I have spent most of my career working in food manufacturing and ingredients and one pattern keeps showing up. Systems usually do not fail first. People stop speaking up first.
Food companies are built on structure. Food safety programs, quality systems, SOPs and repeatable processes matter. I have helped build, audit and defend those systems. But I have also watched them turn into barriers. Not because they were wrong, but because no one felt empowered to question them anymore.
I have sat in meetings where the same issue came up for the third time in a month. Everyone acknowledged it. Everyone agreed it was frustrating. And then the conversation moved on because no one was sure who actually had the authority to change it. The process stayed the same. The problem stayed the same.
Across R&D, quality, technical support and product development roles, I have seen innovation slow in quiet ways. It sounds like “that is outside scope” or “we cannot change that right now.” Over time, curiosity gives way to habit and teams stop pushing even when they know something could be better.
One of the biggest gaps I see is not technical knowledge. It is translation. Someone needs to connect formulation ideas to what actually happens on the production floor, then bring those realities back to the bench. I have watched R&D teams develop concepts that worked beautifully at small scale but failed in production because no one looped in processing early enough. I have also seen operations shut down ideas without offering alternatives because the why behind the request was never fully explained.
Adding more meetings did not fix those situations. Neither did adding more documents.
What helped was clarity. Clear ownership. Clear decision paths. Clear agreement on where experimentation was allowed and where it was not. Once teams understood those boundaries, they moved faster. People stopped hesitating because they knew where they stood.
Knowledge management creates another friction point. I have personally watched teams repeat the same troubleshooting work because the original solution lived in someone’s email or personal notes. When that person changed roles, the learning disappeared. Centralized resources and simple documentation habits saved time almost immediately once they were put in place.
Onboarding plays into this more than most organizations expect. Teaching someone how to use systems is not the same as teaching them how decisions are made. I have seen strong hires struggle because no one explained when they were expected to challenge an approach versus follow precedent.
Why the Food Industry Needs More Translators, Not Just Specialists
The food industry does not suffer from a lack of expertise.
It struggles with connecting that expertise.
Food safety, formulation, processing, quality and commercial teams are all strong in their own areas. Problems show up between those areas. That is where projects stall and frustration builds.
Some of the most effective people I have worked with were not defined by their job titles. They were the ones who could move between teams and translate priorities. They understood tradeoffs early, not after decisions were already locked in.
I have been part of projects where a minor formulation change caused major processing issues because no one paused to walk through the downstream impact. I have also seen processing teams reject ideas without context, leaving R&D unsure how to adjust. In both cases, the issue was not capability. It was alignment.
One of the biggest gaps I see is not technical knowledge. It is translation. Someone needs to connect formulation ideas to what actually happens on the production floor, then bring those realities back to the bench.
Translation is not about replacing specialists. It is about connecting them. It means asking questions earlier than what feels comfortable. It means clarifying whether a problem is technical, procedural, or simply a communication gap. It means helping teams understand the ripple effects of their decisions.
Growth makes this harder. More products, more customers and more regulatory complexity naturally create silos. I have watched teams hit every one of their internal metrics while a project, as a whole, continued to miss deadlines.
Project intake is often where things break down. When requests come in without context, priority, or clear success criteria, technical teams are forced into reactive mode. I have lived that. Over time, it erodes trust and burns people out. Clear intake processes do not limit flexibility. They prevent unnecessary rework.
Career development suffers from the same disconnect. I have seen talented technical professionals told to “be more strategic” without ever being shown how strategy decisions are made. Organizations that share decision frameworks build stronger leaders and reduce frustration.
What Layoffs Don’t Tell You About Talent
The first time I was laid off, I assumed I had missed something. I replayed recent projects in my head, reread emails and tried to figure out where I had gone wrong. The uncomfortable realization came later. I had not failed. The business had simply changed direction.
I have been impacted by layoffs and restructurings multiple times throughout my career in the food industry. Each situation looked different on paper. Different companies, different roles, different messaging. What they had in common was that performance was not the deciding factor. Cost pressure, acquisitions, reorganizations and shifting priorities were.
Still, layoffs carry a quiet stigma in hiring conversations.
I have felt the pressure to explain what happened, even when entire teams were eliminated. I have been asked indirect questions meant to test stability rather than capability. I have also watched other strong professionals hesitate to share their full story, worried it would be misinterpreted.
Restructuring is a business decision, not a reflection of individual value. Functions are removed regardless of contribution. Projects are stopped mid-stream. Roles disappear even when the work itself is still needed. Treating layoffs as a red flag ignores how organizations actually operate.
What is rarely discussed is what comes after.
Coming back from a layoff is not just about finding another role. It impacts confidence and identity. There is a recalibration that happens. You start paying closer attention to how decisions are made, who is included and what information is shared. You become more aware of how quickly priorities can shift and how little notice changes sometimes bring.
That awareness changes how you work.
I have found myself paying closer attention to how information flows, where assumptions are made and how teams respond under pressure.
These are not soft skills. They are survival skills
Yet hiring processes rarely make space for that perspective. Organizations miss an opportunity to understand how someone has grown through uncertainty.
Retention is closely tied to how supported people feel during uncertainty. Employees do not expect stability forever. They expect honesty. Companies that communicate clearly during change and define roles realistically are better positioned to retain strong talent, even when conditions are difficult.
The food industry prides itself on resilience. Supply chains adapt. Processes evolve. Teams solve problems under pressure every day. That same resilience should extend to how we view careers shaped by disruption.
Layoffs are part of the reality of the industry today. Treating them as something to explain away rather than something to understand limits the talent pool and discourages open conversation. Experience does not disappear because a role was eliminated.
Layoffs do not define talent. What people learn, how they adapt and how they move forward does.
