Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 4. Nancy

As she and Brenda navigated their way back to the Soup, Inc., headquarters, Nancy wanted to kick herself for mentioning that she was the CEO of Soup, Inc. People treated her like a celebrity and a rock star, but she didn't feel like one. After all, just a few months ago, before the board chose her to run the company (and hopefully to save it), she had been the vice president of marketing. The board said her marketing team and campaigns were the one bright spot in the company and that she showed the leadership, innovation, and creativity the company needed. Although the board had confidence in her, she did not yet have confidence in herself. She had never run a company, never mind a company that was spiraling toward almost certain death. Once an icon of American business, Soup, Inc., had lost its way, and it was Nancy's job to help it find its groove again. Yet she didn't have a clue about what to do next. Marketing, she knew. Advertising, she knew. Growing sales, she knew. You could measure the success of marketing campaigns. You could see whether sales numbers were growing or declining. But the negativity and toxic environment that permeated Soup, Inc., was something she wasn't prepared to deal with.

When Peter mentioned the article in the Times, it merely reminded her of how lost she was. The article said that although she was putting a plan in place, the odds of it succeeding were almost nil. Nancy wanted to know the secret of Grandma's soup, but she didn't have ...