Show notes
Hear how to really think about the conversations you're having What if you could see the world through a fresh lens? In today's podcast, I interview Rose Fass, an author, a business executive, and an inspiration to me and to you. Rose has written one book and is on her way with her next one. Her first book, The Chocolate Conversation, focuses on how our conversations become who we are, what we hear, and how we build relationships. Great conversations help us craft clear messages, build a shared worldview, uncover concerns and uncertainties, and help you and others move forward together. As you listen to Rose and her own personal journey, you are going to rethink your own conversations, paying attention to both what you say and what others reflect on your thoughts. Listen in because there is so much to learn! Watch and listen to our conversation here Learning the lesson of resilience from a dandelion Rose tells the story of being a nine-year-old girl, walking home from school with her friends, a bit frustrated like adolescents often are. Her father was a WWII marine and a poet. That day, she saw him picking dandelions out of the lawn. Seeing her, he turned around and smiled and showed her one of the flowers, asking, "Rose, what do you see?" Not knowing what answer he was looking for, she responded, "I don't know Dad. I see a dandelion." He said, "Yes, but I want you to look deeper and wider. Look beyond the obvious." Rose asked him: "What do you see?" He paused, looked at her, and said, "I see the end of a long winter. I see the dawning of a new season. I see lovers walking hand in hand exchanging silent expressions of their love. I see children picking these out of the lawns and handing them to their moms." He went on: "Rose, we, like many homeowners, will use things to take these dandelions out of our lawns, like other weeds. And in their place will come beautiful flowers like irises and tulips and even roses. But the beauty of the dandelion is not in its first expression of spring. It's in the root, because it's resilient. And all of us know that no matter how much we try to get rid of them, they come back double fold." The message for each one of us is that resilience. As you listen to Rose talk about the work she does with and for her business clients, you will be inspired to respect and expand your own resilience. These are fast-changing times, and resilience, personally and in business, is more essential than ever. Powerful advice for women, those in the C-suite or any leadership role As Rose tells us: How often we think we're having the same conversation — about dark chocolate, for instance — only to be referring to three different things: milk, white or bittersweet varieties. She shows us how to first establish common ground that leads to an effective discourse for addressing relevance, growth and scaling — the three most important issues she sees in business today. Judith Glaser, the great organizational anthropologist and change agent, once told me that all our lives are just conversations — good ones and not so good ones. Rose has amazing insights on this too, and all women in business should pay close attention to her ideas. Searching for your passion and purpose? Start here: Blog: For Women In Business, Now Is The Time To Achieve Your Dreams Podcast: Lisa McLeod—If You Want To Succeed, You Must Find Your Noble Purpose Podcast: Tony Martignetti—Are You Ready To Live A Life Of Inspired Purpose? Additional resources for you My award-winning second book: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business My award-winning first book: On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I'm Andi Simon. As you know, I'm a corporate anthropologist, and my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. And for our podcast, I go looking for people who can help you do that as well. Our job is to get you off the brink. But unless you can see things through a fresh lens, begin to understand them in a new way, you get stuck, or stalled, or you know what you know, and your brain doesn't really want to change anyhow, thank you very much, please go away. I'm happy where I am. But today, the times are changing. We are in a world that is full of turmoil, everywhere, of all kinds. From COVID, to the Ukraine, to what's going on in corporations, everybody is having a challenging time talking to each other. And so I brought you today a wonderful woman who's going to help you think about the conversations that we're having, and how to turn them into really growth experiences. The whole world is a conversation. We're having a global conversation right now. So today, we have Rose Fass here. Rose and I met fortunately, serendipitously at the Westchester Business Council, where she was presenting an absolutely brilliant presentation. And she's going to share some of those insights with you. It was really so touching. I said, Wow, can I share her with our audience as well? Now, the Westchester Business Council is a marvelous organization. You have no idea how many people I've met there, it's a really cool place. But each time I meet somebody and want to share them, they add some dimension to our day today. Let me tell you a little bit about Rose and then she'll tell you about her own journey. Rose knows, as she says, how to use her unique gift to take a mess and quickly put it in place with effective steps to teach desired outcomes. Interesting, isn't it. So she loves to change as I do, and like me, is a culture change expert. She's a natural facilitator who connects with all types of people at all levels of an organization, from the C-suite to the people closest to the work. She has over 45 years of experience in technology and consumer-based industries. During her career, Rose has opened businesses in the United States, has been a general manager with full P&L responsibility and led major corporate transformations. She was a chief transformation officer at Xerox and she's going to tell you a lot about some of her learnings and why at this point she's ready to help others do all kinds of transformation. These times, they are a-changing as Bob Dylan told us in the 60s. Rose, thank you for being with me today. Rose Fass: Thank you, thank you so much. And it's interesting that whenever I hear my bio, I have to smile a little because I go back to being this little kid in a very small neighborhood with a group of young Italian girls like myself just walking around and trying to figure out what it was that we were going to do when we grew up. So the interesting part about all of this is, I run a company right now called fassforward Consulting Group. And it's probably the culmination of everything I ever did at Xerox. Later I went to Gartner with the now CEO of ServiceNow, Bill McDermott, and then met my colleague and partner there, Gavin McMahon, and we started this about 21 years ago. And I still feel like I'm a student of the subject that I talked about. So I want to bring myself into the room as little Rose, so you know who I am. Then we can decide whether any of us are a big piece of stuff, or we all buy into this world with our brilliance and our muddy shoes. So I used to live in East Utica, New York. That's where I was born, on Ruptor Street, and we had a four-room cold water flat that my dad worked very hard on, kind of getting it to where we would have hot water or mom wouldn't have to boil it on top of the stove. Believe it or not, I'm 72 years old and I can actually think back to those days very fondly. But my claim to fame was I lived down the street from Annette Funicello. All of you young women, she was on the Mouseketeers and we were just all a bunch of Italian girls who could dance and sing and we were all cute. And we just could not understand why Annette got discovered by Walt Disney and ended up in Hollywood and we were left in East Utica. So for many, many days, I walked with a group of Italian girls home, complaining, whining, saying bad things and being green with jealousy. I remember this one day, it was unusual because it was early spring, and if you know anything about upstate New York winters, they're horrible. But the weather was nice and I saw my dad picking dandelions out on the front lawn. I went up to him very quietly, because I just wanted to scoot by. My father was a World War II Marine, a published poet and conversant in all the Romance languages, so he was a very interesting guy. I remember walking by and him saying, Rose, and I halted. I turned around, this little nine-year-old looking at him, and he said, What do you see? And he held up the dandelion. And I thought, Oh, God, I don't want to do this. This philosopher, I don't want to do this. And I said, I don't know Dad, I see a dandelion. And he said, Yes, darling, but I want you to look wider. I want you to look deeper. I want you to look beyond just the dandelion. And he looked at me, and I said, I don't know Dad, what do you see? I think at that point, I had learned how to be very good at rhetorical responses, especially when I didn't have an idea of what to say. I was so down in the dumps that I just didn't have the energy to get into it. I usually did, because I think for my dad I was the one that appreciated poetry and philosophy. So he looked at me and he said, Darling, I see the end of a long winter. I see the dawning of a new season. I see lovers walking hand in hand exchanging silence. I see children picking these out of the lawns and handing them to their moms to put them in juice glasses on the sills as a means of saying I love you. And I looked at him. And I said, you see a lot, Dad. And he said, Rose, soon this dandelion, this beautiful expression of spring is going to become a weed, and we like many homeowners are going to go to the nurseries and we're going to get the stuff that will take it out of the lawn because we want to rid ourselves of this one beautiful expression of spring that's now an ugly reminder of cleaning up the yard. And I looked at him. He said, Because soon honey, the beautiful flowers are going to come along, the irises, the tulips, and yes, even the roses. But the beauty of the dandelion is not in its first expression of spring, it's in the root, because it's resilient. And all of us know that no matter how much we hack at them next year, they come back double fold. We named you Rose, but roses are fragile. In your heart, you need to be a dandelion. That is my signature story. I remember that day of standing there on that little patch of lawn and crying in the arms of the Marine and in the arms of the poet. And for whatever reason, letting it all out and feeling like I may be enough. I didn't think I was but maybe I'm enough. And I think we women struggle with that. And so for the rest of my journey, I have reminded myself that we get kicked around, and we get hacked at. And we just have to be resilient. And so today, I think that's probably more true than ever. And it has held me together for many, many years. Andi, so I want you know who I really am, the little rose, the woman who became who she is today, and that I am a combination of all of those beautiful moments when you learn through pain. Andi Simon: Now, by saying that, I guess I visualized that scene with your father was exhilarating, maybe painful. But he was imparting to you wisdom that's really hard to come by otherwise. Who else would you trust to listen to that way? So you may have cried but I have a hunch he had a long term impact on the way you see the world. It's all of the implications and the meaning that it has. Am I right? Rose Fass: The Marine, unlike the philosopher, said, one rule for my two brothers and me was to be up by 0600, ready for company. Every day of my life, I am out of bed by six o'clock and I get dressed no matter where I'm going. My hair is combed. I've showered and am presentable and so are my brothers. And in his mind, it was the "ready for company" meant a lot of things. Were you ready to be gracious? Were you ready to be approachable? Were you ready to be aware, conscious, willing to help? All those things culminated in that one little statement: be up at 0600 and ready for company. And I've kind of never forgotten that. Today, with people working remotely, I noticed they get on the camera, and oftentimes, they'll take the camera off because they're not camera ready or they're even in sweat pants, and they're looking draggy. And when you don't feel good about yourself, it's hard to feel good about life. Yes, and we're living in a time when I think more than ever we have to bring our best selves to whatever we're doing. Because it's going to get harder before it gets easier. I really believe that. Andi Simon: You're making the important point about our best selves. And I want you to talk a little bit about the career that you had because we could stay on your lessons learned in your youth a lot. But the best self is a very interesting concept. We are working with a lot of women as coaches, and they are successful, but not happy. They have a position or are partner in a firm. They've got degrees, are financially successful and they're asking, Isn't there more? We talk a lot about who am I? What's my purpose? What's my best self? So a little bit more about as you got into your career, you began to carve out an area around transformation. Sounds like your father became living in these companies a little bit further. Rose Fass: By the way, Andi, you talk about youth. I often relate to men in the work that I do. I tell them there's no more important person in a young woman's life than their father. Mom plays a role but Father gives them the sense of validation and approval of who they are as women. And I think that's critical, just as mothers help their sons become more approachable and more yin and yang. So for me, my early career after I got out of Boston University, I started at Saks Fifth Avenue in an executive training program, and I had two mentors. I had Jan Edelstein, God rest her soul. She was very gypsy-ish, wore all these crazy skirts and crazy glasses and lots of bangles. But knew Judith Leiber, Bottega, every possible fashion brand you can think of in accessories. I was her assistant and I was also assistant to the blouse buyer, who was Miss Janet. And I'm not kidding. Little bow, little glasses like a librarian, always in the black pencil skirt, white blouse, buttoned to the teeth. They could not have been more different. Jan told me to have to learn how to be creative and every bit of data and information you need to make good sound decisions. But let that be one data point that I want you to go with your gut when you feel you know how your experience is and how something speaks to you. Then I went up toJudith and she taught me the process. And it was so procedural. I remember taking an inventory where every single blouse had to be counted. And in those days, these departments were massive. And I walked around and I was spinning. And I was trying to take a few little shortcuts. And she said to me, Miss Maysa (my maiden name), and I said, Yes. She said, You are not to take shortcuts. You will one day take shortcuts but that will be after you learn the long way home, and I'm going to teach you a long way home. The unique part about this was that Jan and Judith were really good friends. They could not have been more different. But they u…
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