Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 45. Friday Night

Nancy loved going to her sons' Friday night football games. Even as a kid, she could remember being either in the stands or on the sidelines while her father played and coached football. He had been an all-American in college, a Pro Bowl player, and Hall of Fame coach in the NFL. Although her father was no longer with her, Nancy felt his presence most strongly at football games, and she knew he would have loved to watch her sons play. They had his talent, size, and fire.

She also loved going to their games because it offered a great escape from work. She immersed herself in the games and yelled so loudly that her sons had asked her to lower the volume a little. She never brought her work to the games, yet on this particular Friday night she discovered something at the game that she would take back to work.

While watching the players give every ounce of their energy on the field and observing the coaches as they paced, yelled, and cheered on the sidelines, she found the ingredient she needed to add to make her soup hot. She'd always heard that organizations don't change—people change. Changed people then change the organization. Cold people wouldn't do it. She needed hot people who would create hot soup.