunch on the sunny day, because those sunny days won’t last forever either.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jen, tell me – anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jennifer Dulski
Yeah, also I would mention that there is a Facebook group for the book, called Purposeful. So, they can find it at the website PurposefulBook.com – there’s a link to it. Even if people don’t read the book, but they want to participate in a community of people who are helping each other push their movements forward, whatever they may be – I would encourage people to join that. It’s free, of course.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Thank you. And now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jennifer Dulski
So one of my favorite quotes is, “Anyone who thinks they are too small to make a difference, hasn’t tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room.” [laugh]

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Jennifer Dulski
So, one of my favorite studies is from Tom Gilovich at Cornell, who was one of my professors. And this piece of research says that people regret in the short term things they do. He calls it “errors of commission”. So, “Oh my gosh, I shouldn’t have asked that woman out. She said ‘No’. It was so embarrassing.” But in the long term, people tend to regret things they don’t do, or “errors of omission”. So, “I should have asked that woman out. She might have been the love of my life.” And this is the thing we go to our deathbeds regretting, is the things we never tried to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Jennifer Dulski
Favorite book is Gung Ho!, which is by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. It is a book about leadership as taught through the lessons of a Native American folktale. And my favorite chapter is called The Gift of the Goose, and it’s about how geese fly in a V and they rotate who flies at the front and who takes the leadership role. And everyone in the back honks to cheer on the leader goose.

Pete Mockaitis
Is that why they’re honking?

Jennifer Dulski
That’s why they honk. They honk to cheer on the leader, which I think is a great metaphor for all of us to think about cheering each other on. And that sometimes will be the leader and sometimes we encourage other people to step forward and lead.

Pete Mockaitis
So does that mean the goose in front is not honking, but all the other geese are?

Jennifer Dulski
That is my understanding. I could be wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
I never knew this about geese. Thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Jennifer Dulski
One of my favorite tools is called the “horizon conversation”, and this also is on the resources page of the book website, if people want to … I learned it from an HR exec that I used to work with, and have adopted it since then. But it basically allows people to outline what they want on the horizon of their careers, where they might want to go, and then map out the gaps they have between what they know now and what they want to achieve, such that they can make sure the projects, jobs, etcetera, that they take in between are helping them fill those key gaps.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool, thank you.

Jennifer Dulski
And I’ve used it myself as well.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Jennifer Dulski
A favorite habit. I think one thing I use a lot is just trying to remember a sense of perspective. So, when things get very difficult, which happens certainly from time to time – I try to remember those moments in my own life that were really tough. I tell a story in the book about having being diagnosed with a brain tumor in my late 20s. Got that call at work in the middle of the day. Clearly no matter what challenges I’m struggling with at work on any given day, they’re not as bad as that day. And so, to remember that we all have days like that and each of us, people sitting around us may be having a day like that. It just helps to keep everything in perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get Kindle book highlighted or retweeted or repeated back to you?

Jennifer Dulski
I think the thing that I’ve shared that’s been the most retweeted is this concept of the work-life mashup, is what I call it. I wrote an article in Fortune. I tried to call it “Work-Life Balance is Bullsh*t”, but they wouldn’t let me. And they titled it “There’s No Such Thing As Work-Life Balance”. But my general concept here is that our work and our lives have become inextricably intertwined, and that one way to make the most of that is to consider it a mashup, or layers on top of each other.
And I had a quote that says, “I’m still a mom when I walk into work, and I’m still a leader of a company when I go home at night.” So, neither of those things go away, and it means that if I get a call from my kid’s school in the middle of the work day, I’m going to take it, and if something urgent happens at work in the middle of dinner, I’ll probably take that call too. And that particular nugget has been retweeted a lot of times.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jennifer Dulski
So I am @jdulski on all the platforms – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. And the website is PurposefulBook.com, which also has a link to the Facebook group.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jennifer Dulski
The final challenge I’d issue is IICDTICDA – the one I mentioned before – “If I Can Do This, I Can Do Anything”. And I’d just encourage people to do one scary thing outside of work that might make them more brave inside of work.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, Jen, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing your wisdom. Good luck in all you’re up to, at Facebook with groups, and the book, and everything!

Jennifer Dulski
Thanks so much. It was great to be here.