Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture [Hardcover]

Jon Gordon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2010

Why it matters who's stirring the pot

Soup offers an inspirational business fable that explains the "recipe" you can use to create a winning culture and boost employee morale and engagement. The story follows Nancy, the newly anointed CEO of America's Favorite Soup Company. She has been brought in to reinvigorate the brand and bring success back to a company that has lost its flavor and profit and has fallen on hard times. Fatefully, while eating lunch at a local soup shop, Nancy discovers the key ingredients to unite, engage, and inspire her team and create a culture of greatness.

• From the bestselling author of The Energy Bus, The No Complaining Rule, and Training Camp
• Find out how culture drives behavior, behavior drives habits, and habits deliver results
• Create relationships that are the foundation upon which successful careers and winning teams are built
• Features quick takeaways you can use to invest in your people, build trust, create unity, and enhance engagement

A turnaround tale like few others, Soup will inspire you to work in your own company to unleash the passion that delivers superior results.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Soup offers an inspirational business fable that explains the "recipe" you can use to create a winning culture and boost employee morale and engagement. The story follows Nancy, the newly anointed CEO of America's Favorite Soup Company. She has been brought in to reinvigorate the brand and bring success back to a company that has lost its flavor and profit and has fallen on hard times. Fatefully, while eating lunch at a local soup shop, Nancy discovers the key ingredients to unite, engage, and inspire her team and create a culture of greatness.

• From the bestselling author of The Energy Bus, The No Complaining Rule, and Training Camp
• Find out how culture drives behavior, behavior drives habits, and habits deliver results
• Create relationships that are the foundation upon which successful careers and winning teams are built
• Features quick takeaways you can use to invest in your people, build trust, create unity, and enhance engagement

A turnaround tale like few others, Soup will inspire you to work in your own company to unleash the passion that delivers superior results.

Characteristics of Great Leaders
Content from author Jon Gordon

Challenging times require leaders who can lead others through the challenges. Now more than ever we need great leadership in our government, schools, businesses, hospitals and organizations. Good leadership won’t suffice. We need great leadership. There is a difference.

• Good leaders get people to believe in them.
• Great leaders inspire people to believe in themselves.
• Good leaders say “Watch what I can do.”
• Great leaders say “Let me show you what you can do.”
• Good leaders catch fish for others so they can eat today.
• Great leaders teach people how to fish so they can eat for a lifetime.

Having worked with countless leaders over the years in businesses, schools and professional sports I’ve realized that great leadership is really a transfer of belief. Great leaders share their belief, vision, purpose and passion with others and in the process they inspire others to believe, act and impact. Great leaders are positively contagious and they instill confidence and belief in others.

Great sales managers inspire their sales people to believe in themselves and their product/service. Great school principals inspire their teachers to believe they can make a difference. Great teachers inspire and empower their students to believe in themselves. Great pastors inspire their congregations to serve and impact the community. Great sports coaches inspire their teams to believe they can win. And the people who have changed the world have been those who instilled in others the confidence to step up, serve, take initiative and create positive change. You don’t need a title to be a leader. You just need to lead.

To lead others in a powerful way you must invite them on your bus, share your vision for the road ahead and then encourage, empower and inspire them to drive their own bus. In the process, instead of having just one bus that you drive, you create a fleet of buses and bus drivers, all moving in the same positive direction. When you create a fleet of buses and empower people to drive their own bus, you generate an amazing amount of power and momentum that becomes an unstoppable force. This is what great leadership is all about.

From the Inside Flap

Why it matters who's stirring the pot

Only a few months into her new job, Nancy wondered whether or not she should have said yes to the CEO position at Soup, Inc. Sales were declining, bankruptcy and takeover rumors were swirling, and employee morale had never been lower. The company had lost both flavor and heat; and nobody likes lukewarm soup. How was Nancy going to turn it around?

Sometimes the answer you need is right in front of you. On a lunch break, Nancy steps into Grandma's Soup House, a little place she hadn't noticed before, and happens upon an unexpected source of inspiration. New from the bestselling author of The Energy Bus and Training Camp, Soup tells the "stirring" story of how Nancy discovers the key ingredients to revitalizing her company, her team, and herself.

A recipe for success for anyone in any position, Soup delivers the powerful message that the quality of your career, business, and team is determined by the quality of your relationships.

People are hungry for positive change and a fresh sense of purpose and passion. If you are ready to stir the pot and lead by example, Soup is a fun and engaging story that supplies you with the tools you need to build a winning team-at work, school, or home.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 164 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470487844
• ISBN-13: 978-0470487846
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.7 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jon Gordon's best-selling books and talks have inspired readers and audiences around the world. His principles have been put to the test by numerous NFL, NBA, and college coaches and teams, Fortune 500 companies, school districts, hospitals and non-profits. He is the author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller "The Energy Bus," "The No Complaining Rule," "Training Camp," "The Shark" and "The Goldfish," "Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture," and his latest book "The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work."

Jon and his tips have been featured on The Today Show, CNN, Fox and Friends and in numerous magazines and newspapers. His clients include The Atlanta Falcons, Campbell Soup, Wells Fargo, State Farm, Novartis, Bayer and more.

When he's not running through airports or speaking to businesses, hospitals or school leaders, you can find him playing tennis or lacrosse with his wife and two "high energy" children.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#59 in Books > Business & Investing

#100 in Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing

#59 in Books > Business & Investing

#100 in Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Stuff May 28, 2010

By Steve M. Shaver

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

While this book reviews basic principles that we all know it is the way in which the story is told tha truly grabs you.
The foundation in which it lays out that people are first is a testimate to all those people who know that without the people engagement we are hopeless.
I encourage you to get this book and read and reflect on the meaning in which the author is conveying. If you purchase this book I don't think you will be sorry.
If you follow this books guidlines I know you will experience the power of the people.
Enjoy !!!!!!!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Recipe for Business Success May 20, 2010

By James R. Brown

Format:Hardcover

If you have read any of Jon Gordon's book, you will love this one. It is written in the inspirational novel format where a story line is used to develop a very practical business model. When cooking soup, all kinds of ingredients are used but as the book points out, the outcome is determined by the love and inspiration of the person who "stirs the pot". I am extremely thankful that I work for a company that could have been used by Gordon as an almost perfect example of the business model depicted. This is simply a good book that will cause you to think about your current business practices and what they could or should be instead of what they might currently be. "Gymbeaux"

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A business novel to help you improve your organization's culture March 26, 2013

By Nathan Ives

Format:Hardcover

Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture a business novel by Jon Gordon illustrates the significant impact senior leaders have on setting and nurturing their organization's culture. Jon goes on to reveal how culture, in-turn, drives performance and ultimately an organization's success.

I believe leaders at the top set the tone and tenor of the organization's performance; that the workforce will, over time, embody a set of beliefs aligned with senior management's decisions and actions.

I like Soup for the way in which the relationship between senior leader decisions and actions, organizational beliefs and work ethic, and overall company results is illustrated. Through the story of Soup, Inc., Jon reveals the nuances of decisions and actions by a CEO and how these effect those immediately around her and are then translated throughout the workforce. These easy-to-relate-to interactions follow closely with our own experience with personnel reactions in the workplace; making Soup`s lessons both real and applicable.

The lessons in Soup go one step further; illustrating in an implementable step-by-step fashion how to positively impact and change an organization's culture.

Soup`s insights and implementable actions on how to constructively improve an organization's culture makes it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

All the Best,
Nathan Ives
StrategyDriven Principal