Jennifer Dulski (@jdulski) is the Head of Groups and Community at Facebook, former COO of Change.org, and author of Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter?
What We Discuss with Jennifer Dulski:
- While they’re both necessary for any organization to succeed in realizing its ambitions, what really separates movement starters from managers?
- What movement starters from all walks of life have in common and what they do differently that makes them able to achieve incredible results.
- How businesses and teams can unite for a common purpose — and why this is not only important, but crucial for moving forward and keeping everyone involved on the same page.
- How to bridge the gap between idea and impact — from creating a clear vision for your team as well as persuading decision-makers and even navigating criticism.
- How you can use influence mapping to recruit others to support your movement.
- And much more…
- Have Alexa and want flash briefings from The Jordan Harbinger Show? Go to jordanharbinger.com/alexa and enable the skill you’ll find there!
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When you’re dissatisfied with the way the world is today, what do you do to ensure it’s a better world tomorrow? You roll up your sleeves and start a movement that, by small and purposeful increments, brings your vision of what’s possible to life.
Head of Groups and Community at Facebook and Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter? author Jennifer Dulski joined us to record this episode live at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, California and show us where to begin. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
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More About This Show
Jennifer Dulski’s Wall Street Journal bestseller asks a question in its very title: Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter? As Head of Groups and Community at Facebook, former COO of Change.org, and someone who’s spent time at the upper echelons of Yahoo and Google, Jennifer knows how she’d answer. Do you?
What’s the right answer? What makes a movement starter stand out from a manager?
“I’m not trying to say that managers, in and of themselves, are bad,” says Jennifer. “Managers are necessary and there are awesome managers that are critical to organizations that help people grow their careers. But the distinction that I’m trying to draw is that managers are people who do the best with what they’re given. They say, ‘We’re doing everything we can.’ And movement starters are the ones that push beyond the status quo. Who say, ‘There must be more that we can do’ and they find a way to rally people behind them in doing that.”
Jennifer clarifies that one doesn’t have to be a manager or in some comparable position of power in order to graduate to the level of a purposeful movement starter. A movement starter can be anyone who sees room for improvement in some area — whether it’s in his or her neighborhood, workplace, city, state, country, or planet — and starts the ball rolling toward transforming that improvement from an idea into reality.
The movement being started doesn’t have to be a grandiose improvement. Maybe you see yourself simply as a manager or team leader in a customer service department and you’d like to boost morale among the people who answer the phone and listen to complaints all day. Or maybe you’re a student with the desire to take a Swahili class at a college that doesn’t currently offer one.
“It can also be something that is going to change your community or the world,” says Jennifer. “Those things also start small, which I think is sometimes confusing to people. They think that you have to just wake up one day and suddenly you’re Nelson Mandela! It doesn’t happen that way. It happens with regular people who take small steps that become bigger.
“A good example is we’re in the middle of this situation with children being separated from their families at the border. There’s a couple, Charlotte and Dave Willner, who started a fundraiser saying, ‘We don’t think this is right, and we want to do something about it.’ They were trying to raise $1,500; they’re almost [at] $20 million! They didn’t start out saying, ‘We want to raise $20 million for this issue.’ They took a small step that then rallied other people and became a movement.”
Something that began as a small token of support for families being torn apart snowballed into something bigger than the Willners could have imagined, and now has the momentum to power an even bigger movement. But it couldn’t have started without the couple’s purposeful first step.
“That’s one of the things that I saw about movements in all of the interviews I did and the work I’ve done,” says Jennifer. “The first step really almost always leads to some kind of future action. People are afraid to take that first step, but once you do it, it’s much easier to do everything else.”
Listen to this episode in its entirety to learn more about the ladder of engagement that turns a small step into a movement, where moral licensing ends and investment toward real action begins, how movement makers use storytelling to motivate such action, why no vision that aims to realize an improvement is too small, the three separate but complementary ingredients that make up Jennifer’s recipe for vision, how influence mapping can be used to recruit others to support a movement, the movement-perpetuating rewards of embracing the first followers of your movement, how to use criticism as an advantage for your movement, and much more.
THANKS, JENNIFER DULSKI!
If you enjoyed this session with Jennifer Dulski, let her know by clicking on the link below and sending her a quick shout out at Twitter:
Click here to thank Jennifer Dulski at Twitter!
Click here to let Jordan know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at friday@jordanharbinger.com.
Resources from This Episode:
- Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter? by Jennifer Dulski
- Purposeful at Facebook
- Purposeful at Instagram
- Jennifer Dulski’s website
- Jennifer Dulski at Facebook
- Jennifer Dulski at LinkedIn
- Jennifer Dulski at Twitter
- Change.org
- Charlotte & Dave Willner: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know by Tom Cleary, Heavy
- Kari’s Law, Requiring Direct 911 Access, Heads to President’s Desk by Cody Lillich, NBC DFW
- Virgin America Safety Video (Original Animated Version)
- Virgin America Safety Video (#VXsafetydance Version)
- How to Start a Movement by Derek Sivers, TED Talk
- Owner of Harvey Facebook Page Is Overwhelmed by Gratitude from Victims and Families by Jill Ament, Texas Standard
- Lady Bikers of California at Facebook
- Women in Beekeeping at Facebook
- Runner Who Lost 230 Lbs. Starts Private Facebook Group and Helps 52 Men Drop Over 4,000 Lbs. Total by Dave Quinn, People
- Books by Ken Blanchard
- TJHS 55: Mary Lou Jepsen & Rob Reid | The Future of Telepathy and Affordable Healthcare
- One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
- Change.Org President: 5 Leadership Lessons from My Days as a Coxswain by Jennifer Dulski, Fortune
- The Motivational Pie Chart: A Foolproof Tool for Motivating Your Team (and Yourself) by Jennifer Dulski, LinkedIn
- PL+US
- How Slack and Flickr Founder Stewart Butterfield (Twice) Mastered the Art of the Pivot, Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
- Excerpt from Purposeful about Influence Mapping
Transcript for Jennifer Dulski | Improving the World with Purposeful Possibilities (Episode 105)
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFillippo. Today, we are doing one live at Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto, California. We're talking with Jennifer Dulski. She's the Head of Facebook Groups, which is one of the most central functions of Facebook, namely bringing people together and building community. And at first, I thought maybe this isn't for me. What does Facebook Groups have to do with the mission of the Jordan Harbinger Show? But then I started to dig a bit deeper as I do with guests and saw that Jennifer was the President and COO of change.org, one of the largest social enterprise companies in the world, and under her leadership, change.org scaled up to 180 million users. That's no small feat. She's also spent time in the upper echelons of Yahoo, Google, and today, we're going to dig into her experience as not just a manager, but a movement starter and we'll uncover movement starters from all walks of life.
See what these people have in common and what they do differently that makes them able to achieve great results.
[00:01:00] We'll explore how businesses and teams can unite for a common purpose, and we'll understand why this is not only important but crucial to keep people moving forward and on the same page, and we'll dig into some practicals of course on bridging the gap between ideas and impact, creating a clear vision for your team as well as persuading decision makers and even navigating criticism. There's a lot in this episode, and frankly, even I was impressed with the level of practicality and focus we had here, which is different than a lot of business interviews, so I hope you enjoy this episode that we did live at Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
[00:01:35] And by the way, if you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits, check out our Six-Minute Networking Course which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course, and don't forget we've got worksheets for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of all the key takeaways here from Jennifer Dulski. That link is in the show notes for those worksheets over there at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. All right, here's Jennifer Dulski live at Facebook Headquarters.
[00:02:06] So first things first, the question posed by the book is, are you a manager or a movement starter? And when I thought about this myself, I was like, “Well, I'm kind of a bad manager so I must be a movie star, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:02:18] Yeah, I am not trying to say that managers in and of themselves are bad. I mean, managers are necessary and there are awesome managers that are critical to organizations that help people grow their careers, et cetera. But the way, the distinction I'm trying to draw is that managers are people who do the best with what they're given. They say, “We're doing everything we can.” And movements starters are the ones that push beyond the status quo, who say, “There must be more that we can do.” And they find a way to rally people behind them and doing that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:51] So how do you even make the -- is it desirable to make the shifts? If so, how do you start that process? Because I think most people who are in a management position are not, maybe I shouldn't speak so soon, but I feel like most people are going, I'm just trying to get by. I'm not trying to be a world changer. That's up in the C-suite. What am I going to do about that? All I have is this small team of 12 people working on an app.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:03:15] So my view is that all of us really can be and potentially are already movement starters, and part of the reason I believe this is because I have been lucky to get to see so many regular people do this. In my job at change.org and my job at Facebook, I see it every day. Just regular people who stand up and say, “There's something I don't like in the world or in my neighborhood or in my workplace. Why don't I be the person to do something about it?” That's all I'm talking about here. Just be the person who tries to change the things that you think need to be changed.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:50] Okay, so we can zoom in a lot on that and go, maybe I do just manage a Starbucks or a car dealership, but I can change the way that customers feel about visiting our store or our shop or the way that this particular type of problem is handled because the idea of having like a purpose movement sounds grandiose enough where people are going, “Look, man, I work at H&M. What am I doing here?” I'm not going to ever need this.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:04:19] Yes, that's true. I think it's all in how we define what the movement is and as I said, like it can be that you want to get a new course offered at your school or it can be, as you said, you want your customers have a better experience with the brand you work on. It can also be something that is going to change your community or the world. Those things also start small, which I think is sometimes confusing to people. They think that you have to just wake up one day and suddenly your Nelson Mandela.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:48] Right, yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:04:49] It doesn't happen that way. It happens with regular people who take small steps that become bigger. So a good example is, we're in the middle of this situation with children being separated from their families at the border. There's a couple, Charlotte and Dave Willner who started a fundraiser saying, “We don't think this is right and we want to do something about it.” They started a fundraiser, asked their friends and family. They were trying to raise $1,500.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:15] Oh yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:05:16] You may have seen this in the news. They're almost $20 million. They didn't start out saying we want to raise $20 million for this issue, right?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:25] Right.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:05:24] They took a small step that then rallied other people and became a movement.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:29] I wonder, are they getting -- how does that work when you do a GoFundMe, don't they take a percentage of what you raised?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:05:35] This is the Facebook Fundraiser.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:36] Okay.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:05:36] And we do not take a percentage.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:39] That’s good to know.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:05:40] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:40] Because I was going to say, “Uh-oh, that could backfire nicely.”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:05:43] Yeah. And I think, the other thing is I actually met with them yesterday and they're now trying to think about how do you actually turn this into more of a movement because now you have hundreds of thousands of people who've donated to a cause that they are passionate about. And so now they're thinking, “Well maybe we can turn it into a group.” How do you get these people that take other actions? And that's one of the things I saw about movements too in all the interviews I did and the work I've done is that the first step really almost always leads to some kind of future action. It's like, yeah, people are afraid to take that first step, but once you do it, it's much easier to do everything else.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:20] Do you think it's easier to get people to donate money than it is to get them to take an action? Or is that kind of a great way to get people started?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:06:27] Yeah, so there's social organizers use something they call the ladder of engagement, right?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:31] Right.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:06:31] So you start with a small step and then you ask people to do more and more. Often the small step is really small, like signing a petition is a good example. But sometimes donating is that first small step, and especially now that it's so easy to donate online, you often have your credit card already there and it might just be 5 dollars. It doesn't have to be that you're donating thousands of dollars, that can be a good first step to a movement.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:56] How do we separate the people that are -- because I feel like sometimes when I donate to something, I can't believe I'm admitting this. When I donate to something, I'm like, I'm off the hook now. I gave like 8 dollars to save the oceans. I have the moral licensing. It's like those people that drive a Prius and they'd throw their McDonald's bag out the window because they'd drive a Prius. There's a little bit of more a licensing happening. I'm not that bad obviously, but it seems like starting anything, keeping that momentum going is a matter of neuroscience plus some sort of fine arts persuasion.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:07:28] Yeah, for sure. Well, what I'd say is that oftentimes those first actions do really lead to other actions. So at change.org often we would hear people say, “Oh, that's just slacktivism.” You just sign something and you think that's enough, but actually almost 50 percent of people who sign petitions take at least one other action, whether it's sharing with their friends or tweeting to a decision maker or donating money or showing up at an event. So many, many people don't stop at the first action, and then the other thing is there's tips that great movement builders use. Like storytelling is one that I've seen you super effectively where people, like you shared a story with me about someone who explained that why they write comedy, because sometimes people have really tough situations and they need comedic relief. That is a story that will resonate with people and next time they see comedy, they'll think of that story. So movements have the same thing. People basically tell a story about why the movement matters to them, and there's many stories and purposeful that give that example. So one that's pretty difficult is that there's a man named Hank Hunt who, he had this kind of picture perfect life. He married his high school sweetheart, they had a few kids and one day they really had tragedy strike in their life, and his daughter Carrie was stabbed to death by her estranged husband in hotel bathroom. It's really horrible.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:02] Goodness, that's not what I sort of expected that to go.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:09:05] Yeah. But the part of it that's really the most sad is that her three kids were on the other side of the wall trying to dial 911, and they couldn't get through to 911 because you have to dial 9 to get an outside line from a hotel.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:20] Oh, yeah, they don't know that.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:09:21] Exactly. And actually many adults don't know that either.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:25] Yeah, shoot.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:09:25] So Hank, who had this tragic situation basically took that story and said, “I'm going to do something about this. I don't want anyone else's children to ever have to go through this situation.” And so he started this campaign for what he calls Kari's Law, which is requiring all businesses to allow direct dial for 911, and he started small, just reached out to his friends and ultimately got 600,000 people to sign this petition, and it was just passed into law in January. So without that story, just hearing about dialing 911 by itself wouldn't really resonate in the same way.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:01] Yeah, of course you're just thinking, okay, I can read the phone says dial 9, I'm just going to dial 9, 911, no big deal. Why do we have to incur all these -- have these companies incur these expenses to change their systems and everything, and it's like because tragic murder witnessed by grandchildren and totally avoidable.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:10:19] And there's nothing that makes it more real and resonate more.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:22] Yeah, now you get like angry, like how was that already a thing? Why do we have to make laws about things like this? Yeah, that's brilliant. So how do we find those particular stories if say I am a manager and I'm picking on Starbucks because I patronize it all the time. So it's warm up your email for somebody else. But I'm just like, I work at Starbucks. How dare you?” What if I manage a Starbucks? It's not a life and death situation. So what? Some customers come in here and they wait too long or okay, I'm just, whatever. I don't have to worry about this. No one's going to care except for me, so why try?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:10:57] Yeah, So I think the thing there is trying to think about what could happen if it were better. All movements start with a vision, and a vision is a desired future for what you want the world to look like. And again, it might not be the world, it might be your personal Starbucks. And you might say, “What would it look like if every time my loyal customers came in, I knew what they already wanted?” or something like that. And how would I make that happen? Why does it? So vision has three parts. One is your desired future. Second is a purpose, why it matters to you that desired future. And three is a story that brings that vision to life as I just described. And one of my favorite examples, which is also in purposeful is, a woman named Luanne Calvert, who was the CMO at Virgin America when it was still a brand. And she had, and this isn't world changing, but it was really important to their and critical to making their brand into a movement. So they had this safety video, I don't know if you remember their original safety video on Virgin America.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:02] I don't know if it was the original, but the one with all the dancing?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:12:04] No. So the original one was an animated cartoon, which was really comedic and totally loved by their loyal customers. It had a nun trying to fasten her seat belt and it was really, really well liked, and it turned out that it didn't meet the FAA standards. And so she had to change the video and she was so worried because everybody loved this video. How was she going to do something that was better than that? And so she said, well, I got to do something that's never been done before.
And so she went to this creative shop they have inside Virgin America and said, “You got to do something brand new.” And they said, “Okay, how about a musical rhyming safety video?” And she said, “Yeah, that sounds great.” But then she had to persuade all the people inside her organization that this was a good idea, and that's what makes it a movement. It can't just be my good idea. I have a decision maker, I have to persuade, and Luanne did something that I outlined called social organizers, call it power mapping. I prefer the term influence mapping.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:09] Okay. Oh I got you, yeah. That does sound a little bit more palatable.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:13:13] A more gentler.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:14] Yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:13:14] Yeah, but so she looked at who she had to persuade, which was in this case, the CEO of Virgin America. And she looked at all the people that influence him and she said, well, it's other executives and it's our flight attendants and it's our loyal customers and in this case it's FAA. And so she went around and took a little bit of extra time to persuade each of those constituents that this was a good idea. And in the final setting where this had to get approved by the CEO, one of the people she had persuaded along the way turned out to be totally critical. So the CEO said, “I don't know, it's music, it's probably going to wear on you over time.” And the COO who was brand new to Virgin America said, “Nope, I love it. The more you hear it, the more it grows on you.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:02] Oh, that's true.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:14:03] Yeah, and so he approved it and like the rest is history. This video has been watched 13 million times on YouTube.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:12] Yeah, I'm one of those people because I was like, I've got to get this song out of my head. It’s in my head and I've had more annoying songs in my head than this inflight video, I thought it was really cool and creative and I want to show my friends this video I saw without booking them on a flight to New York. Brilliant.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:14:29] So an airline safety video has been viewed 13 million. It's not just a video, it is a safety video, and that helped turn their brand into a movement that people love.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:38] Yeah, that video was unbelievable. There's nothing that will make me pay attention on a plane other than probably that video.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:14:45] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:46] Even when they're right in front of you and you're like, “Crap, I got to not look at my phone for three seconds because now, I mean they're right.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:14:52] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:52] This is how you put on the mask and I still don't care. My life is in that -- this is life changing, lifesaving information can't be bothered.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:15:01] I once been quizzed on the safety because one time on a plane, I wasn't completely listening and a flight attendant stopped to say, “Excuse me.” I think she asked me whose oxygen mask to put on first. It's like, “Really?” You’re going to quiz me on this safety video?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:20] Did you get it right?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:15:21] Well of course, I could recite, especially after Virgin America. Now I could sing them the whole safety video actually.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:26] Yeah. From a competing airline.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:15:28] Yeah, that would be good.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:29] That would be good. Yes, so I learned from the Virgin America video that I actually pay attention to that you always put your own on before helping others.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:15:35] Right.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:39] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Jennifer Dulski. We'll be back right after this.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:45] This episode is sponsored in part by The Great Courses Plus. This podcast is all about upgrading your mind with wisdom from brilliant people, you know that. And that's why The Great Courses Plus is all about that as well. So I've been a fan for so long. It's a great way to learn about virtually anything that interests you from top professors and experts in their field. They've got everything from business to personal development, also stuff like history, cooking, art, science, fitness, whatever, tons of different topics. You name it, they got it. And you'll get unlimited access to thousands of lectures that you can watch or listen to anywhere using The Great Courses Plus App. They've got this fundamentals of photography. Jason, you checked out some of their photography stuff in the past, haven't you?
Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:26] Yeah, yeah. And I've actually checked this one out and it's from a national geographic photographer. So I've sent this around to people who I know who are trying to get into photography because it's a great way to get started from somebody who really knows their stuff. I mean, I was a photographer back in the day and this lets me send people to The Great Courses Plus without having to go teach them myself because everybody wants tips and tricks, so I'm like, “Get him from The Great Courses Plus, leave me alone.”
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Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:55] I think that video set the bar so much higher for -- you saw other companies kind of tried to imitate it a little bit. They're like, “Oh, we'll make ours funny.” And they just go, “Nah.” It's kind of like going to Broadway and seeing a really good show. And then you're like watching a high school play and you go, “No, it's a good try.”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:19:12] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:13] But it's not nearly, it's not the same thing.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:19:16] That’s right. And so Luanne was the movement writer, and if she had just said, “Well, I'll just do my best and whatever I can.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:24] Especially for something that seems minor.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:19:26] Right. And so the difference is pushing it all the way as far as it could go.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:31] So it's obviously better to be a movement started than just a manager. Besides vision, what other or what other sort of characteristics are there that we have to really focus?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:19:38] Yeah, so vision is the first step. The second pieces about taking some action towards that vision. As I said you -- and sometimes it's scary, but in this case I liken it to being the first one to stand up and clap in a standing ovation.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:55] Oh, terrifying really.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:19:56] So exactly. It's scary. You're going to be the first one standing. But I ask this and sometimes in big audiences of people, “How many of you have been the first to stand up and clap?”
And usually you've got a couple people who have, and then I asked them, “How many of you have been at a show of any kind where only one person ever stood up?” And it's just so rare.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:19] Yeah, no.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:20:19] As scary as it is to be the one, like when do you ever see that person just standing by themselves? Someone gets up with you.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:27] You feel like you have to, if everyone else or other people are standing and you're sitting here like, “Okay, I did like it. I guess I’ll stand up.”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:20:34] That's right. And so this is the second step to starting a movement. So you have your vision, you'd be the first to stand up, and the next thing you do is about embracing your first followers. The next few people to stand up with you, how you treat, how much you embrace and welcome them has a lot to do with whether your movement will take off. So there's a really fantastic Ted Talk on this topic, Derek Sivers.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:58] Yes.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:20:58] Have you seen it?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:58] He does the one with the guys on the hill dancing.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:21:00] Dancing, shirtless man.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:0 I was going to put that in your keynote for the book now, yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:21:04] Yeah, it's already in there. Thank you to Derek Sivers. Great example. But right, so he's shirtless dancing man for anyone who hasn't seen it, kind of out of the concert on his own, somewhat seemingly crazy.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:17] Possibly on some substances.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:21:19] Possibly. And then the second person who stands up, the first shirtless dancing man, instead of just continuing to dance by himself, he really embraces that person. He grabs his hands, he twirls him around, and all of a sudden they're in it together. And then a couple more people stand up and a few more. And as you point out, once everyone else is doing it, you kind of have to, and so soon the whole hill is just dancing together.
[00:21:45] So in movements it's about embracing those first few people and also often giving them a role to play that is somewhat significant. So there's an example that I love here. A woman named Jennifer Cardenas, who she started a group during Hurricane Harvey, like in the heat of it, when everybody was evacuating, she lived in Houston.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:08] A group in real life online?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:22:10] A Facebook group. She started a Facebook Group.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:11] Nope, don't be ashamed of promoting the brand, we’re at Facebook right now, it’s allowed. She started a Facebook Group and here's what happens. So she just invited her friends and family. Then she went to dinner and there were 800 people who had asked to join the group. She went to bed, and the next morning, while they were evacuating 30,000 people had asked to join this group, and over the next couple of days, it grew to 150,000 people. And Jennifer really embraced the other people who had joined her, 80 different people, volunteered to be moderators of the group.
They ended up pulling in the different expertise of the individuals. So some people had been through previous natural disasters and had spreadsheets they could use. Some people were members of the coast guard and they pulled in people to actually start helping coordinate rescues. Jennifer herself ended up losing Internet access. So she's the leader of this movement.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:03] Oh, what a bummer!
Jennifer Dulski: [00:23:03] She can't even get into the group.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:05] So anti-climactic.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:23:05] Right. But the amazing thing is because she had embraced those early followers, she didn't need to. There were all these people who could do it on her behalf when she wasn't there and they ended up rescuing 8,000 people from Hurricane Harvey.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:19] And it didn't descend, the Facebook group didn't descend into chaos?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:23:22] Not at all. I mean people, because all these people had volunteered to moderate it. It not only was it successful during the hurricane, but that group is still engaged and now they're helping each other manage through forms they have to fill out for FIMA.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:34] Insurance.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:23:35] Exactly. All of that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:36] When you see a group with that kind of growth, is there a little alert that goes off in someone's computer here in the office? It's like, “Hey, this thing is really popular. We should probably look at it and make sure everything is.”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:23:47] We do have various alerts for all different kinds of metrics. You might imagine though that we have a lot of groups, tens of millions of them.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:54] You do.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:23:55] And so there are a lot of them that actually grow like this very quickly.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:58] Really?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:24:00] Yes, they don't all do that. I say, that running a community is sort of like being a great host of a party. You have to give it some love and attention to make it work. You have to invite people and introduce them to each other and so forth. But there are many, many examples of groups that really take off like this when they resonate with people.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:21] What kind of groups of have you seen where you're like, “Wow! Who would have thought?” You remember beanie babies, if that was a coexisted at the same time as Facebook. There would be a huge beanie baby group that pops up overnight.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:24:31] That's right. I mean, they're really, honestly, there are huge groups on pretty much everything you can imagine. This is one of my favorite things about this is that there are groups on the things that people are really struggling with in their lives. There's huge groups for people who have someone in their family affected by addiction or themselves. There's groups for people who are adopted to like find and connect to other people who are adopted. How else would you find that except online?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:54] Good point.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:24:55] And then like every passionate hobby you can imagine. My one of my favorites is called Lady Bikers of California, but there's also a Lady Bikers group in Italy. There's one in India, there's one in like most of the states.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:08] Are you a Lady biker or just?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:25:10] I’m not a lady biker.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:11] You don’t seem the type, but you’ll never know.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:25:13] I’m not. In fact, not only am I not in lady biker, but there's a story in purposeful about me not learning to ride a bike, a bicycle until my 20s, which is pretty embarrassing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:21] A little. But hey, you threw it at, now you're owning it.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:25:24] That's right. And I still fell off a lot, which was extra embarrassing. But like these lady bikers, they felt really alone at first. Because they were often the only ones, they'd be out there biking on the road by themselves. Some of them say like they had things thrown at them, they were name called.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:41] Oh that’s terrible, yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:25:43] Right. But now that they find each other, now they connect online and they also like go riding together all the time. And so they feel empowered and the sense of belonging and that's part of why these groups grow as quickly as they do.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:56] Jen, how many people are in women in beekeeping on Facebook?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:00] I could look it up, but honestly there are. And like the --
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:05] She [indiscernible][00:26:05]
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:05] Are you in the women beekeeping?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:06] Oh yeah, women in beekeeping.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:07] Oh my God! How many people are in it?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:09] A lot.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:09] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:10] A lot.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:11] Right. So whatever like interesting or unusual hobby you have, there are other people who do that too.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:18] I never got to look for it. And when I saw women in beekeeping I was like, what is it? There's probably 15 people in there from NorCal who have hives. You can't post something and then check back in an hour without scrolling.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:30] That’s amazing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:31] Because there's so many videos of only women keeping bees in there. And I asked of course, why isn't it just beekeeping? And she goes, “The guys are dicks.” They're so mean to other. I thought okay, yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:45] I mean there are groups of blended gender and then there are also some groups that are just guys. One of my favorites is called The Missing Chins, which is a group of guys that run together and or just encourage each other while they're running and they've lost so much weight that they--
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:58] Oh The Missing Chins.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:26:59] Call themselves The Missing Chins. They've lost like thousands of pounds together.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:03] That's cool. That's really interesting. I'm waiting for, well, I'll talk about that later. Let's go back to the book, shall we?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:27:10] Okay.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:11] Stopping the haterade using criticism as an advantage because you mentioned earlier that there was a critical member who got that video for Virgin to go forward. I think most people are worried about there being somebody who's critical in the other direction, who says, “You know, this is a freaking FAA safety video. No one's paying attention. We can make it for five grand or we can make it for 150.” “Pick the cheap one, man. Why are you in my office?”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:27:39] Yeah. Well, what I say about criticism, first of all, you should expect it. I say it's part of the package. The more successful you become on your path to growing a movement, the more likely you are to face criticism. And first, I suggest that people separate it into two buckets because I've talked to a lot of people who've both started movements, also celebrities and so forth, and like there's a set of feedback that is about things that are outside of your control, like your gender, your appearance, your race, et cetera. And I try to tell people to just set that aside and not let that kind of feedback get you down.
[00:28:16] There are other ways to handle that kind of feedback to that have to deal with giving extra love and understanding, because the truth is people don't behave that way without a reason. People are not born haters and trolls.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:30] Normal people don't throw things at women riding motorcycles.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:28:34] That's right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:34] That’s not a normal person behavior.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:28:36] Well I guess what I'd say is normal, not normal like that is probably coming from a position of some kind of pain and trauma. And so there is a path, and I talked about this in the book, I call it the bear hug, of like trying to understand the people that hate you and why. And actually maybe I'll tell one story about that because we had a situation that changed out of work right after I started there, where we were getting spammed by a guy in Spain who would put fake signatures on the petition, take pictures of them, and then tweet them out to the press.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:15] Fake signatures, celebrities or something?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:29:16[ I mean, he would, yeah, he could put a name that was like obviously fake.
And the way that our system worked was that any bulk signatures would get taken down immediately. Individual supposedly fake signatures like that usually could take up to 24 hours.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:31] How are you going to find sig more buts on a petition.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:29:33] Right, so we do, we did find them, but we didn't take them down immediately. And so it was possible to do this thing where you would screenshot and tweet to the press.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:42] He just wanted to discredit your organization.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:29:44] Exactly. And so we were brainstorming like “What do you do when you have a kind of hater like this?” And we had all these tech solutions in mind and our then VP of Com said, “Why don't we try the bear hug? “And I'm like, “Well what does the bear hug?” And he says, “Well, why don't I fly to Spain and just go meet with him.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:03] Punch him in the face.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:30:02] No.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:03] I mean that was option B.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:30:06] I mean exactly. Yeah, yeah, maybe. No, just like listen to him, see what he has to say. We'll give him an oversize dose of love instead of, because the other ideas were like block his IP address, but then he goes to a new one and so forth. So I said, “Okay, well it's worth a shot. It was a little bit of like a boondoggle trip to Spain potentially.” But I didn't have a better idea, so.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:28] Okay, we get it. You want to go to Spain.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:30:30] So we flew him to Spain, and he went and flew out to this tiny island where this guy happened to live. And they talked about it and he explained kind of the way our system worked at a high level, you don't usually give all the details to spammer, and it turns out that the person who was doing this really cared about this one petition, and he was worried that there might be fake signatures on it, and so he wanted to prove whether or not it was possible. And it wasn't that he actually hated our organization, it was that he really cared about this one thing. And so when we understood that and when he understood the way our system worked, all of a sudden I'm getting like text messages with pictures of them with their arms around each other, they're drinking beers together and then he's not spamming us anymore. So a little bit of love and understanding can sometimes go a long way with the haters.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:22] Yeah.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:31:25] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Jennifer Dulski. We'll be right back after this.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:30] This episode is also sponsored by Home Chef. Now, I love these pre-portioned meal things where they bring you or send you everything you need to cook because I'm -- I don't know about you, Jason. I know you love shopping. I don't hate shopping, but I’m not, let's just say it's not a hobby. So if you go to the grocery store, you're prepping your meals for the week. It can be really difficult if you've got, let's say a really busy schedule, maybe you got some kids, instead you can simplify your day, can try a little Home Chef if you work late, if the kids have a crazy back and forth. If you travel and you can't get to the grocery store with like me, if you're guilty of making frequent trips to your local fast food joint or buying something that's not really a good for you, just so you have something to eat.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:32:13] Like me.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:13] Yeah, there. Yeah, exactly. I mean I think a lot of us are guilty of that and that's what Home Chef is designed to replace. You can try that for quick and easy meals. They've got 16 different meal options each week, which is a ton of variety from steak to chicken. They got vegetarian stuff, you can mix and match based on your preferences or the preferences of people in your house. And once you join, it's as simple as selecting your meals and customizing your delivery dates. Your box will arrive at your doorstep each week with recipe cards, fresh pre-portioned ingredients, and then you've got a home cooked meal and like half an hour, and even a five minute lunch options, which I dig.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:32:48] And some things I really liked about Home Chef. I mean the ingredients, they're all bagged up for each recipe. You don't have to sit there and sort them, and figure out what goes where. And I'm like, “Okay, where's my scallions go?” Rummaging around in the drawer trying to find all the pieces and parts. They're all just bagged up per recipe, which is really nice. And the portions are just super generous, which I was not expecting for a delivery meal. We were completely stuffed and there were leftovers, which never happens. So if you have a big appetite, you will not be left hungry, and it's delicious. There are tons of options and varieties. In the first box we got, we had to make French onions, shrimp and grits, which I never thought would be something to be on my dinner plate, but man, it was good and some sweet chili tofu and green beans over rice and fish tacos. They were all amazing and the ingredients were, they were really high quality, really high quality and totally fresh. It was just fun and fast, and great way to make dinner and you can listen to a podcast while you do it. It's great.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:41] Jason, tell them where they can find the Home Chef.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:33:43] Go to homechef.com/jordan for 30 dollar off your first order. That's homechef.com/jordan for 30 dollar off your first order. Homechef.com/jordan.
[00:33:53] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air and to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/advertisers. We also have an Alexa Skills so you can get inspirational and educational clips from the show in your daily briefing. Go to jordanharbinger.com/alexa, or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa App. Now for the conclusion of our show with Jennifer Dulski.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:21] Unfortunately that was a really expensive spammer in terms of time.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:34:26] It's true, but it was actually way less expensive to do that than it would have been to take say five or 10 engineers and put them on the technical solution or no against it, much cheaper.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:33] Oh, yeah, fair enough. Following this guy around the Internet to make sure he doesn't write stupid things on Twitter.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:34:38] Exactly. Exactly.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:40] Interesting.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:34:40] And then there's this other set of things which you mentioned before about using criticism to your advantage, which has to do with trying to realize that people who are criticizing us may have something of value to offer us. So there's a great quote that I love from Ken Blanchard that says “Even the best athletes in the world have coaches.” They are the best at their craft, and even they don't believe that they have all the answers.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:06] I'm a huge proponent of this.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:35:07] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:08] Whenever I've interviewed somebody who's really great at something, they always have four coaches or 10, for each of these subskills.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:35:16] That's right. And so when you think to yourself, well, if Michael Jordan's coach didn't probably shoot a better free throw than he did, but he still added a lot of value. If you can kind of see your critics as potential coaches, people who might make you better, it actually can let you use that criticism to your advantage. And there's a great story in the book about a woman Mary Lou Jepsen, who--
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:39] Yeah, she was just on my show.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:35:40] Oh really?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:41] Yeah. I was going to ask if you knew her.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:35:43] Love her. Yeah, she's one of the smartest technical minds in the world.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:47] Yeah, unbelievable.
Jennifer Dulski: [000:35:49] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:49] Yeah.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:35:50] And so one of her early projects, I don't know if you'd guys talked about this, but the One Laptop Per Child.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:55] Yes.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:35:55] So she was building these solar powered light readable, super inexpensive laptops only.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:00] Impossible to make.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:36:01] Right. Everybody thought they were impossible, did she tell you this story?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:04] Yeah, this was my friend Rob Reid did the interview on his show called After On, and it started with that. And then we talked or they talked about the imaging technology and things that I'd be reading our dreams, which was a little terrifying but also really cool. But yeah, everything everyone said was, you can't, and this is years before you and I would even have a laptop because it was ridiculous. Why would I need to bring a computer with me?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:36:31] Exactly.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:32] And she said, “No, we're going to make these really cheap portable devices that work on, I don't know, sunlight and rainbows--
Jennifer Dulski: [00:36:38] That’s right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:39] Or something, and she did it.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:36:41] That’s right. Well, the interesting thing is how she did it. She says, she went out to visit one of the biggest tech companies in Asia and she met with all their executives and she did the pitch about this and they said, “Oh no, there's 23 reasons why this won't work.” And so she said she took notes and then she said, “Well I think I have solutions for 17 of those things. Why don't I go back and like try to fix the rest and then I'll come back and you can tell me more things that might not work about my product.” And so instead of seeing them as critics, she basically leveraged them to debug her products to where she could make it possible.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:20] Q&A-ing like to try her entire idea in hour.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:37:21] Exactly, exactly. And so if you think about it that way, then those people who are criticizing you may just find things that actually you should change about your product.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:32] How can we tell the difference between somebody who's giving us coachable feedback versus somebody who's really just trying to demotivate because of their own stuff?
Because it's obvious when you're looking at this person threw a beer bottle at me while I was biking down the road. That's really obvious. What a four in an office situation, and someone says, “Yeah, this really isn't in the budget. We can't do this.” But really the reason is they're so pissed that a woman got promoted over them that they're never going to let you do anything.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:37:59] Yeah. So I'd say two things here. One is that similar to managers and movement starters, there's two types of people in organizations. This is another Ken Blanchardism that I love. He talks about eagles versus ducks and he says there are ducks. People who are ducks, they kind of sit on the surface and they see only what's immediately around them, and they crack all the time. The rules say quack, quack, we can't quack, quack, my budget, quack, quack, quack. And then there are eagles who fly above, see the big picture, use their judgment and kind of see past rules to what might be possible. And so if you're facing someone who's just really duck like, then I would suggest just moving them to the side. The type of feedback you want is critical feedback that helps you make what you're doing better, not just continues to quack at you. The other thing I found in interviewing, again, so many people is that having allies and supporters is really helpful. So sometimes if you're not sure if someone's a duck or an eagle, you can go to your other people who are allies in your movement and say, “I heard this thing. What do you think?” And just get some perspective from others.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:13] Right. So “Oh, did Tom tell you that?” “Yeah, he's never.” You had the same thing with me five years ago, and he'll eventually leave you alone. Right. Got it. That makes sense. How do we identify the people? You mentioned allies. How do we identify the right people where we go, “Okay, this person's going to end up being critical potentially to my idea.” or “Yes, I have to get the head of the flight attendant--
Jennifer Dulski: [00:39:36] Right.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:37] Training people on board with this video. How do we find those people? There's got to be some strategy to?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:39:43] Yeah, again, this gets back to influence mapping, I think. So you basically, most movements have a decision maker, one or more people who have the power to do the thing you want change. Sometimes it's your CEO, sometimes it's elected officials, sometimes it's the head of your school, whoever it is that they're the person that has the power, understanding both who motivates that, like who influences them and also what are the things that motivate them really matters. So I tell a story about an experience I had early in my career where I did this badly, and like learn from those.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:19] Let’s hear it.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:40:20] So basically when early in my career at Yahoo, I was responsible for leading marketing for what was then Yahoo Search, which we were trying to fight back against Google after we had kind of lost all the market share and search, and we had to run this, not that we had to, we wanted to run a big marketing campaign because we thought this would help us let people know why the product, we had rebuilt the product and it was much better and we wanted to let people know. But there was a decision maker whose approval I needed on the budget and I just did not do a good job of getting his approval. I was nervous because he had so much power and I had sometimes seen him not be super nice people when they asked him for things, and so instead of like really thinking about what he cared about and how I could effectively persuade him, I just delayed and delayed until it was the very last minute, and I essentially boxed him into a corner because I needed his approval to launch the thing like the next few days, which was not a good, not at all a great recommendation.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:29] He didn’t appreciate that?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:41:31] No, he did not. And later, it all turned out okay. I tell the rest of the story where I went to explain to him the results of this campaign and he started out by saying this was a horrible idea and we spent way too much money on it, which was a little rough for--
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:46] It’s a great start to any meeting.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:41:46] Yeah, exactly. It's like, okay. But as it turns out, the data was really clear in my presentation that this marketing campaign had led to increased market share, which was worth tens of millions of dollars.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:58] I bet you that were glad to be able to deliver that news.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:42:00] Right. And he was also, and at the end he said, “Boy, I'm sorry. I was wrong. I could be wrong.” But it was one of those moments where I realized how hard it is to sit in that seat. I had not been a decision maker on a big budget item before, and now that of course, I do that all the time, I realize how much more we can help those people make the decisions by empowering them with the data they need by persuading other people who might influence them to make it easier for them to say yes. So there's a whole section in the book about making it easy to say yes and kind of the combination of data and storytelling and understanding the people that matter to that person are all key.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:43] What are the common mistakes you see from people that are working under you, where you go, “Man, if this person had just done this in a different way, or all young people who are working in my departments continually do this thing. How do we get rid of this bad habit?”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:42:58] Yeah, I guess what I'd say is that in working in a lot of different organizations, what I tend to see is that people have different strengths. So some people are really super analytical and they're great at presenting data. Other people are much better at painting a vision and a picture and a story of what it could be. And the people who are the most successful are the ones who either can get well-rounded themselves or can put together teams of people that are well-rounded. So I might, if someone's presenting something to me and it is lacking data, I will just ask, can you show me?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:38] Where’s the beef?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:43:39] Yeah. I need to understand more about the metrics of what might happen if you launched this. And generally, again, I tend to view myself as a coach the same way I view my critics as coaches to me. I tend to view myself as a coach to my team. And this comes from my experience as a coxswain on the crew team in high school and college. So for people who don't know, in a rowing team there's a role called the coxswain. So coxswain is they sit in the boat, they steer, they strategize the race because you can see how many strokes per minute the team is taking. You pace them and you also coach and motivate the rowers to push themselves harder than they think they can and to do that correctly so that they win the race. And I learned pretty quickly that if someone's or going in at the wrong angle or too slow or too fast, you have to give them feedback. If you don't give them feedback at that moment in real time, and in this case, unfortunately in front of everyone else, then you'll lose.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:44] Yeah. You can’t pull someone aside on that little boat.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:44:46] Right. And so at work, it's always good to pull someone aside, but even when you can't, the thing that I learned over time is that different people are motivated in different ways. And so I actually practice this outside of the boat. They have these rowing machines and it was my job to coach them each on the erg, it's called. And I would find that different techniques worked with different people. So some people like they wanted it really direct or competitive, like you'll never make it. That's not good enough.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:16] Talk to me like my dad talk to me.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:45:17] Exactly. And then other people wanted like really positive, encouraging feedback. Like “That's awesome! You're doing so great! Just a little bit more.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:25] Yeah, three degrees right.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:45:26] Exactly. And so then when we were in the boat, I knew what was the right thing to say to each person and that made it easier for them to take the feedback, and that is true at work as well.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:37] I think a lot of managers think they have to calibrate to my management style, not I have to calibrate my management style to the way that my team functions.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:45:45] That's right. And what I would say is you will be more effective if you can do the latter.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:50] And not everyone will hate you like they probably do now if that's how you currently operate.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:45:54] Yeah, I mean there are -- I think it is reasonable to set expectations that you expect people to deliver. But that's about setting again, clear vision and goals and getting everyone rowing in the same direction, but then how they want to do that or be motivated around that really is different. And I created a tool, there's a link to it on my website.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:16] We’ll link to it on the show notes.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:46:18] Yeah, great.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:19] What is it called?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:46:19] It's called the Motivational Pie Chart.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:21] Oh nice.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:46:21] And basically I learned because everyone's motivated in different ways now I just ask that. And so I give everybody I work with an empty circle and I say fill it up with the things that matter to you at work, and they can use as many categories as they want. So then they weight them the size of which pie chart matters most and then they color code them red, yellow, and green. How we're doing against those factors. And I did this initially because a woman on my team came up to me once and said, “If I ever do a good job, just pay me more money.” And I was like, “What?” I was so shocked by that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:59] Yeah, that's very blunt.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:47:01] Right. She just said, I don't really care about recognition and I just want more money, like a spot bonus or something is what will make me happy. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I would never ever have guessed that if she hadn't told me. So I just started asking people, and now after decades of using the pie chart, I've learned two things. One is there are a lot of unique things that come up that you wouldn't guess about people if you didn't ask them. The other thing is there's three things that show up on every single pie chart.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:30] What are they?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:47:31] They are purpose or meaning. People want to know that they're working on something that matters and they want to know how what they do connects to that purpose. The second one is growth. People want to feel like they're learning and growing in their job, that they're being challenged, et cetera. And I think the main reason why people leave jobs is they feel like they're not learning anymore. And the third is connection. They want to work with people they like and trust and respect. And so there's a chapter in Purposeful called lead your crew and it breaks down into these three categories, and basically says, “Whether you're leading a team at work or you're leading a movement as a social organizer, those same three categories are what really matters.”
Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:13] How do we stay motivated or what do we do when we go through all these steps? I've got the book, I read the whole thing, I went through the workbook that doesn't exist yet, and Jordan's worksheets don't exist yet, and then it falls on its face or it doesn't get off the runway, or of course, if I made some obvious mistake, I didn't do the influence mapping, that was a huge fail. What happens if we just don't have enough lift?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:48:38] So I guess here -- the thing to remember is movements don't happen overnight. So first, I say expect that there will be some ups and downs, and I described this as mountain climbing. It's kind of like some days are super sunny and you brought a picnic lunch and other days are really cloudy and you have like a backpack that weighs 50 times your body weight. The key is to keep yourself climbing on both of those days and to remember that there will be those ups and downs. Part of what helps there is also having a team of people you're working with. The other thing that I've seen be really successful in keeping momentum going is new stories that you bring into the mix. So sometimes what you see is like you'll have initial success and then it'll feel like it kind of flattens out. And what I see happen is there, if people can bring a new story into the mix, it can reignite it.
[00:49:30] So an example here, and this one is not in the book, but there's a woman named Katie Bethel who started an organization called PL+US, which stands for Parental leave in the US. She's on a campaign to get companies and the government in the US to offer some parental leave, which our government doesn't do as you know.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:53] Did not, well actually I didn't. I don’t think I know, so.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:49:55] Yeah, we are one of only three countries in the world that doesn't offer parental leave as part of the law.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:01] Oh really? Okay, I just assumed because every company that I know, that you hear about anyway has it, not here?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:50:08] Around here, that's true. But most of the country that's not.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:12] That’s insane.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:50:13] And so people will often have to go back to work like days after giving.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:16] That sounds horribly uncomfortable and distracting.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:50:19] Really difficult and unsafe to both the mother and the child. And so Katie is on a mission to change that and she's doing it really effectively because she keeps new stories coming into the mix. So they will work with people who are employees of certain companies and get them to tell their stories and then go to the company and try to persuade them. They've effectively done that with both Starbucks and Walmart at this point. And then anytime there's kind of a flattening out, she'll find a new story, she'll raise awareness about a new thing, and that's what helps keep this going. It's going to be a long fight. It's not like, this is something you change a week or day.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:56] Changing labor laws is you're going against the people with the most money in the whole country and you're trying to affect change through the government. I mean, good luck -- vaya con Dios with anything in that department
Jennifer Dulski: [00:51:09] And I do believe that they will be successful, but it's going to be, you know, it's going to take a while and it's going to take lots of pieces along the way. The other thing I'd say is that sometimes you may just be on the wrong path. And I tell a story also about my own startup that we changed the name twice. We changed the product three times. Sometimes the idea you have actually isn't going to work, and so you have to be willing to do what we call in startup land, the pivot.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:35] Yes.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:51:37] And change your approach. Ideally your mission doesn't change. So the vision that you set for your movement, what you want to change and why stays consistent, but how you go about it, you may need to shift that approach.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:49] Sure, yeah. The listeners are very familiar with pivoting in Silicon Valley, of course, that's like, you hear that word every single day and you think of companies like Slack that spent 10 years trying to make a video game or something like that. And then the only function that was working properly was the chat feature.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:52:04] Well, you know that's how Flickr got started too.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:06] I did not know that.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:52:06] So Stewart Butterfield, who started both Flickr and Slack, tried to start a massive multiplayer online game both times.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:14] Oh, poor guy.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:52:16] Well, he’s --
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:17] [indiscernible] [0:52:17]
Jennifer Dulski: [00:52:17] Right. And he's doing it right. He's been successful both times and starting something else, so.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:21] Yeah. Good for him and that, and by the way, before you all ask me, we're going to post an excerpt from the book that has information about influence mapping and hopefully in the future a couple of resources about that because I like that idea of being able to pinpoint who is actually the right person to influence so that they can influence someone else. I guess--
Jennifer Dulski: [00:52:41]Exactly.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:42] Is a priceless set of skills. What I'm waiting for Facebook to do, and I know this isn't necessarily your department, I want to post a picture of myself and have it go, “Here's everyone in the world that looks like you.” When is that coming?
Jennifer Dulski: [00:52:56] I don't know, but that's an interesting idea.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:59] Because as there's got to be some people that look just like you.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:53:00] The doppelganger. I have one because people told me that I have one, and sent me her picture. It's quite amusing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:08] I definitely met people that look and have other people go, “Is that you?” And I'm like, “No.” But that looks so much like me. Who is that guy? I don't know. He's at an airport, but he has a Facebook profile for sure. Same height, same weight, similar phase. I even showed my mom a picture of this guy that somebody had sent me and she goes, “Did you get your eyebrow pierced?” And I'm like, “It's not even me. It's some other guy.”
Jennifer Dulski: [00:53:28] Oh that's great. We'll take that feedback.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:30] Let's do it.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:53:30] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:31] Yeah. How hard can it be, right? Remember those apps that gave you guys all that trouble. They do have useful applications, I promise. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Jennifer Dulski: [00:53:41] Thanks so much for having me.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:44] Great big thank you to Jennifer Dulski. The book title is Purposeful: Are You a Manager ... Or a Movement Starter? And you know I've really liked her takeaways and insights from not only her experience but she didn't seem super corporate and stiff like she really is putting this stuff into practice and I can see why it gets the results that it does. And so thank you to Jennifer for coming on the show. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage a lot of my relationships and network, I use systems, I use tiny habits and I'm teaching you those for free because I wish I knew this stuff 10, 15 years ago. It's in our Six-Minute Networking Course, again at no charge at all, not like “Put in your card number and then we charge the,” I don't do any of that. Just go to jordanharbinger.com/course. jordanharbinger.com/course. And I know you think you're going to do it later, but the problem with that is that you can't make up for lost time when it comes to relationships and networking. The number one mistake I see people make is kicking the can down the road de prioritizing it and not digging the well before they get thirsty. So these drills are a few minutes per day. This is the stuff that is the most important and saved my bacon when I had to start over with Jason and the team earlier this year. So go to jordanharbinger.com/course.
[00:55:00] And speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Jennifer Dulski. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. Love hearing from you on both platforms, and don't forget if you want to learn how to apply everything you heard today from Jennifer, make sure you go grab the worksheets. Those are also in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast.
[00:55:21] This show is produced in association with PodcastOne and this episode was co-produced by Jason “Hey, What Happened to the Polk” DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes by Robert Fogarty, worksheets by Caleb Bacon, and I'm your host, Jordan harbinger. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which is hopefully in every episode. So please share the show with those you love. Share the show with those you don't lots more in the pipeline. I'm very excited to bring it to you and in the meantime, do your best to apply what you're hearing here on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.
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