Hello, everyone. Welcome to Real Talk with Tia and Jill. As you can see, I'm here by myself today. Jill is traveling. Maybe she's watching. I don't know if she is. Say hello in the comments, Jill. But I have two very special guests with me today. Maureen and Madison, welcome. Welcome to Real Talk. Thanks for having us. Yes. Maureen, I know you've been on the show before. Madison, have you ever been on Real Talk before? I have not. I've listened. Well, welcome. We are happy to have you both here today. And we're talking about this topic of preaching to the choir. So you both are food safety and quality experts out in the industry. And there's a lot of conversation around food safety culture. It's a top thing. We talk about it all the time. People feel it's a buzzword. Is it moving forward? Is it not? And as we were prepping for the show, one of the things you two are very passionate about is the fact that as food safety professionals, we keep preaching to the choir. We keep preaching to food safety professionals who get it, but maybe others who don't. Would you consider this something that you're passionate about now in your careers? Yeah, I mean, obviously there are a lot of conversations around food safety culture and we talk about what's not working. We talk about what should be the outcome, the desired outcome, but we don't talk as much about like the actionable how to actually do that. And so that's where Maureen and I have gotten into a lot of conversations on what really does drive that change because it's less the talking with people that like you said, get it and understand and instead influencing and bringing different people along so that they can then be champions of the culture as well. Yes. Yeah. And I suppose just to add on that, it's the delicate balance between needing to do all of the things on our to-do list and finding ourselves in spaces where food safety is not necessarily the topic of discussion, but a topic that needs to be embedded as part of what underlying vine that connects us all together so that even if we're not necessarily talking about kappa or food safety culture directly whatever it is we're talking about is connected somehow because that's how we get other people who are not on the floor thinking about how do i contribute to this grand story of food safety culture Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we are going to dive into all of that today, and I'm super excited to have you both on with us. If you are new here with Real Talk, like I said, I'm Tia. I typically have my partner in crime, Jill, with us, but she is traveling. But we have honest conversations about how to how people lead right and move culture forward. And today we're talking about stop preaching to the choir and build allies. And like Madison and Maureen have sort of started the conversation, it's very important for us to reach across the aisle or build allies outside of our core function if we want to shift culture. And so to kick off the conversation, if you've never met Maureen, if you've never met Madison, I would like for each of you just to talk a little bit about yourself. How did you get into food? How did you get into food safety? And if you saw yourself moving into food. So we'll start with you, Maureen. I initially really thought I was going to go to medical school. That's all I thought about. That's all of the books that I read as a child were about medicine and specifically neurosurgery. I'm fascinated by the human brain and how it works. And it wasn't until I was in undergrad that the realities of paying for medical school as an international student, but also the reality of being on the floor. And after watching multiple surgeries, spinal fusions, tumor removals, taking care of cancer patients. I realized I really love being in public health and having impact on people's lives, just not directly on the medical floor. And so I took a year out just trying to figure out how else can I benefit public health without necessarily being a medical doctor? And so eventually, through a lot of introspection, lots of mentorship, came to food science as a career path, as a way that I can bridge that technical background and interest in public health and have it blend really beautifully. And one of my professors inspired the transition specifically into quality by helping me see how all of this knowledge in science can then impact how we produce safe food, especially for young children. So I credit her for helping me see that path as a way that I could continue to build on my life for public health. And once I was hooked on that, it's been very seamless transition. It fits like a glove. I don't struggle with it. And I always tell people I would do it for free if I didn't. Even if money was not an object, I'd still probably be doing food safety because I just love it. I love it a lot. I love that. I love the passion just behind I want to help people and then finding the intersection between what you're actually passionate about and what you love to do. Yeah, I'll add to Maureen briefly just because I've loved working with her so much because I've never met somebody that truly is driven by such a deep rooted food safety passion. And it's just been an honor to work with someone like that. For me, I studied chemical engineering, wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it, but liked the versatility of it. And then just happened to run into a recruiter in the food industry and gave it a shot. and fell in love with just the tangibility of what you're making people interact with daily. They know what you're working on. And then met enough awesome people along the way that I wanted to stick with that, stick with that crew. I definitely think the way of quality engineers and risk assessment and problem solving info gathering, all of those are things that are just like deep rooted behaviors for me. So it lined up and is something that I've enjoyed building. Yeah. Well, awesome. And I know that both of you have many years in the food industry working with not just food safety, but Madison, you also spent some time working in R&D. A little bit briefly, yeah. Do we typically share our full career? No, no, you don't have to go into resume. I brought that up because even as we are going to talk about today of building allies, you have experience working in other functions. And Maureen, you might too have some experience working with or within other functions. Yes, it's been an interesting transition coming out of academic research into industry, initially starting out as what you'd call a specialist. So working on very specific projects, transitioning to more of a quality engineer role, which blends a lot of aspects of production with regulatory. So that's been fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, as we talk about that, you know, and around our topic around preaching to the choir and having these conversations. Again, I know that you all have spent over a decade in an industry, working in food safety, working in regulatory, working in R&D. And I'm curious, how did you kind of get to this moment of, wow, we're kind of preaching to ourselves about the importance of food safety and how to build food safety culture? What led you to think we need to branch out? I mean, For me, over the last year, especially, going to some of our food safety conferences and just feeling the energy and how rejuvenating it is to be surrounded by everybody that gets it and talking through all the right key things and saying, this is where we need to go. But then realizing those key players that will help us get from point A to point B, they're not at those meetings with us. And it's hard to come back as one or even two people and say, hey, guys, there's this there's this good energy, really good things that we need to work on, but they're busy with all their other priorities. So how do we bring them along on that journey? And Maureen and I got in this conversation around the value of infiltrating their own meetings and their own conferences. Instead of getting all together and talking about the importance of food safety, we need to be going and crashing their meetings and their conferences and saying, hey, we have a topic that is important to you guys as well. Let's talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Madison reminds me, so for people that don't know, Madison and I, we worked together early on in our career, when we first started our careers, basically. And I remember Madison when we were, we had an audit, and our auditor at the time, which we absolutely loved, Danny, You're out there. I'm sure he's listening, yeah. We absolutely loved our auditor, but he was very honest. And I remember him having a conversation with the food safety team and he's like, I forgot even what it was that he was upset about, but he has seen it a couple of times when he comes to the facility and he's like, this needs to be fixed. Otherwise, you know, we're going to lead down a path of shutdown. And I remember all of us in this room like, man, we wish operations was here. We wish engineering was here to kind of hear the type of conversations that we have, how we defend the positions that we are, you know, how we're like, yeah, we've been talking with the team about this. And it's like, those are the type of things that our counterparts and other functions, they don't really hear at all. They don't hear how we are like, how they're like, well, I should shut you down for this. And we're like, no, you shouldn't because of this, this, this, right? Like we're in very tense conversations and they don't really hear that. They don't really see that part of our job. If we do it, if we do it well. Yeah. Well, and to the same end, we're not seeing the tense conversations they're seeing on their deliverables and their accountabilities. There's a lot of value in the empathy building piece of what are my priorities? What are your priorities? How do they overlap? And let's work together and not against each other. Maureen, have you just in your career, when you think about these tough conversations, Do you remember being in a room where you're like, wow, like I wish other people could hear this or even to the other part of what Madison was saying, like being in a room and saying, wow, I'm glad I was here to hear this. Multiple times in different contexts. An example that I'm just willing to share is just the general conversation of food safety culture is something I'm beyond passionate about. It's something that I actually studied as part of my research is understanding what is food safety culture and how does it play out. And in the academic world, it's very simple. When we don't like something, we control for the variables. And so we are able to really create experimental environments where if temperature is a factor, we control for temperature. And so food safety culture is on the complete end of that spectrum where very few variables are within your control because you're dealing with human decisions and people are extremely passionate about whatever it is they do and how they do it and whatever else is influencing their day and it's often this awkward pockets where something happens and then you're trying to debrief and you can almost feel you can almost cut the tension with a razor you know in rooms where No one's quite saying it like that, but the blame is shifting towards a particular person or a particular unit for something that was misaligned or did not go well. And in those moments, there's a quality person who's really focused on process and the fact that people really are the reason why systems fail. It's just what was it that allowed for this incident to turn out this way? Typically, that is how quality people think. And we are trained to think that way. We are trained in risk assessment. It's a skill we gain over time. Not all the other units are trained to think that way. And so the natural way is you did it wrong, or you forgot to turn this on, or you forgot to check that. Well, that's the final straw, right? A million other things happened before. Right. Yeah. Often when we're in those tenuous conversations, when something has already fallen or is falling, I'm always in the eye of the storm, trying to figure out how can I explain this so that everyone in the room understands that what we're seeing right now is a symptom of a bigger problem without pushing myself off a cliff, so to speak. That's something that I try to figure out ways to explain things without necessarily talking about listeria or pathogens or biofilm because Again, preaching to the choir, the people that need to know those things already do. Right. Right. So how do I explain to supply chain about biofilms and how they impact our food safety culture? How do you connect those dots? Right. Yeah. Marina, I think you were talking about something that's really important when that I feel like the industry or really, let me just say food safety people that we forget when it comes around food safety culture. is that we have this term culture in the phrase, which is all about people. But we focus so much on the food safety, the processes, the can I make a new SOP? Can I talk about the Biofront films? Can I talk about the technical stuff that's happening? Because that's where we're most comfortable. Like you said, we spend our whole careers, we spend our whole education really learning how to become so technical. And so we struggle to step outside of that and really just think about think about the people. you know, the work that Jill and I, we do around culture, there's many times that we have conversations and companies are like, yeah, this happened to us. We need your help. We've also fired people. And we're typically like, okay, right? Like you're at the point where if you are firing people or removing people after having an incident, you typically are late, right? To the game of how do we really help? shift our culture. And it doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means now we have to also deal with the fact that someone or someones have been blamed for an incident. And now everyone's looking like, man, am I going to be blamed next? I don't want to make a mistake. So I love the way you talk about that, about being in rooms and trying to connect with other people, because it's hard to do because it steps us outside of that comfort zone that we're so used to being in. Absolutely. It's not what we're known for. You know, we're the, like you said, the technical, the let's work in numbers and data and upper and lower control limits. No, we need to really work on the people and the relationships. And that's always been a big component. But that focus point is what's going to drive this cultural change that we need very broadly. Yeah. So let's talk about infiltrating new spaces, right? And I love that word because sometimes and a lot of times, right, many of our audience, they're sitting in this space of, I don't know if my company really care about food safety culture, or I feel like I'm not involved in meetings, or they just won't invite me right to that meeting. What are some ways that people can actually infiltrate spaces in a way that they might feel comfortable doing, maybe? I don't know if you feel comfortable infiltrating spaces or not. Or be comfortable with discomfort for a little bit too. Know what you're getting into. Yeah. I'd say for me, I mean, I have told my team I don't like surprises. And so I try and take stock of what are the things that have been surprising me? Is there a pattern? Are there things that we're learning about late and having to react instead of be proactive on it? And if that's the case, where are those decisions being made further up the line? Is it with engineering? Is it with supply chain planning? Is it with sourcing? Where are we not getting info early enough to influence things until it becomes a reactive need. And then trying to have those conversations, talk to them. How are you taking quality and food safety into account in your decision-making process? That's the one-on-one, two-on-one, small group, connect with them first. That's build the allies. And then maybe start finding out, okay, do you mind if I come listen in on this decision meeting or this planning meeting? Because I want to learn. I want to learn how you guys are doing this. This is helpful for me as well. And then in the back of my mind, also thinking, are they asking all the right questions? So there are a few times that I should chime up and say, have you considered this detail? And then like earn your place there in that meeting through that. Yeah, I like what you talk about, Madison, of really you need to do some of this pre-meeting work, talking with, you know, whoever's leading or whoever's making decisions to say. What what is it that you consider when you're making these decisions and then saying, OK, can I come to one of those meetings? Right. And being a part of it, do you find that people are like, sure, come on. Yeah. I mean, I think people value curiosity. I mean, we're all driven by curiosity in this space too. So if you do it as a mutual, like, oh, I'm not just trying to come stick myself in your business and create some roadblocks. I want to understand the process. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Is that empathy for the other side? Right. What about you, Maureen? Have you, how have you found yourself infiltrating spaces? Similar to Madison, starting by building individual relationships, that's just something I take very seriously. I love my work. I love my colleagues more. I like when we solve problems, but do it together so that everyone feels seen and heard. There's no point of, there's no winning in food safety. There's no such thing as I had a wonderful day and somebody else goes home overwhelmed. It just doesn't make any sense that way. One of the strategies that I I tend to lean on a lot is clarifying in my mind, what problem am I trying to solve? So food safety culture is a very broad stroke. And in there, there are a million different things that need to happen at specific points. Am I trying to understand why the alarm goes off and nobody responds, or it goes off and people ignore it, or they shut it off altogether? What am I trying to figure out? And then who is the key point person in that space? Is it a line lead? Is it the supply chain analyst? Is it the production manager? Who's the person that I can go to and be the idiot for a day and essentially say, I am trying to learn because I have no clue how you do things in this space, but I'd love to know so that next time this happens, I know what to do, how to respond so that I'm not creating more work for you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That open minded curiosity of being an everyday learner and helping people see that you're interested not just in solving your own problems, but. In in having a mutual win for the day, right, it has it has It has been a very good strategy, I think. And because of it, I always follow what my mom told me, leave a place better than you found it. And that has, it's been very, very helpful. Every time I go into a room, I try to leave that room where people feel better than before I walked in. And I feel like I want to be invited into spaces because people think of a problem and they say, I bet I could go to Marin for this. if she doesn't know she might know who will and so i have this little placard on my desk that says answer desk and it has a bill on it and i want to be known as that person right i want to be known as the answer desk and people can come and ask me all kinds of questions sometimes it has nothing to do with quality but they just know if they ask me chances are we'll solve it together anytime anytime that quality is seen as a bottleneck where we walk in and people roll their eyes, we've already lost, right? Yeah. Yeah. I can give you one for free. Her most common answer is, it depends, tell me more. It depends, tell me more. I love that. All right. How do you become known as, I need to go to Marine for this question, regardless of if it's food safety, she might know where to go. Like how do you, when you started an organization or restart with a new group, how do you build that knowledge within others? Just a lot of listening, right? In the beginning, it might be listening from a distance, right? A conversation is happening across the hall and it's back and forth. And I'm just really curious, what are they talking about? Something is broken. What is it? And then I'd walk up and I'd say, well, I heard you guys talking about broken. I wonder if there's a food safety aspect to it. Can you clarify what is it that was broken? And sometimes it has nothing. It's HVAC system in some other building that has nothing to do with food safety. And in that case, you know, saying good morning to people. How are you? How are you doing? You know, treating people like they have a life outside of work. Yeah. And so people have that interaction with me outside of me needing something from them. You know, they're going through a difficult time. You know, they lost a loved one. They're out sick. Just that one message, how are you doing? How's your day? How are the kids? Just having people know that when they interact with me, I wanna know how they are first before they answer a question for me. And that then helps them understand that I'm resourceful just by the nature of my training, that I can look things up and quickly synthesize information. And it takes a while. It's not something that I do overnight. It takes years to build that kind of relationship with people. Yes, that's right. That's the culture of food safety, right? Those are the things that you should be doing when you're not having like technical jargon, right? Come from you. You should be building relationships in that way because you're right. I mean, it's amazing. Like for people who's listening, if you've never actually taken the time to talk to people about things that's not about work or to ask them about their life or to be curious, right Madison, you even brought up curiosity, just to be curious about other people, you'll be amazed at how many work stuff then start to come back to you. where people then start talking to you about stuff that maybe you've been asking them for weeks. But now all of a sudden, like now you have all this information that you needed just because you opened up and talked about something different than what you need, what's on your to-do list. You know, I'm curious as we talk about infiltrating spaces, you know, really the goal is to get champions, right, of food safety so that we don't necessarily have to keep being a part of these conversations, but they actually see that, okay, food safety is important. So I know, hey, once we start getting a little deep in food safety, I need to go and get Madison or I need to go and get Marine and have a conversation around it. How do you sort of build these allies to advocate for you, you know, and to carry your message forward as you're building those relationships and infiltrating those spaces? And anyone can start. Yeah, I'll jump in. I think just through exposure and you know, conversations of proving over and over that these you're bringing up important details in the smallest types of situations. I mean, Maureen touched on it, but it seems to highlight that every single function has value in having a combination of deep knowledge and fresh eyes because we all make assumptions and it's very easy to skip over several questions for efficiency. And to miss some of the details that should be discussed. I mean, that's why we don't build food safety plans or do risk assessments in a silo. We have a team. We have to all kind of talk through and say, am I thinking about this the right way? And the cross-functional aspect of that is true as well. Bring them in, have them think about, oh, well, we don't use the equipment that way. It's actually a different way. You made an assumption. And having all those details playing together, I think just builds over time. Yeah, Maureen, would you have anything to add? Well, let's get the right team assembled and ask those questions. Right, right, yeah. I like that, the cross-functional piece of it. And I love the, what, how did you put it? The deep, the deep technical or... Yeah, deep technical or deep knowledge combined with fresh eyes. You gotta have both. You gotta have both. You gotta have both. Maureen, what would you add? How do you prep others to be an advocate around food safety? To Madison's point earlier, learning to understand and appreciate that every unit has deliverables. They have KPIs that they need to deliver on. And if all we do is go to them and ask for what I want, I want you to do this. I want you to give me that report. I want you to do this for me. We are pivoting them away from what they ought to be doing. And we are essentially using up their time in a way that is not clarified. and so every time i go to somebody i always try to see how does them helping me answer this question potentially help them solve a problem they have yeah and you can't really know that unless you're actually talking to people and understanding you know what's on your plate this week what's driving you crazy this week what's keeping you up at night this week yeah so if i go to our supply chain analyst and he seems really frustrated, and then I add to the frustration by, I want this report in ten minutes because I have to deliver this and that. And now he's going to help me, but then he gets even more frustrated. Right, yeah. But if I understand that he would really appreciate quality's feedback on a worksheet that he put out and he's still waiting for our feedback, perhaps I do that first and go and say, I understand you needed this done and it's completed. And I'm hoping that you could help me solve this, you know, help me generate this report or teach me how to generate the report. So I don't have to keep coming to you for it. Right. And there is, you know, here is something that he can help me do. And then I stopped being a, you know, a pest every time showing up and asking for the same thing over and over again. Right. Yeah. The other thing that I, I'm learning to do is really define questions so that they're intelligent and actionable. Asking bare bone, boring questions that leave the room flat doesn't really help us move forward. Questions like, what happens if we do nothing for the next ninety days? That makes everybody in the room pause and think, especially when it's a heated argument or there seems to be an unnecessary push to do something right just about now and everyone's stressed out and you just ask that simple question now it forces everybody to relax and take a deep breath and say I wonder right yeah so building a you know an arsenal of intelligent questions that are you know timeless and they can be asked in different contexts so that you're adding value in every conversation not going into rooms and adding to people's stress is you're really getting the team to think and in the process um indirectly bringing in food safety culture as a conversation without necessarily having to say let's all stop it's food safety culture lesson one-on-one right yeah yeah right I feel like there's this common thread of empathy or really compassion for each other on the work that we do, on the work that they do. And not just saying, oh, wow, I know that you're busy, but you need to do these things. It's more around, I know that you're busy. How can I help you? How can I remove some burden off of you? How can we work on this together to move forward? Well, there's a bit of currency building in that, not to make it transactional, but if I'm figuring out how can I take my expertise or insight or just be an empathetic listener to talk through something with somebody, be a thought partner, then they're more likely to do the same and be a thought partner with me. And as Maureen touched on, when you're just going in and having that connect with people, I might have the chance to talk through what I'm focused on for the week. And even if it doesn't interact with the person or impact the person that I'm talking with, they might hear a little bit of my rationale and what I'm having to think through. And that makes them better equipped to, oh, these are the things that food safety and quality team cares about. So later on, they might think about it. You know, we've also been talking about like building relationships. And Maureen, you hit on this a little earlier on like that needs to happen before. So before you even need them to do anything. So Madison, even as you're talking, like hearing, having them hear your rationale and talk through different things and talk to things that might not be as heavy at the moment. That's important to do before, you know, things get heavy, before things get chaotic. It reminds me of, I mean, people know that I have a three-year-old and Madison, you have kids, Maureen, you have kids, where, you know, when they are upset and having a tantrum, that's not the time to like try to teach them coping mechanisms, right? Like that's not the time. But in moments of calm, that's the time to say, hey, when you're angry, you know, what are some things that you can do other than hitting, right? Other than throwing. And then it's like, oh, I can think about these things, right? That's the building before the actual moment when they're angry and maybe they decide to do something different. Maybe they don't. I have a three-year-old, so they're still learning. You know, you might be onto something. Maybe manufacturing facilities need the, like, this is how I'm feeling card deck. Maybe they don't have a lot of conversations. Yes. From my opinion, that's the culture of it all. And just think about those things. And again, I'm relearning these things through mom eyes and having a toddler. But I truly believe that they are at the core what we are as human beings. And we have to learn how to deal with our emotions to be a part of society. And it's the same thing in our industries, in our organizations. People have learned many different things. They might have learned how to cope. They might have not learned how to cope. They might have learned how to build relationships. Most people have not learned how to build relationships. Most people do not know how to do group projects. We know that. We know that from our own learning. But at work, we're in group projects all the time. You would think that they would focus more on group projects in school, because literally, it's a group project when you work. But most people don't actually know how to do that. But in order for food safety culture to be successful, we have to build those relationships so we can work well in group projects. And we have to do it when emotions are not high, when the line is not down, when we feel like we're not going to make that order. That's really not the time to try to build those relationships. You have to do it before. Yeah, well, and I mean, I think you and Jill have a whole course on influence effectiveness, right? But this gets down to the core of it. We talk about a big part of food safety and quality professionals is on influence. And it's a tactful professional to know how a conversation is going to end, but to instead bring the person you're talking to along with you and have them come to the conclusion that lasts a little longer, right? And now you're getting into the inspiration piece and working with people's emotions and not just relying on persuasion and rationalism. but it has to be done early. Yes. Yes. And when you talk about inspiration, that's all built on values and beliefs, right? People can connect to what you're saying and they say, yes, I believe that that's the right way forward. I believe that's the best path for us. And so me too, I'm going to be a champion of this. But if you don't have conversations with them or build relationships with them before, you're not going to actually know what their values or beliefs are. right? You're not going to know what those things are. You're not going to know the norms or the assumptions. I'm even thinking about like GFSI's definition of food safety culture. You know, they talk about the norms. What are the behaviors and the norms? We might feel like we know, but if we're not working in this spot every single day, then you actually don't know what the norms are. And you have to build relationships so that people will tell you what the norms are, what the assumptions are around things. And we talked about like almost like the pre-meeting, the meeting before the meeting, but how important is it after you've kind of like, let's take the example that Madison, you had earlier where you had the pre-meeting and you said, Hey, how do you all make decisions around food safety? You know, how do you, um, incorporate that into your decision-making? You go to the meeting with them and then what, what is the after meeting? What does that after conversation look like when you are trying to build allies, when you're trying to. get others to think about food safety in a different way. Well, for me, I mean, typically it's that give and take, right? I want to understand how their role is carrying out their tasks as well. So I likely in that meeting, not wanting to interrupt, track a list of what does this acronym mean? This was said, what does that mean? Explain it to me after and kind of that connect. And adding into that conversation, if I had any food safety concerns, that'd be a great avenue to slip in and say, one-on-one with this ally that you're trying to build the partnership with, what about this? Have you considered this? And maybe they have. And if so, great, they're thinking about it. But if not, that's where they might start seeing value of, oh, maybe it is useful to have you here. You should come back again. And now you've got somebody on your side when the time comes for you to start raising concerns or questions to the larger group. You have somebody that you've already test driven this with. I love that. Maureen, what about you? What does your after meeting look like? I like to follow through on things that I promise people I'm going to do. That's usually really hard to do as a quality person where you have ten other thousand things that have to be done. So let's say you had a conversation with Madison's example, you've had a conversation and then they ask you a question. You don't have a direct answer, but you tell them, I look it up and get back to you. And so you've essentially you've opened well. Right. They're curious. You've promised to do something. And typically what happens is you forget that you don't write it down or you forget who it was that you spoke to if it was a busy meeting. And so three months later, you still have not responded to their question. And either they'll remember it and circle back with you and say, hey, did you get an answer for me on this? And if that happens enough and people do have conversations, If it happens enough, people stop trusting your word. And in quality, our word is gold. And so I think one of the biggest lessons in Madison, I credit you for this one, is appreciating the value of even when you have nothing to say back, sending a message to say you have nothing to say back yet. I have not forgotten that I was supposed to look this up for you. I haven't had time to do it yet, but I'm still thinking about it. And as soon as I have an answer, I'll get back to you. That inherently helps them understand that you heard them, you are committed to responding, and you want them to continue to be in your circle of influence, right? And once you make that commitment once or twice, quality people, we take what we say seriously, right? That's what food safety is about, is committing to what you say and doing it, and then proving that you did it, right? Right, yeah. As you do that often enough where people ask you questions and you respond in kind, or you honestly say, I don't know, and I'm not in a position to answer or help you understand that right now, but maybe we can revisit it three months later when I don't have this project anymore. What ends up happening is you become an answer desk of sorts, right? People trust you. We want people to trust what we say. Yes. And I feel like... I just want to note on trust because I think you're getting right to the root of we have to trust each other and our organization if we want our consumers to trust what we're putting out. Oh, yes. Yes. We have to trust our working relationships. We have to trust that we're doing the best that we can, right? And that we're looking out for each other. You know, how many times I just think back working with different groups and I'm like, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Let's talk about that because... If you do it that way, I know we're going to have product on hold. I know something might go wrong here. Let's just make sure that things are buttoned up because I don't want you to have an issue later on. People are like, oh yeah, okay, let's have that conversation because I too don't want my product held up. I too want to be able to ship at the end of the day. And that is so important. That's so important to build that. And trust is like the foundation of relationships, right? It's really hard to build relationships. I would even say it's almost impossible to build a strong, positive relationship without trust. Right? So I think that's important. What do you all, just as we think about trust and building allies and even this component of safe spaces or psychological safety where people can bring up, you know, Maureen, you talk about like having answers, like people can bring any question to you and you won't be like, wow, you should have known that, right? Or you won't, right? Like we're in this safe space that they're able to ask questions, explore, be curious. Even when you infiltrate their spaces, sometimes people don't want food safety there because they want to get their thoughts together right before their food safety team comes in and have their own thoughts around it. But with this higher level of psychological safety and safe spaces and trust, What I found is that people respond differently to you. They want you to be a part of it because they know they can probably get their answers faster if you are here, because you can call out anything that is a red flag for you instead of waiting, right? Because they want to be prepared for whatever you might say. Do you all feel the same way when it comes to safe spaces and trust? Sure. When you brought that up, I immediately thought of an incident. I hadn't really thought of it this way until it was pointed out to me about what the presence of quality does to frontline operators. And this is when I started my role, I came in as a contractor. So I really did not see myself as part of the C-suite, so to speak, in terms of leadership level. I just thought of myself as I just came out of school, you know, and I'm the same age as the people on the floor. We're friends, we hang out, you know, but the fact that we were designated as quality and we wear the different colored shirt, it by itself spoke of leadership presence on the floor. And so every time the orange shirt rolls by, It was inevitable that the reaction would be the same as if the CEO came to the floor. This leadership is here and we need to button up our shirts and stand straight. You know, that response of authority is here. Right. Yeah. Just true to my nature of building relationships, I really took time to even though sometimes I needed interpretation help, really just talk to people on the floor. Hello, how are you doing? You know, get to know Who are the friends? Who are the cousins? Who are the spouses? What do they do on the weekends? What do they enjoy doing? Do they know anything about Africa? Those conversations that have nothing to do with the CCP on the floor. And my goal anytime I go to the production floor is that when they see orange, they see help. They beg of me, please come. I have something that you can help me with. I've been waiting for one of you to show up and help me with this problem. That's my dream for quality is that when anybody sees us, the collective us in their space, they say help has come. Help has arrived. A different way of looking at things or a different way of assessing risk has arrived. And this is good for us. This is good for business. That quality is here. I would hate for those situations, which is mostly what happens now where we roll up and people are just like, oh, quality is here. Oh, my God. The bottleneck effect where we are there to slow production, to put product on hold, to reprimand and correct and retrain and do copper. That's what we put forth is process, process, process, not enough people. Yeah. And that makes a difference. It does. I think it does. Just based on my personal experience, I think it makes a big difference. Madison, what about you when you think about trust, safe space? Yeah, I mean, I'd add talk about preaching to the choir with this statement, but we don't want quality to be viewed as the police or to be viewed as the guides, the partners. And building those relationships is going to be more likely that somebody flags you down and says, hey, while you're over here, come take a look at this. I have a question. And make it a conversation instead of, yeah, scared to involve you. Right. Right. Because you might be management or your food safety. I remember when someone. Right. I mean, a big part of it. You go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just going to say a big part of building that safe space is allowing like all the commentary and saying, oh, yeah, that's a that's a great point. Let's talk through it. Bringing them into the conversation. Mm hmm. I remember the first time someone talked about management and I was like, who's management? And then they were looking at me. I'm like, I'm not in management. I don't make those type of decisions. But I do appreciate appreciates the level up but um I don't know I'm making those type of decisions but the connection between I'm on the I'm on the floor to help you or you know even if you're in a corporate location right connecting to your counterparts I'm here to help you not to give you more tasks not to cap us not to do this but I'm actually here to help you so I want to hear these things And if you say, hey, I'm going to tell you this, but I don't want it to get back to me specifically. Okay, let's have a conversation. They don't need to know where I heard it from. They need to know that it's out here, that it's a norm, that it's an attitude, right? That it's a belief out here. I just need to know that. I don't really care who said it. I just need to know that it's there so we can react. And that takes trust. Yeah. Well, and specifically interacting with operators, like come into it with that perspective that they're the experts, they're the ones doing this task day in and day out, knowing the production lines like back of their hands. I mean, we don't know where a hiccup could be in a process if they're not telling us. Right, like we just wouldn't know that because that's not our jobs, right? So one thing I wanna circle back to is really understanding the business. And we touched on this a little bit on making sure that we connect with all of our counterparts, making sure we understand their goals and the things that they're doing. How can you use shared goals? Or even, I would even say goals that people don't even think are shared. Most of our goals are impacted by other people, unless we're building a process. And even then, someone has to execute the process. um but how do you use this concept of shared goals to really build partnerships um with your cross-functional counterparts uh yeah i mean for for me um talking through we all have the we're working for a likely for-profit company like we have the same same goal job security is keeping the company going and making money and providing products that your consumers trust and If you can speak to the cost of quality and cost avoidance of having to correct something later than getting it right early and being able to get people to understand and articulate the difference there between reactive measures and preventive measures, then they're going to better be able to quantify, well, here's all this time and all this money that you saved because you did it right the first time. And I always use this example. So Marines heard it a million times now, but Frankie honest has been talking about the whole, don't look through the rear view mirror and see if you're driving straight. Think about the value. If you look through the windshield and see a turn coming and can adjust, and then you're not having to react to your lagging metrics. You're talking about your real time metrics. Yes. Yeah. And that's like a shout out to like, you need the leadership skills to be able to do that. Most people can't see that, ooh, this is going to cause an issue with our people. You know, oh, I might need to circle back with this group because there might be some anger. Like, get back out the emotion cards we talked about, right? Like, ooh, we might have a tantrum here. Well, culture is a big thing to change. That's where the allies come into play and the influence and the tactful, like, how are you shifting a big thing with little adjustments along the way? Yes. And I love that you talk lag and lead metrics too, because a lot of people lean on surveys and assessments. And we always say if that's great data, we're not saying don't do it. You should do it. You should understand. you know, through assessments is a great tool. But when we talk about culture shift, if you are already seeing negative results on your survey, people have been feeling that way for years before they put it down on a culture survey, a company culture survey. so if they're at that point they're probably they're probably kind of pissed and they're they're putting their information on the assessment so that you can hear it and it just it takes that much more work to shift culture or to turn the ship around, right? Your ship is much bigger if you see it on an assessment or if you see it in your audit scores or if you see it, right? If you see it in these places, these are all live metrics. Things have already happened. You've already kind of blew past that curve, right? You couldn't tell it was coming. Well, and I've had to remind many people in my career that success to us in our space real time or lagging, success to us is the absence of excitement. We want stable, we want calm. So how do we see that in, get ahead of the exciting events. Right. Right. And that is also true for other functions too. Like I remember leading an operations and I would walk by, I was on second shift. So, you know, people yawn a lot when there's not excess excitement happening. And I used to walk by and someone would be like, I'm like, that's what I like to see. I want you to be bored all shift long. These surprises. What about you, Maureen? Anything to add as you think about shared goals across functions and building partnerships? Sure. This one I struggled with a lot in the beginning, just transitioning from academia into industry, is how do the mission and vision statements apply to my role specifically? And for a lot of anyone below mid-management, that could be a real-time problem is I need to do this check a hundred times a day. What does that got to do with the mission and vision of the statement or the big annual meetings and the big KPIs that get reported because nobody reports how many quality checks were completed, right? They report what was sold and what wasn't sold, right? And being able to articulate that for yourself and for your team and having it trickle down so that everybody has a very clear inspiring understanding of what this one check has to do with the end year bonus for everybody in the company and what has it to do with keeping a five year old safe when they eat your product, keeping your name out of the news as leading to a recall. That chain cannot be left unlinked. Usually the culture starts to suffer in that space where I don't care. This has nothing to do with me. Right. if you're doing a repair as a maintenance person and you don't understand how using a non-food contact lubricant impacts our, you know, final year goals on KPI for quality, that's a problem, right? A quality person, that should be something they ask right off the bat. I need to repair this chain. It's near a food contact surface. I think I heard quality say something about food grade lubricant. What is that? Quality. I need quality. Can somebody come here and tell me about this? Right. That's what we want. That's what we want, yeah. And in terms of just understanding the business goals, I think we struggle, again, as quality professionals, we really focus on what our goals are as a unit. I always say quality has no role outside of other people's jobs. Our job is to be in the eye of the storm and make sure this, you know, whatever else is going on around is steady state. Taking all the information, helping process all of that, bring science into it, help everybody else execute on their jobs. If we can do that, then we want steady state. Quiet is good. We cannot do that unless we understand the business speak, right? We need to understand how finance makes decisions, how sales makes decisions, what's impacted, what's a quarter and what has it got to do with risk assessment. Right, yeah. Why did they decide to change from an American supplier to a Brazilian supplier? I don't know. I just know that it changed the risk factors. Well, you ought to know that. Right, yeah, yeah. So the more we can understand business speak, to put it very plainly and simply, the more we are positioned to ask intelligent questions that are about other people's roles and their deliverables and how our roles intersect with what they have to deliver at the end of the year. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yes, I love that. I think it goes back to, you know, what what do they value at work? What's most important to them at work? And how do you connect what we're doing and food safety and quality to that work? And like you said, Maureen, like that's our job to do that. No one else is going to do it for us because they're trying to do that for their own stuff. Right. Like they're not going to take a look and say, what is Maureen trying to do today and how do I connect that to the business? They're saying I have all these things I need to do for the business. Maureen, what are you trying to add to my plate? And why is that important? You know, I also think about two conversations that I've had where it's sometimes people forget that we're there, too, because we we want to make a paycheck. Right. And Madison, you said it earlier, right? Like we we have lives. We want the business to grow. We want our jobs. Now, I remember telling someone at a company that I worked for, like, I, too, want to ship cases because I, too, will get paid. If we're not shipping cases out the door, then I, too, am not getting paid. So I want that, too. But I don't want it to come back because then, again, we're not going to get paid if no one buys from us again. So we've been connecting that, too. oh that makes sense you too care about your your paycheck and that's why you're here like literally shifted this person's thinking on the importance of food safety and this in this case it was really quality on the importance of the quality of our product because they connected it to oh yeah we don't just want to sell one box we want to sell multiple boxes to the same person that's that's how we still have our jobs today today right um so just living that connection but no one's going to make that connection for our teams except for us and so we have to we have to know and learn really learn how to do that yeah i think it's also helpful um as you think about like cross-functional understanding a lot of people that don't have the plan exposure don't know all the many things that can go wrong and how quickly it can go wrong and how variable product can actually be. So there's a lot of value to bringing some of those examples. like real examples, even like bring a, bring a treat, a carefully thought out planned deviance treat. You open it up. It's like, Oh, this isn't the color I expected. Great. Let's talk about how that can happen and how often it happens and how to stop that. I love that Madison. I carefully like you need to, you need to plan it right. You need to plan it so you don't create more work for yourself. Well, as we wrap up today, we've had such a great conversation just talking about how to build these relationships with people across the aisle so that we can stop preaching to the choir, whether it's building relationships, infiltrating spaces, getting out of our comfort zone. And then the bigger piece is this last part of the conversation on how do you understand the business so you can connect it to the work that you do? What would each of you, maybe each of you can give maybe one or two key takeaways from today's conversation. Madison, I'll start with you. Okay. I'm trying to think of what we talked about. There would be, I would say the first one for me would be taking stock of what surprises you in your role in your business. Are there any things that are coming up the same kind of category as, oh, that that caught me off guard. They didn't bring me into the loop on that conversation early enough. Um, and then having that steer, you know, who are the allies that you want to connect with to understand where can I start that just infiltration and influence earlier. I like that. Yeah. Look, what has surprised me in the past, what I want to get ahead of. And then using that to, to start your ally shipbuilding. Okay. Maureen, what would you add? I think we brought up something previously, and this was Madison's point earlier. If you've never been invited into a space, inviting yourself can be extremely intimidating, even though you need to be there. And sometimes there are situations where you are actively being kept out of the room, right? Yeah, we talk into that a lot. Exactly. That's true. That's a whole different conversation. If you have established through very careful listening, lots of empathy, that you need to be in a room that you're currently not in, and that being there allows you to solve one or two of your problems while helping somebody else solve theirs. Essentially building relationships on a one-on-one basis, having individual conversations with people. so that you have a support system inherently built in those teams and your presence there is welcomed even though it might initially be by just one person having somebody to echo your voice positively having discussions with them about this is the point that i would like to bring up today how might it echo in the room when i'm there having them tell you the temperature on which to come into that conversation, right? Don't come in too hot and don't be lukewarm because then people just ignore what you said is just passing by. Right. And over time you create yourself essentially a support system because we all need that. Those cross-functional projects don't get done by random people showing up in a room and magically, you know, meeting goals. Yeah. You have to do the legwork. There's no way around it. Yeah. Yeah. Those are awesome, awesome, awesome takeaways from today's conversation. And I know we said that plus more in the conversation. So I know as people are thinking about how do I build allies? How do I stop preaching to the people that know and step outside of my own spaces? It is uncomfortable, which we've acknowledged, but it definitely can be done. Thank you both for being here with us today. I really enjoyed our conversation and I love seeing you both. Hopefully you all are staying warm in Minnesota. We are cold down here in Maryland, but probably not as cold as you all are. But I also appreciate that you all took the time to share with our audience on what you've seen through your careers and really how you all are building allies. So I appreciate you all and thank you for being here today. Thank you so much for having us. And to our audience, thank you so much for joining us again on Monday. We are live every Monday at eleven a.m. Eastern, ten a.m. Central. And we do we have these conversations. And if you have something in this conversation really sparked for you, share, share it with someone so they can learn to shift culture and start to build allies. And with that, we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.
