Change can be hard and painful. It can be maddening, scary and uncertain. It can also be exciting and exhilarating. Most often, change is necessary. No matter the emotions that go along with change, no one can deny that change is inevitable. It is a constant. Change is LIFE.

I am no stranger to change. In my almost 20 years in this industry, I have been a corporate lawyer, a hog buyer, an animal welfare specialist, and now a marketer of pork products. Every career change has been exciting, yet terrifying. Every change has created opportunities that I never would have imagined before.

I am writing this blog, my first for Meatingplace, on the airplane on my way home from the Annual Meat Conference. It was a fantastic gathering of industry leaders. While not an official theme, the overwhelming message that served as a common thread throughout the program was disruption and – you guessed it – change. According to keynote speaker Leonard Brody, we are in the middle of a great rewrite...the fourth in the history of the United States. To survive this rewrite, the meat industry must make major, and perhaps uncomfortable, changes. The biggest question is, are we up to the challenge?

For the past several months, I have been helping to lead an effort to update the National Pork Board’s operating system and networking capabilities. If we do this right, it should result in fewer emails, more efficient collaboration on documents and presentations, and better tracking and accountability in work streams. An exciting change to say the least, but equally scary – as it means people will work very differently, and expectations about how we work together will change.

As you may imagine, we have spent a tremendous amount of time working through the change management process to implement this technology. Change management is not rocket science. It is effective communication; thinking through why a change is painful to some folks and how you make it less painful. It is examining what education and information people need to feel comfortable leaning into the change and getting people excited about moving off center and progressing forward.

I am a change agent. I have been comfortable in that capacity for a long time. Despite that, change still rocks my world from time to time. Like when I recently upgraded my iPhone from a 7 to an XR. Now that was painful…and it’s still really embarrassing a few weeks later when I keep accidentally turning on the flashlight when I try to open the home screen (facepalm).

Even in the most difficult times of chaos and upheaval, I have learned that change is neither good nor bad – it just is. The challenge for me – and many others – is all in how you react to it. Do you dig your heels in and protest every chance you get? Do you hedge, trying to keep one foot planted in both the past and future at the same time—paralyzed and unable to go backwards or forwards? Or do you embrace the different, the unexpected, and yes, the sometimes sad or maddening change and lean in?

As hard as it is, the people I admire most and who I see as most successful are those who see change as a fact of life. The people who work hard, adapt and roll with it. True champions of change look forward to it; these leaders try to predict the impending changes well before they occur.

As you might have gathered from the name — Pearls and Pork — my blogs will be about the pork industry; from farm to fork. Many of the themes I explore, however, will be applicable across the other food animal proteins. I hope to challenge your thinking, to drive change. I will seek to be fair and balanced, but I also plan to be a bit provocative. After all, a rewrite will require us to deeply examine why we do things, and the answer of “because we have always done them that way”….well, that just will not cut it ladies and gentlemen.

I look forward to your comments and feedback. And if there is ever a topic that you would like me to tackle, please let me know.

The meat industry has changed before; we’ve got to do it again

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