Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 48. Tastier Soup

As Nancy awaited the board meeting that would decide her future and the future of Soup, Inc., a funny thing started happening. The company started getting phone calls and e-mails from customers asking what had changed in the soup recipe. Countless customers reported that that the soup tasted better. They asked whether the company had improved the recipe and, if so, why it wasn't noted on the can. However, Soup, Inc., hadn't change the recipe at all. The company used the same equipment, the same ingredients, and the same process. "The only thing that has changed," Nancy told the employees on a conference call, "is us. We've changed. We are the most important ingredient, and our love, our passion, and our teamwork have made the soup even better."

While some employees thought it was just coincidence, Nancy knew there was more to the story. She theorized that there's a spirit, an essence, a core radiated by a great company's culture that persuades customers to choose its product on the shelves or to frequent its stores. Certain companies had it. Certain brands had it. Certain people had it. You couldn't explain it or quantify it. It was one of those mystical things you couldn't analyze with tools, but you knew it existed. There's a physical world and a spiritual world, and what is unseen is more powerful than what is seen. For years, Nancy had been buying a certain brand of milk without thinking twice about it. After Nancy met the milk company's CEO and learned ...