Over a year ago, when Dr. Hal King reached out to me and asked me to contribute a chapter to his book, Food Safety Leadership in the Business of Food Safety,1 I was honored to be included as an author alongside so many other experienced and well-respected food safety business leaders. For my chapter, Dr. King asked me to focus on how I was able to work within a large and global restaurant company to set up and sustain a successful food safety management program. My chapter is titled, "Building a Successful Food Safety Management Program by Learning the Business."
In my chapter, I shared the importance of establishing strong working relationships with suppliers, internal departments, externally with public health departments and other food safety experts in the industry. When Food Safety Leadership in the Business of Food Safety was published and I was able to read the entire book, I was struck by how so many of the other contributing authors also mentioned the importance of establishing strong relationships with other key stakeholders in the business or externally as part of being an effective food safety business leader. For example, in his chapter entitled, "The Attributes and Priorities of a Successful Food Safety Business Leader," Jorge Hernandez of Wendy's shared the following key insight about being an effective food safety leader when he wrote, "The combination of being effective at achieving results that are part of the business and building relationships seems to be the 'secret sauce' of food safety business leadership success."1