The Essay Meta (Literally) Asked For

and how prioritizing the principles they paid me to preach led to a Federal Lawsuit

As 2020 drew to a close and I transitioned from Facebook's Creative Shop to Developer Platform PMM, I was asked by Meta leadership to write an internal post ahead of a leadership summit about one of our four directions of leadership: Continual Growth.

So I wrote about how pursuing the next right thing, again and again, builds a career rooted in purpose instead of position.

The essay quoted Obama on thinking in terms of what you want to do vs. who you want to be. It channeled Anna from Frozen II, finding her way through darkness one step at a time. It told the story of how I'd built my career by consistently choosing impact over title, purpose over position. How I'd walked out of pre-med when I realized I was torturing myself. How treating people fairly had always been the right business strategy.

What neither Meta's leadership nor I could have imagined then was how these same principles—the ones they asked me to evangelize—would lead me to file a civil rights lawsuit against them in King County Court that would later be moved to Federal Court. That “the next right thing” might one day include taking a stand against the very company that had asked me to write about principled leadership, guided by those exact principles.

Stonelake v. Meta

This essay came up while chatting with Maureen Wiley Clough on last week's episode of It Gets Late Early, and I've been thinking about it since. These principles continue to guide my decisions today; they can also provide scaffolding for fractional careers, for those of us rebuilding after illness or injury, for anyone whose capacity fluctuates.

Those in power can take a lot from us. They can take our jobs, our titles, our money, they can sideline us and in many cases, silence us. But they cannot reach inside and rewire what we know to be right (although they certainly try). They can’t take your principles. As I said to Maureen in our discussion, “I don’t have f-you money… I have f-you self-worth,” which is about recognizing that money is not the only path to stand in your truth, although it certainly helps. I’d be remiss to not acknowledge that while sticking to my values and principles, I’m also being supported by doctors, psychologists, occupational therapists, child care providers, house cleaners, friends and family members. Much of this is expensive.

“F-you” self worth means that I’m willing to accept losing whatever it takes to stay true to myself.

And “the next right thing" isn't foolproof, it’s not guaranteed success. The framework doesn't prevent mistakes, but it gives a way forward when you make them. I have learned that even the biggest mistakes are easier to bear when you know you made the best choice you could possibly make with your existing circumstances and skillset. Because with all the highs and lows come learning, insight, growth, and new tools as we ask again, what’s the next right thing?

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Originally published internally at Meta in late 2020, slightly shortened and now with an AI-generated image:

Growing from the Gut: What Obama, Anna of Arendelle, and I have to say about leading from within

by Kelly Stonelake

What happens when we relieve the pressure to define the next milestone in our careers, and allow ourselves the freedom to ask what we actually want to be doing? How do we want to spend our time?

“Worry less about what you want to be, and think more about what you want to do. Because this town is full of people who want to be a congressman or want to be a senator or want to be president. And if that’s your focus, if that’s your moral compass, then you’re consistently going to be making decisions solely on the basis of how do I get, for me, what I want. If you think in terms of what do I want to do? ‘I want to solve climate change’ or ‘I want to employ disadvantaged youth’ or ‘I want to fix a broken healthcare system’, then even if you don’t get to the place you wanted to be or the office you wanted, during that entire time you’re going to be working on stuff that’s real and getting stuff done…You'll do great things.”

-President Obama

Phrased differently:

Worry less about what you want to be, and more about what you want to do.
Because this company is full of people who want to be a director or a VP or a CEO at their next gig. And if that's your focus, if that's your moral compass, then you're consistently going to be making decisions on the basis of how do I get, for me, what I want.

If you think in terms of what do I want to do? "I want to connect people to businesses in a meaningful way" or "I want to help others discover their potential and flourish" or "I want to change the way people consume video around the world", then even if you don't get to the place you wanted to be or the title you wanted, as Obama says, “you’ll do great things.”

What things, though? If we go beyond Washington for our inspiration, yes all the way to Arendelle, Anna descends into a darkness and uncertainty when her sister, Elsa, and snowman friend, Olaf, are missing. She wants to find them. Her process? The next right thing.

"This next choice is one that I can make / So I'll walk through this night / Stumbling blindly toward the light / And do the next right thing / And, with it done, what comes then? / When it's clear that everything will never be the same again / Then I'll make the choice to hear that voice / And do the next right thing"

-Anna, Frozen II

When I heard this song, on my couch, surrounded by my 3 young children captivated and silent for the first time in what seemed like a year, I had an epiphany. This is the anthem of my career!

From the time I was a little girl, I had two goals. I wanted to go to Harvard, and I wanted to be a Doctor. As a child, I did not deviate from this plan or proclamation once. It wasn't until I was sitting in a pre-med Organic Chemistry class that it hit me like a stack of textbooks - I'm going to spend the next 6 years studying this stuff that makes me feel miserable? How do I want to spend my time? I knew the answer. I stood up and walked out in the middle of that class.

Rewind a few years, I was 14 years old and sitting in the living room of the basement apartment my mom and I rented. I watched the pile of bills surround her, pushing around papers and pushing away tears as she made desperate phone calls. Emboldened by a mix of empathy and panic, I opened Craigslist and searched in the "gig" section. A couple days later, I spent my Saturday handing out brochures for a window treatment company at a mall and made $80. It covered our electric bill.

Soon I was doing this work every weekend. I learned the difference between products of quality and not. And companies of quality and not. In addition to being ethical and customer first, the best companies treated their contractors well. They paid the standard 20% agency fee on top of the talent fee, so when we worked for the best companies, we went home with the full fee instead of the typical talent cut of 80%. Soon, I realized that $15 toward a business license meant that I could effectively be my own agent and guarantee I'd always take home either the full talent fee, or the fee + 20%, depending on the client.

When a job surfaced and I was booked (or in high school), I'd recruit friends and the best people I'd met on other jobs. I only took the agent's fee if the client paid it on top, so when people worked for me, they always took the full fee.

If I had set out to "be" the owner of a successful talent company, I probably would've focused on maximizing profit for growth… how to achieve maximum client satisfaction with minimal cost, or talent fee and quality. But I was going to be a doctor, of course, so I wasn't focused on creating a talent empire. I was motivated by what I wanted to do: find fun, flexible work to support my family, and to create similar opportunities for others. I believed that creating values for others was also good for me and my business.

I continued making decisions based off the next right thing and graduated high school with a rolodex of hundreds of contractors and a thriving talent business that had morphed into a marketing consultancy. Managing event talent had accidentally put me in the center of the marketing process—it gave me the privilege of visibility. Of both reading the briefs from my clients, and then leading the teams that executed these assignments in malls and concerts and festivals around the country.

Sometimes I saw failed, laughable execution plans that we scrambled to put lipstick on, at the hands of something I call "boardroom marketing" - the effect when executives sit in their office buildings deciding what consumers who often look and live nothing like them want. Too often the absence of insights and ideas. Really, you don’t want to stop your holiday shopping to play shoot ‘em hoops at the mall for a chance to win a small discount on a phone carrier you’d never consider anyway? This front-row seat spawned an insatiable curiosity about consumer motivations and barriers, and how we can build big ideas and products that speak to these, generate business, and create value for everyone.

This was the spark that ignited the career I have today.

I started giving feedback to my clients and sharing ideas for how to improve. In doing this 'next right thing' and engaging in a way that wasn’t socially sanctioned, I built deep client trust and received an invaluable business education from executives from TMobile, XBOX, Budweiser, and Starbucks. When this work led to an opportunity to support higher education marketing via Apple’s Campus Rep program, I jumped at it. I could work remotely with a flexible schedule, which meant I was able to keep doing what I loved while getting the degree I needed. Because I still wanted to be… a doctor?!

I made it this far into my journey as a literal teenage prodigy businesswoman without reevaluating my own ambitions? How?! I’d separated who I wanted to “be” and what I wanted to “do” in a way that was setting me up for disappointment. My understanding of "growth" was a fixed definition of a future I had planned, even though the fulfilling career of my dreams was right in front of me. I walked straight from that Organic Chemistry class and into the marketing department to change my major.

In 2008, Dave Morin, a force in Silicon Valley and my former manager from Apple called to say that if I didn't join him at Facebook on the Developer Platform team, we'd both regret it. He was right. I've spent the last nearly 12 years saying yes to the next right thing at Facebook, all the way back to Developer Platform last month. And my goodness, did we all get lucky, because this place has to be the best company in the world to take both Obama and Anna's advice.

So, I'll ask again.

What would happen if you relieved the pressure to define the next milestone in your career? What if instead of where you want to be 6 months from now, you asked what you wanted to be doing for the next 6 months?

Leading from this place gifts us with the ability to coach ourselves and others to pay attention to our intuition, to the compass within, on the next project, question, or role. Growth from the gut.

What do you want to do? What's the next right thing?