Hello, everyone. Welcome to Real Talk with Tia and Jill. We are excited to kick off Monday morning with you, or maybe afternoon, or maybe Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, depending on if you're listening to us on our podcast or on our YouTube channel. But either way, it is great to be back, right? We took off a few weeks, like actually a couple months, because with summer, we had some great replays. And now we're into season four. And This is our first time live on season four. I mean, we did have a podcast last week with Sharon Northern, and that was fantastic. Yes, I know. She's so amazing. She's so amazing. And a great kickoff to this season. Right? It's the whole, like, How are we developing leaders? Yes, yes, yes. So if you have not joined us here before, we're excited that you are here with us on season four. Can you believe season four, Jill? Which is pretty wild, but we're excited to be here with you. We want to hear your perspective. So please put in the comments, say hello to us. I'm Tia, this is Jill, and we are the co-founders of Catalyst Food Leaders. And on Real Talk, every week we have real conversations about what's happening in food and how people are leading in food and how to move forward as leaders in food. Today we're live. We're here with you and we're bringing a conversation that we've been having with each other for a while. And you know this about Real Talk. I was actually talking to someone. I didn't tell you this, Jo. I was talking to someone last week who listens to Real Talk either live or on our podcast. And she loves the conversations that we were having. And I told her, I was like, let us know. Let us know other conversations that you want to have because How we come up with these topics are really from the real talk that's happening outside of this time. And we bring it here and we talk about it and we want to hear what you are thinking about. And that's really where this topic came from. And one we're going to dive into even deeper at BRCGS Connect Americas in Nashville on October thirteenth. So if you were there, join us. What our what our time is called. You own it. They shape it. Now what? And this just gives you a little bit on what we're going to talk about in a more conversational way. One where we can really kind of like dump our thoughts out and have this conversation with you versus like presenting, right? Yeah. It's the teaser. This is the teaser of like, come join us. Yes. Yes. So if you're in Nashville, October thirteenth, if you have not signed up yet, you can still sign up. We would love to see you in person in Nashville and we'd love for you to be a part of this little teaser conversation. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love this one because you, we've been talking food safety culture for a long time now. Right. I mean, the industry has, yes. And the part, the reason part of what the, we do the work we do and why we exist is because we know to shift culture, you have to shift how you lead. Yes. It is not just behavior for our frontline team members. And so, This is the conversation we bring all the time, whether it's to Real Talk, our blogs, our posts, like with clients, with everybody. And I love that we've been talking about, like, what are these moments that happen in every food organization? And it's like everyday moments, these little moments that really tell you about culture and the things that a survey never will. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's those things that if you're paying attention, if you are insightful, or even if you have the skills, the leadership skills that you need to be able to identify, these real moments that's revealing where your culture is and you know one one of the things we like to do here is to talk about like what's kind of trending out in in the space and you brought up culture surveys that's definitely something that's top of mind for organizations right now like we we had conversations with people who are um this one this one person was talking about running like a food safety culture and now the whole organization is going through a culture survey you know and it's like building off of each other And the thing of it is that we see and that as we talk to people in the industry is that people do the surveys, right? They give some feedback, senior leadership, they get the results, they may be trending, they maybe come up with a culture plan. And then nothing really shifts, right? Other than people's attitudes, because they've given you feedback multiple times, multiple times, multiple times, but nothing is shifting for them. And so the survey is not the problem, right? That's the data that you're collecting. And we're not against collecting that data. Building your plan, right, that's not really the problem, right? If you executed your plan, maybe, right, you can see some culture shift. But really what we see is that none of those things, whether it's the survey, it's the plan, right, that's a part of it. But none of them are touching what the leader is actually doing on a day-to-day basis. How are they actually engaging with their team? What problems are they solving? not just technical problems, right, but people problems, behavior shifts. What are they focused on? What are you focused on as an organization to shift your culture forward? And that's what I feel like is missing from this conversation of culture surveying is that we're just collecting a whole lot of data. We're telling people, hey, tell us all these things. And then we don't listen to them right now. It's like we don't listen to them because things do not shift. Yeah, or you know, even this summer, we've we've gone to a couple shows, you know, annual meetings this summer. And I remember specifically having a conversation with one, you know, the leader of food safety for an organization. And they were talking about, you know, the things that keep them up at night, like they had some real feedback from their direct managers about, you know, the state of food safety. And they were like, man, I need to do a survey. I need to get this data so that I can present it to the rest of our leadership team so we can drive needing support. And I was like, what do you mean? You already have a signal. Like it's blaring at you right now. Like you have a signal already that's telling you something's not working the way that you need it or want it to or that your team is telling you they need it to be different. And so I think this is part of why like you and I are here because this continual need of like, how do we help people navigate through this? I don't know. Sorry. Can you all hear my dog? Goodness. Sorry. She is on fire right now. I don't know what's going on. So if you do, that's, that's her. So I'm sure it's not as loud as what it sounds like. It comes through on these headphones sometimes, but I mean, these are the things where it's not like, that is the signal of like, here's something that as a leader, I can help navigate through today. You don't have to run the survey. You don't have to do training. You don't have to put the plan together. Like it's almost like handed to you. Like, here's the thing. The thing about it is as technical leaders, we've always been taught to like the problem solving techniques, the scientific methodology. Sometimes it's hard for our brains to think like, how do I take what I was just given and fit it into these things? Right. And this is where we're talking about when these moments come up, how do you actually take that forward and leverage that? That is gold when you think about food safety culture and where you need to go. Yes, yes, yes. One hundred percent. You know, I think we kind of get stuck in this loop. this, oh, we haven't done a survey in a while. Let's take a survey when really you just need to have conversations. And to your point, to the leader that you were talking to, they already had this information. They've already visited sites. They've already talked to their team. They already knew what they needed to do. They already knew how people were feeling in the culture. Well, let's just do another survey. Instead of spending the money on actually moving your culture forward, let's spend money on, again, another survey. I mean, because... you know, let's be honest, it's not free to run surveys, right? It's not free. Even if you develop one in-house, that's still someone that you're paying or someones that you're paying to come up with another survey that you already have the information for. Now is the time to act. Like, I feel like that is like the biggest piece. Now is the time to act. No matter what your culture is revealing to you, act now. Yeah. And I think this is a great example of like we always talk about leadership and culture are built in these little moments. Yes. These are the moments, whether you as a professional leader can respond in that moment or it's something where you come back around and you're like, hey, you know what happened yesterday? Let's talk about that again. Yes. It doesn't mean you have to be armed for today with all the right words. Because me being an introvert, I often will be like, oh, what just happened here? I need to process that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coming back around to it is still just as valuable as responding in the moment. And in fact, sometimes it even demonstrates that you took a pause and went, huh, I actually evaluated that even further, and I'm still coming back around to it. Mm-hmm. But if we don't recognize those moments and when those opportunities show up where we should be having some type of conversation, that's where culture just does what it does. Absolutely. It's going to be where it is. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we want to talk about three moments that we've identified, right? That actually reveal where your culture is and where it stands. Yeah. So, you know, Tia, to start off, like when there's a moment that I think about a lot and I call it the shortcut moment. Oh, yes. And these are ones where I don't mean like the big obvious ones where you're like, wow, we just totally missed like buying new equipment, whatever. But I mean the small ones, the ones where somebody makes a call and it seems like it's a little bit easier than it should be. And there's a leader in there standing right there. Yeah. And like, what do they do in that moment is what matters. So the shortcut moment. In fact, actually, before we jumped on, I was just sharing something about, you know, something I had observed, you know, in the past with someone where there was this person who liked to sidestep the process. Oh, yeah. Right. I mean, people like this person and they'd be like, oh, we're just going to like instead of doing X, Y and Z, we're going to do X and Z. And it's one of those things where, you know, people were like, oh, well, if they say we can do it, then we probably can. Right. Yes. And those are the ones that are so dangerous because you need someone to kind of like raise the hand and be like, well, actually, the process says we should do this. Right. Yes, exactly. And bringing it back to it, I feel like this is one of the ones where if people around you are taking shortcuts, you feel like people are taking shortcuts around as a leader to figure out why those shortcuts are happening. And sometimes it's exactly what you're talking about, where the leader is really doing shortcuts and the rest of the organization is like, why are we not doing these steps, right? Like, why are we kind of going around versus there? And you're right, some people are like, OK, well, maybe that's the new way of doing it. Maybe that's the new way. And that really deteriorates your culture. Because a lot of people think, oh, if I just do a shortcut over here, because it's not that important right now, what human behavior and what our human brains do is that we relate it to other things that are happening. Oh, OK, so we don't necessarily have to follow all processes here. And so now people start looking at what other processes can you, can you shortcut, right? And this could be a shortcut in like an operations. And now people are thinking about shortcutting food safety because this organization we shortcut, you know, and a lot of people don't think about it being the snowball effect, but it is. It is, you know, and I can remember back where. You know, like having a failure, like I remember having some type of sanitation failure and after that, you know, cause with sanitation, right, they're usually on a different shift. So sometimes that communication happens by email and the solve was sent to us by email. Like, Hey, and I wish I could remember the exact thing, but it was like, Hey, going forward, we're going to do this instead. And of course we had a failure. You would think, well, that must've been in a CAFA, but there was a lot of communication through email. And I remember like the quality manager going like, hey, what procedure needs to be updated with this? And even though it's all with the right intent, it's a shortcut in terms of we're trying to just quick fix something and get it pushed out in a communication. But until we notice, I think this is the big thing. We have to notice when these moments come up so that we can then do something about it. So, of course, one of the next communications that I sent was like, cool, what procedure do we put this in? Like, does it make sense to be here in this SSOP or in this pre-op form? Right. It needs to live somewhere so it doesn't get lost again. Yes. Yes. And it kind of resets. This is the way that we're doing work, work here versus, you know, just kind of quick fixing. Right. And moving on, you're going to run into the same problems. And then that just creates a culture of firefighting ultimately. Right. Of keep going back and solving, you know, having these fires pop up, but not really solving them and driving them out. Yeah, I remember back, oh, years ago, I was at the company and they were putting in a stage gate process for product development. And, you know, there's this all this effort in like, here's how we do this all the way through. And then when we came back to cool, now what happens when we have an update? And initially they were like, well, you just, you know, make that one update and you go through. But of course, if you've been in food long enough, you know, one update to something typically doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's usually something else that happens. And had like our person who was in food safety quality did not speak up, like they probably would have just been like, ah, we're just gonna make that one change. And then, you know, one person approves it and it goes forward. But instead they said, no, let's pause because that one change You know, often flows through the specification, through a label, through a process, through a check. Like something has to happen. Otherwise, we wouldn't be making this change. Right. Right. Yeah. And those are the moments where when we feel like something can be shortcut, whether it's product development, whether it's something operationally. Like those are the moments to look for. Yes. Yes. Those are the moments to say, are we moving around process or are we creating processes? Are we closing gaps in processes? You know, are we incorporating human behavior in our processes? You know, like I like that we started with this one, this shortcut moment, because I feel like it is one, it's one of the ones that's like, one of the biggest red flags on if people are just kind of short-cutting around and not really thinking about process you notice really quickly of like oh okay this is where this culture is and they're definitely not on you know they definitely don't have a mature culture right they might be developing they might be you know trying to help close gas but you realize that there's something that's missing and when you think about from a leadership perspective if shortcutting is a part of that culture typically leadership does not have to have um the leadership skills to be able to influence and inspire people to move in a direction sometimes there's lack of safe spaces because people don't want to bring up that the process is too hard or they don't have time or they don't have the resource they They really can't voice in a way on why the process is not working for them or for their team and why they continue to shortcut. So this this one is one that if you were thinking, OK, I need to like I need to be more aware in my culture. Look for this one. Where are you taking, where are you not following processes and you're short and you're taking shortcuts or that you might not have a process written. Right. And people are kind of doing their own, their own things. That definitely tells you something that your culture needs to strengthen. Right. Yeah. To get stronger. Yeah. And you know, this is one of my, like, if you've listened to us at all, you know, this is one of my soapbox items, you know, I was, fortunate to grow up in quality systems. Like my first job out of college, and this was a long time ago, was with a company who was already like ISO certified. So we already, like, I've lived in this space of like, where's the document? What is the policy? What is the procedure? Like, show me, show me, show me. So you know, if you're out there and you're, you know, if you're a GFSI certified org, you, you've got policies, you know, you've got them, you've passed your audits, you got something. So how often do you go back to those and like say, Hey, let's go back to that policy and see what it says. Like that is really strong. And that's an easy way because it's not you saying it, it's this policy. Right. So it's an easy way to navigate when you feel like someone's doing a shortcut, be like, what does our document say we should do? Exactly. It's like your true north, right? Like this is where we're headed and this should be representative of that. And you should review it because we know sometimes, oh, we thought we wanted to go this way, but now we want to go this way. Right, like you can always pivot, you can always shift, but you need to review, right? And you need to make sure that people know what are in your policies. That's like one of the biggest things that we see too, is that people have certifications, you know, they have all these things again, you know, certifications are very similar to like, The culture surveys in my mind, like you have this thing, but are you actually using it? Are you using what you have? Are you using the policies? Are you the only one that knows about the GFSI policy? Or are the people who need to actually execute it know about it? Yes. That is the difference between I have a food safety program and I have a food safety culture. Exactly. Like these shortcut moments, like when you see it and when a leader sees it, like what typically happens next in your organization? Because whatever that answer is, is your culture. Exactly. So nobody says anything, then that's the space you're in. So watch for these moments. Yes. And one thing about these moments, too, I know we're in the in the first one, but each of them, you know, it's really hard to capture these things on a survey. You know, it's one of the reasons why, you know, we call them culture surveys, but they're really they're really measuring the climate. Right. Like what what is sort of happening in this moment versus your actual culture, which is the reason why, you know, a lot of times they don't lead to culture change because they're really not data for your full culture. But these moments will actually give you insights into what your actual culture is. And the first one is really around how often do you see shortcuts happening in your organization or are they following what your policy says or what your procedure says? And that's not just a food safety and quality thing. Strong cultures have policies that they are working from, that everyone is working from the same policy because that is who they are as an organization. And that's not really specific to food safety and quality. The whole organization is following these policies and procedures. That's what strong cultures look like. Yeah, and there's always that myth that if we have to write out procedures and follow them, then it's going to take us longer to do things. Let's bust that myth right now because without policies and procedures, you run into disagreements, misunderstandings, more meetings to discuss, emails that aren't clear. You waste time. If you are trying to be a profitable company and drive out waste... put in some procedures that you all can follow. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You can move far and you can move faster when you are all aligned because our procedure says this is how we go. Boom, let's go. And we, we see it now with people that we talk to with our clients, the ones that do not have procedures it's a slow process or the you know the wrong person is making the decision or you know that just calls confusion it calls um slow down right and and it's funny because most organizations we talk to want to move quickly you know i want to figure out how do we move quickly how do we go to market faster how do we you know bring leaders up to speed faster how do we share best practices across organizations faster you know like people want to do that But it's really hard to get people to the point of, well, let's focus on building our policies and procedures. How do we share information? What information do we share? I can't share everything that I do every single day. So what is the most important information here at this organization that we share through what avenue? Someone has to put some thought behind that. Otherwise, you're really not going to share any best practices. Nope. And your consistency goes out the door, which means then once again, more waste, more rework, longer turnaround times, all of that stuff. Like, right. Like this is why I love going live. Like these are the things that make me go, these things are so changeable. They are like, they are solvable. They are. And, and it's, even though it feels cumbersome, right? It feels like it is, and it takes some time, right? Depending on where your culture is, but with the right tools, with the right skills, right? Like building those leadership muscle, it makes it so much easier than trying to, you know, fight an organization that takes shortcut without the right tools, without the right skills. That's what makes it difficult to do. Yeah. That kind of moves us into our second one, right? When we talk about like policies and procedures, you know, the second moment is that standalone moment when a leader does speak up or hold on to a standard or back someone up when maybe the rest of the room is not with them. right, and you kind of see it in your culture of, hmm, you know, and we've been, I feel like we've been flies on the wall, right, with organizations as we kind of help them move their culture forward, where you see someone step up and say, like, this matters, and you know the rest of the room is not necessarily with them, you know, how do they respond in that moment? That reveals a lot about your culture. Yeah, it does. It's those moments where, you know, I've seen these at like daily huddles, like operationally where people are like, good, we're going to fix it, do this, do this, do this. And then the quality person is like, what about this? They just pause for a moment and it's, you know, like everybody's kind of on the same page and they've already decided where things are going, but it's this person who steps in and goes, what about this? Yes. And it doesn't mean stop. It just means how do we give some consideration to this extra spot, the spot that we know needs it. It's almost like, Honestly, it's like it's valuing that person, right? Valuing that person as a part of your team and saying, okay, I want to hear, I want to get curious, right, about what this person is saying to see if all the things that we've talked about, if we've closed all the gaps, right, that we're not going to run into a problem. And if someone stands up and say, hey, like, Let's talk about this for a moment. Does that change the direction that we're going in? That is worthy, right? That's worthy to take a pause and to ensure that you're going down the right path so you don't run into any issues in the future. Yeah. You know, I think about this person being the one who often people are like, oh, no, they're going to say something. Right? Like, ugh, it's going to be a showstopper. I love the squeaky wheel. It is. It is. But how do we really think about this person who's brave enough to stand alone in this moment and say, hey, what about this? Because it would be a lot easier for them to stay quiet and just let things move forward. However, they can't because they know their conscious is like, I got to bring this up. Yes. Yes. This is... This is when I see this and when I'm really looking at the leader, this will let you know, does your leaders have the right skills in place? One of the things that I think about, I remember I had a lab tech that He was vocal, right? He was vocal. He's not going to stay quiet. He doesn't care if the rest of the room is with him or not. He's going to speak his mind. He's always going to stand alone if that's what he needs to do. And one of the things that I made sure I did before going into a group conversation is to listen to him separately. right before the meeting. He was definitely my pre-meeting on, okay, this is what I'm gonna talk about in the meeting. Like, let me know, what am I missing? What should I address? What do I, you know, and I, and I heard all of that ahead of time so that some of it I can be like, okay, that makes sense. I'm going to add that to my, to my discussion. And I want, and I will also tell him, I want you to say that in the meeting. Like, I want you to bring exactly what you're saying to the meeting, because I want to hear what other people feel about those, right? Like, he's just one person, one view. But he might represent other voices, right, that's happening. Many times a standalone person is. representing other voices. They're just brave enough to say it. And so I tell them, I want you to say that in the meeting. And then there's other ones that's like, okay, let me explain why we're doing it this way. And then now it's no longer a problem, you know, no longer a problem to bring up. But knowing, seeing how a leader responds to that standup person, that person that stands alone, let you know if your culture is safe, if your leaders have the right tools and skills to be able to have a conversation and move that person forward, right? Like this standalone moment tells you so much about your culture. And if you have the right relationships, if you, you know, how involved even your senior leadership is, right, with your team. Yeah. You know, I really like how you say this voice can help so others can also back them up. I think that's the thing. Oftentimes when these standalone moments come up, it's not that there's only one person thinking about it. Right. But the room, the space, the people involved may not make it a safe place for someone to use their voice. Yeah. And I know, you know, the whole like, everybody is authorized to stop the line and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You know what? Get over it, people. Like, that's not true. It's not true. It's true. We wish it would be true. But the reality is it's not. Because especially in these standalone moments, often there's some type of power differential that comes up as well. Right? You're standing up to someone who either real or perceived has more authority or power over a situation. Yes. And so when someone speaks up, Even if you're not that person, if you can back them up, you change the standalone moment so it's not a standalone anymore. Yes. Jill, this made me think about a time in my career when a temporary employee stopped the line because we were having these kickoffs at the metal detector. And she saw a tiny speck that could have been metallic. You know, like a tiny, tiny speck she saw. And I remember, of course, it was like, kickoffs happening, right? Like, we need to figure out what's going on. Is the filler falling apart? You know, like, everyone's down there trying to figure out. And I remember when I came in, the temporary employee was like, I'm so sorry. You know, she was like, I'm so sorry. I think that I see this. You know, we had a kickoff. And I'm like, you did exactly what you were supposed to do. You did exactly. I mean, it was like... no one knew where it was coming from there was some filler work there was and actually the line ended up going down and we go we ended up going into sanitation early so like we literally stopped the full operation and I remember her she was just like I can't believe I did this and I'm like you did what you were supposed to do we need you to do these things and I remember talking with my system engineer saying Hey, go talk to her. Like, you know, encourage her, encourage her. My operation, encourage her. Like, this is what we need. We need her to do. And we actually saw her personality almost like shift where she became more vocal. You know, it was almost like this ownership. Now, you know, she wasn't just a temporary employee. She was. over this area that she was she was like loading cups right and she's like i don't know i don't know what and she eventually hired in she eventually became a full-time employee but a part of that is she saw what type of culture was there right we valued her opinion because we have her on the line right she's a valuable part of of the team and something could have been different right in that situation if we had not valued her opinion because she's a temporary employee or because she doesn't typically catch things like this or you know well I don't see anything I looked online I don't see anything so you know, my opinion matters the most because I'm the quality engineer. I mean, you know, like insert, insert other people that could have like overridden her, her position, but we took it seriously. And she stood alone in that moment and she felt so bad, but we were like, no, no, no. Like you are protecting our consumers and that's what you want. Like, that's what you, that's what you need to see. That's what we're here for. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think about where I've seen this before with, oh gosh, I think it was a client we had last year where they had somebody new come in as they're kind of leading some food safety and quality. And as they were going through kind of like a HACCP reassessment, something shifted. And they were like, it didn't mean something shifted in their process, but like the industry knowledge around it and what was considered industry best practice had shifted. And they were the person who stood up and went, This is actually shifting in our assessment. Yes. And obviously, this is what they're here for. But it was one of these moments where like everybody else, you know, this was like new to them. They didn't realize like outside of their, you know, the bubble of their of where they were. that the expectations around what was considered a better practice had moved. Yes. And so having someone come in, you know, I remember if you remember this, but when they came in, they were kind of like, am I seeing this wrong? Like based on where I was before, like this is what we would be doing now. And then, you know, there's these moments I think where you tend to doubt yourself and go, gosh, am I creating a bigger thing here than maybe what there is? But that standalone moment just, once again, that using your voice and being confident in like, even if you talk through this and you're like, oh, maybe it's not such a big deal. Not saying in this situation, it still was. you at least use your voice to actually have the conversation. And that's part of culture. Like, can we pause long enough and invite and people come to the table to talk about it versus like just bulldozing through it? Yes. Yes. That's such a good example because When you're looking at culture change or you want to shift your culture, that means like your best practices or what you've known to be true is going to shift. And so in this situation, right, they were seeing that best practices has shifted. So they have to shift. sort of almost stand alone and say, hey, we're doing things this way and we've been doing things this way, but we need to get better. We need to close some gaps. We need to shift over here to whatever it happens to be, whether it's closing gaps or you want your people to show up differently. So we need to do things differently. That's going to feel like But we haven't been doing it that way. Or this has been working. Or we haven't seen a recall. Or we don't have any complaints. Or we don't have, right, like insert all of the reasons. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't shift. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't listen to the person that's standing alone saying, hey, standards have changed across the industry. People have changed. Generations have changed. What people want shifts. How are we shifting along with it? yeah and i think to notice too like this comes in through kind of a technical route like just a standard old reassessment which a lot of people do reassessments and just check the box yes like didn't see a problem here didn't see a problem here but you know with fresh eyes and you don't have to have always fresh eyes but to come back and be like does this still hold true yes like that is the strength in shifting culture to actually pause and go, is this still the way we want to go forward? When everybody's already decided like, yep, we're going, we're going to sign off and checkbox. But, you know, a group of managers sitting together to say, are we willing to look at it and know it's going to shake up perhaps a little bit of what we do. And, you know, that was fantastic when we saw that with, I think it was last year. Right. Just the difference that they make. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're willing to use and lean into these leadership skills that we had worked on to make a difference here. Yes. And one thing that you said that stood out is that you said it came through a technical route. And I think a lot of people, you know, it's one of the reasons why Catalyst exists is because. We are very technical people. We started our career. I'm an engineer. You are in quality management. You're a microbiologist. We're foundational. And when you think about technology, when you think about really being a technical expert in a field, But what we, and we almost kind of think about it as like this leadership is a separate thing, but it's not, it's not. You are solving technical problems. You are getting your results. You're finding business solutions while also being a strong leader, right? While also using those leadership skills And no matter what, it's almost like culture, where they say, you have a culture. Whether it's good or bad, you have a culture. Well, you are being a leader in your space, whether you're a good leader or a bad leader, whether you're influential or influential in a good way, or you're inspiring people to lead the organization. No matter what, you're still being a leader there. And a lot of people don't think about when you are taking a look at your culture, look at those times that you are making business decisions, that you are solving problems, because that's really where leadership is front and center. That's when those stand-alone moments are happening. That's when those shortcuts show themselves, is really when you're working on problems, working in groups. I think that's one of the downsides of our culture surveys, is that it doesn't really take that into account. I mean, it's good information. I'm not saying good data. We'll take some data, right? And we'll use some data. But it doesn't really capture these moments of when we're working together as teams and how do we show up as leaders in that space. And the work that we do, if you've been through our leadership courses or you're kind of thinking about it, one of the things that we really connect is how do you practice these leadership skills within the work that you're already doing? We don't want you to create something new and different and kind of over here that you have your leadership skills. No, we want you to solve the problems that you're already going to solve and practice building relationships, practice safe spaces, practice being more of a strategic leader in the space and showing up as your brand and the type of leader that you want to be. Like we want you to do that in those meetings so that you can be a better leader in those meetings, in that space, at your home, right? Versus this like separate space kind of bubble yeah separate bubble so i love the way that you said that like these moments come through those technical um problem solving solution oriented moments that we are in almost every day yeah they do and you know as you talk about that i think about just like you and i personality wise are different i come from midwest like non-confrontational family right so when when there are moments like learning to stand alone Honestly, that's still something I'm always working on. Because I have moments where I'm like, hmm. But I've also gotten really better at like, I circle back. Because I know my tendency. I know that I will avoid confrontation. I know that I will perhaps doubt myself and be like, did I have the right data? I need to go find more information or data. And it's like learning to trust your gut in these moments where you're like, I have the experience. I have the expertise. and maybe maybe I'm not a hundred percent correct but something on my radar just went off right how can I stand alone in that moment yes yes you know that that's often an approach that I take because I too will wait to see how things maybe play out and see does this need something to come up or will others bring it as well right so you know there's just different approaches so If you're out there and you're like, I'm not sure that's me. It's hard for me to stand up in this space because of the people around me or the way that our company is. Like, that's okay. We get that. And that's why there are different tools and techniques you can use to still have the same type of and impact in a way that feels safe and right for you. Yes, yes. That's another thing that we really like to focus on is how do you lead being you, right? Like people lead in different ways. And honestly, we all need to know of these tools because there's times that no matter what in the situation, you need to actually not speak. you need to actually listen and circle back or allow the room to think and process because of the people that you're working with. so like you said like having these tools to be able to say oh this is the right tool for this situation or the right tool for me as a leader right like you know i've seen some amazing leaders stand alone and they didn't necessarily have to stand up in a meeting you know front and center standing alone but they were able to like you said process and circle back on let's revisit this moment or I'm going to set up some additional time or I'm going to have a one-on-one time with someone versus like a meeting of twenty-five. Well, I'm actually going to have some one-on-one meetings to see like what's really going on and to voice my concerns that I might have and see if there's some other people that feel the same way. Those are all ways that you can stand, that you can stand alone. And as you're thinking about your culture and are those things happening? Because that's a good sign if people are circling back and saying, hey, I need to voice these concerns or I need to voice what is not necessarily sitting right with me, whether that's in a meeting or whether that's one-on-one time. That's positive for your culture versus, oh, we never heard any concerns about this. And after something happens, people are like, oh, yeah, I knew that was going to work. I knew that was going to blow up. I knew it was going to be, right? Like, that's what you're looking for when you think about these moments in your culture. You know, does people just kind of wait for it to blow up? Or are people really standing alone in these moments to say, oh, something's not right? Yes. And of course, I'm going to just point out for a moment that if those things are happening as leaders, signal, signal, signal. because that means for some reason, people don't feel safe. They don't feel they can stand up. There's something going on in that space that someone doesn't feel like they can do it. I've been there, right? Where I'm like, Ooh, I don't know if I can have confrontation. What is it about this space? That's making me feel like if I speak this truth or bring this up, that there's going to be confrontation that I want to avoid. So, I think there's that because I think about how that even plays into this third moment that we've been talking about. This is kind of like the stop the line, but this is the like raised flag, red flag moment. Yes. Like we've all been in a spot where I'm saying like, oh, no, no, no, we better not be doing that. Right. And like these are moments that are scary because you know that they can be game changers within your organization, right? And often as food safety quality professionals, we're seeing it, but other people, because they don't have the same training, they don't have the same background, they don't have the same expertise to them. They're like, Hey, it's Wednesday afternoon. We're just doing our thing. And you're like, Oh no, we just like, we're on like red level and they don't see it. Yes. Yes. And these are the things that are scary because This is really what determines once again, will people bring things forward or are they going to decide it's not worth it? Yes. And they're going to be the ones who are like, I'm going to start looking for a new job because this pressure, like not worth it. They don't value me here and I can't change what's happening. That is scary. Yes. We have to be able to notice these red flag moments where people are shift like we i remember i remember seeing this where all of a sudden somebody like disengaged they were like that happened and i saw the result and they were like now i'm i'm disengaged because i don't matter i don't add people are telling me i don't add value here and so i'm just going to get through the day yeah scary this one is you know i would say is the most damning for cultures especially when leaders respond in a way that causes people to not feel valued um and disengaged you know if you are if you're a senior leader watching and you're thinking okay how do i how do i really help with culture like pay attention to this one how you respond to people is the number one thing to work on whether it's your tone the timing on when should you have this conversation? We kind of talked about it on the standalone moment. Is it in the moment? Do you need to circle back? Recognizing when those things should happen. And then recognizing, did something visibly happen? Did something shift? Did the energy in the room shift? And being able to say, ooh, I noticed that this person took a step back. Or they're not communicating the way that they have before. That's what we need senior leaders to think about and to do and to solve and to remove roadblocks for other leaders. Like, you know, it's funny just coming from food safety culture, right? Like everyone's like, oh, you need to know HACCP. I don't need my senior leaders to know HACCP. Like, I don't I really don't need you to do that part of my job. I need you to ensure that these that attitudes are not shifting you know to poor you know that they're not going towards the bad you know you're helping me actually shift those attitudes forward and that's you as a senior leader working on building relationships and building trust and being more strategic and setting a vision that um people can align to right and that i'm able to explain right you know if i'm someone that's a middle manager that middle managers are able to explain it and get people on board and that you are open to feedback like that's the type of stuff that we need our senior leaders to work on and recognize these red flag moments and be an active part of it. I feel like if senior leaders can just do that, plus all the vision stuff and they still have to help run an organization, that's their technical side of things. But the people side of things, if they can just focus on that work, I mean, cultures would, the culture shift that people are looking for, they would start to recognize it. Yeah, and I think about, well, first, I'll share an example of like, where this went well. Yeah. Like, back in the day, right, I grew up in chicken, and the company I worked for no longer exists. So like, this isn't a risk or anything for them. But you know, one of the things is that, right, like, we always had whip, right, there was always stuff that would carry over, carry, carry over. And what we talked about was, you know what, from a microbial cutoff standpoint, even though we did sanitation every day, like we had whip in the cooler also that came out the next day. So they didn't really have lot within one day. Right. Right. So we were like, Oh, you know what? Our lot, we know that it'll really be like a week long. When we started investigating things more and more, we were actually like, Oh, You know what? I don't think it's a week long because we got whip here, but we send some of this to over to that plant and then they have that and then they use it and they might send it back. We started noticing this web of how our product actually flowed that shifted what we saw when it came to risk around traceability and product. Our company and our leaders could have been like, ah, that's standard in our industry. We're just going to keep doing it. It's fine. It doesn't matter. Instead, they went, what do we need to do to have a real cutoff that is meaningful? Yeah. Right. Because they, too, were like, this is a risk that we don't want open, not only for our company, but for consumers and good manufacturing. Right. But they could have looked the other way. But instead they went, nope. We understand that that is going to create some hardships on how we're shipping product between facilities, on what we're doing, on how we're doing clean outs. Like we totally get that, but we are willing to step into that hard decision because it's the right thing to do. Yes. Yes. that was one of those red flag moments that could have been not good. And I imagine before you all even brought it up, like the groups talking about it, like, Ooh, just the gap, even thinking about how's my leader going to respond, right? Like, you know, they can respond well, or it can go down another path and you're almost kind of getting ready for it to say, Ooh, if they go down the wrong path, how am I ever going to feel about being here? Right. You know, And I remember it wasn't like, oh, this came up and then like everything was great. It was like, oh, okay, now let's figure it out. Right. Because I think sometimes people are like, well, if we don't have a solution right now, we can't bring it up. And you're like, actually, strong cultures do bring it up and say, let's solve this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And many times it's one of the things like we have this gap and this is something we're going to focus on next year to solve it. You know, we're going to focus on next quarter to solve it. Or, you know, what do we need to put into place to solve it? You're absolutely right. Because great cultures are they're thinking ahead. Right. They're thinking about like, how do we regardless of what my certificate says and what number I get and how excellent we are. from a certificate standpoint, we're always looking to improve our processes. And one of the things that you said in this example that I liked is that regardless of what was happening in the industry and that this is a gap that other organizations, this is a gap that your organization did not want to take on. And they valued that their food safety and quality team was coming up with this gap, that they recognized it as something that is a high priority, and the organization moved forward with it. I mean, they hired you to find these gaps. and to tell them, why would you not, you know, move forward with it? Yes. And I think the other part about this is, you know, even though we kind of called this the raised flag, red flag type moment, at least I'm going to use the food safety quality lens because that's the one that I am most comfortable with and see. Typically in an organization, the red flag isn't like all of a sudden today, like, ooh, problem. It's typically something where your food safety quality team has been like, huh, something seems off here. Hmm, something doesn't fit right here. Hmm. And they bring it up little by little. so getting to this red flag raised flag moment isn't usually something that in hindsight you couldn't have seen coming right it's usually something happened that almost causes a tipping point where the team is like we can't put up with this any longer right we need action we see too much risk and everybody else you know if you're leadership hasn't been noticing these moments along the way, this will feel like a red flag. That's why we called it this raised flag, red flag moment. When in reality, there were probably some signs along the way that they got signals to say, this doesn't matter to us. This isn't important enough to us. We don't believe you. We don't believe that data. And then it gets to a tipping point where the team is like, We can't sleep at night because this is too real. Right. Exactly. Then we're going to have a true, a true problem. And food safety and quality, since we're so consumer-focused, that could be a marketplace incident that we're having. You can also think about it in terms of equipment breakdown. This could lead to an equipment failure, and then we can't make product at all. Just thinking about those different areas before this major breakdown, before this major pump failure, before this dead end in a line, there were some flags raised along the way that really as leaders, we should be able to identify. But if we don't get there and that red flag is raised, how leaders respond is so impactful to your culture and how they respond reveals where you are. on the culture, maturity, model, spectrum, whatever you want to use, it tells you if you need to focus on those areas or if you have the right people, the right systems in place so that people can raise flags and identify them and move forward with them. Yeah. You know, I think that's so important. Like when you think about when somebody has raised a concern, Like this, whether it's one of the small ones or it's a big one, like what happens after? Yes. Like you said, that that tells us a lot about culture and that positioning. And these moments, you know, are, you know, they're not failures. They're really signals, right? They're signals that leaders should be learning from. They should really be seeing. And, you know, we like to say, like, that's your spark. Yeah, you should be scanning for these. When do I see these moments? How are they coming up? What are these little sparks that are happening, these little moments that are happening? And then really start to shift on, do we need to respond differently? Or do we need to highlight how a specific leader responded so we can see those things happen across our organization? And then how do you sustain it? Right. How do you sustain in moments like this? Because even in great cultures, right, even in the examples we use today, like some of those cultures are pretty good cultures. We still see these moments. Right. We still see these three moments happen even there. The difference is how those leaders respond. Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah. These are big things. You know, and I think, like you said, these are things that are happening today in your organization right now, on some level, some way, shape or form today, whether someone's naming them or not, they're not dramatic. They're not always visible. But this is where it's either building culture or just chipping away at culture. Yes. And so it's not about do you have a culture plan? It's What are you doing to build leaders who even can see these things so that you can build an appropriate culture plan? And do something about it. Right. And actually do and do some actions. So we're going to expand on this at BRCGS Connects Americas in Nashville on October thirteenth. Again, it's called Join Us. We want you to be there. You own it. They shape it. Now what? It's going to be there. Come find us. We would love to connect. We would love to set up some time. We would love to hear about your moments in your organization, how you are overcoming them or what support you need to be able to identify those critical moments in your organization and then do something about it. I feel like at Catalyst, we're about that practical application. What are you doing about your culture? How do you help get the skills that you need and use the tools that you need? Yes. You know, and if you're like, I don't want to wait till October. Well, go on our website, catalystfoodleaders.com, contact us, book a culture conversation with us. Yes. We'll drop it in the show notes, but it's just a conversation. It's not a sales pitch, but tell us where you're at because for you to move forward, you've got to take a first step. And we encourage you to be that standalone moment. Stand up and say, it is time for us to actually do something different. Love a survey. Sure. Do that every year, you know, every two years, every three years, whatever your rotation is on that, you know, do it. That is absolutely fine. It's actually good to do it, but then do something else about it. Otherwise you're just collecting people's viewpoints and then telling them that their voice does not matter. Yeah. You need to spark. You spark because leadership is not a one person show. You hear us talk about this all the time. Culture does not grow on its own. It can erode on its own, but it won't grow on its own. It really takes intention and a system. So that's today's real talk. It is. And we're so happy that you joined us today and we look forward to seeing you next week. We do make it a great week. Bye everyone.
