Culture as Perpetual Soup

Photo of three cauldrons of bubbling soup, with fire behind, on a black background; at the left side, a hand wields a long-handled ladle.I heard a great metaphor the other day about culture: “You cannot microwave culture. It takes a crockpot approach.” (From Charlie Malouf, the CEO of BroadRiver, on Simon Sinek’s podcast “A Bit of Optimism.”)

I love how that points to the reality that culture isn’t something you can fix or do quickly.

But I also think the metaphor falls apart in the end. Yes, crockpot stew is a long-simmering endeavor as compared to microwaving a bowl of soup, but it still ends after a few hours.

Perpetual soup, on the other hand, can literally go on for decades, and still be perfectly safe to eat. For instance, there’s a restaurant in Japan, Otafuku, that’s had the same soup going since 1945 – and diners still order it and, yes, survive the experience and enjoy their meal.

Without getting into the details on how this works (you can read about it on Wikipedia), and coming back to the question of culture, my point here is that culture is a perpetual soup, and must be – should be – attended to as such.

Culture change initiatives are all very well, and often necessary, but the effort isn’t done when the culture project reaches its final milestone. Any culture that’s not consciously attended to will slowly slide downhill. At best, it will become fractured, as one manager’s perspective on what the culture is and on what the values are diverges from another’s. At worst, it will inadvertently encourage bad behavior as the desired cultural norms are ignored or misunderstood due to inconsistent – or nonexistent – communication and accountability.

In and of itself, culture “just happens” – but what happens will be anyone’s guess.

A solid, strong culture, on the other hand, requires active, ongoing stewardship.


Who owns culture? It’s an important question, and is the subject of my article here, on my Substack – where you’ll find a host of other articles on culture, leadership, values, and more. Come explore, come subscribe, come join the conversations!