Can You Reorganize Your Way Into a Better Culture? | Episode 69

In episode 69 of Don't Eat POOP! A Food Safety Podcast , Matt Regusci and I are talking about the recently approved FDA’s reorganization plan, which will hopefully bring positive changes to the organization.

We discuss all the major changes being made to the FDA, including our opinions on each of them. We also talk about the acronym nightmare this is already proving to be.

But that’s not all, today Matt is busting down a widely believed food safety myth that might just shock you, so make sure to listen to the end.?

In this episode:

• [00:54] LinkedIn Live Interview Q&A Coming Soon
• [02:08] The FDA’s upcoming reorganization
• [04:43] Doing what you have to do versus what you want to do
• [10:40] Changes to the FDA’s Human Foods Program
• [11:46] The mess of how food safety is controlled in the USA
• [15:15] From Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) to Office of Inspections and Investigations (OII)
• [17:09] Establishing the (OCMO) Office of Chief Medical Officer
• [18:35] Merging into the Office of Regulatory and Emerging Science (ORES)
• [19:15] Dealing with all the new acronyms
• [20:14] Creating an Office of Enterprise Transformation (OET)
• [21:01] Can you reorganize your way into a better culture?
• [23:30] Busting the food safety myth that there is a kill step in fresh produce

The Real Issue

The FDA reorganization will be comprehensive and will impact almost 8,000 employees.

According to Food Safety News’ Article: FDA’s reorganization is official, “the reorganization includes:

• Making the FDA’s Human Foods Program and product centers solely responsible for receipt, triage, and closing consumer and whistleblower complaints, rather than this role being split between centers and field offices.
• Renaming the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) as the Office of Inspections and Investigations (OII) and solidifying its role as the frontline of the FDA’s field-based inspection, investigation, and import operations.?
• Establishing an Office of the Chief Medical Officer (OCMO) in the Office of the Commissioner to strengthen central coordination of cross-agency medical issues, including special populations such as children and people with rare diseases. This includes a new Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response to support medical countermeasure policy, emergency preparedness work, and medical product shortage coordination across the agency.?
• Merging the Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats (OCET) and the Office of Regulatory Science and Innovation (ORSI) to form a new office; both offices are currently housed within the FDA’s Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). This newly merged office in OCS, proposed as the Office of Regulatory and Emerging Science, will strengthen the support of regulatory science and preparedness research efforts.?
• Creating an Office of Enterprise Transformation. This proposed new office in the Office of the Commissioner will work across the FDA to drive high-priority cross-cutting business process improvement efforts. The proposed shift will result in more strategic and efficient use of agency resources.”

This shows that they understand there’s room for improvement and are committed to making the organization more effective.

The issue here is that the problem is not an organizational one, it’s a cultural one.

It will not matter shuffling people around to new roles or clarifying their current roles if the culture is not one of carefully looking at your email for potential outbreaks no matter what, of doing the job to the best of one’s ability because that job saves lives.

Reorganizing the organization may facilitate a shift but for the culture to change it’s all about the people, they need to change.

Personally, I think the type of change that the FDA needs would require not a reorganization but new people who really do care about food safety and saving lives.

So, ultimately, I don’t think one can reorganize their way into a better culture.

But I want to hear from you. What do you think?

Can you reorganize your way into a better culture?

Let me know in the comments!

We'd love to hear from you!

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