Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 39. No One Eats Alone

As a way to bring people together and create an interactive culture of greatness, Nancy also encouraged and launched a program to enhance communication and relationships, which she called "No one eats soup alone." She told her employees that soup was meant to be shared, enjoyed, and created together and that together they would accomplish great things. As part of the initiative, leaders and managers encouraged employees to have lunch with someone from a different department each week so they could brief each other on their challenges and accomplishments. Here again, Nancy led by example: She took a different person to lunch at Grandma's Soup House each week and also made it a habit to eat in the cafeteria with the employees. It was amazing how much information and how many ideas she gathered by breaking bread with her teams.

To further enhance communication and transparency and spread optimism, she shared a daily message via e-mail, conducted a daily 10-minute teleconference with the entire company, provided frequent status updates via the new company intranet, and hosted numerous town hall meetings. She became a proponent of positive and frequent communication and encouraged her managers to do the same. In turn, not only did the managers become a source of top-down information, but they listened a lot and implemented a number of improvements that came from the bottom up. Nancy and her team also shared critical financial reports and engagement numbers ...