Stone Soup
Stone Soup
The classic story of the desperate soul wandering into a village in search of food. Hut to hut he begs for just anything to eat, each family refusing to help, claiming they barely have enough for themselves. The wanderer then enters the center market area, setting a fire and a pot of water to boil over it. The villagers look on as he drops a big stone into the boiling water, and begins taste testing it every couple minutes. Eventually he’s approached and asked what he was up to. The wanderer explains how he’s making his famous Stone soup, and as he tastes the water again, goes on to say how it just needs some potato to make it perfect.
The villager quickly leaves and returns with a potato, and finds another curious villager has joined the wanderer with the same interest in the soup. With another tasting, the wanderer says the same thing, making his famous stone soup, and it would be perfect if it just had a carrot. Villager after villager approaches with the same curiosity, and each time the wanderer offers up a new ingredient that would make the soup just perfect. Soon the whole village is aware of the soup and gathers around. The wanderer then shares his soup with the village, that he started with just a stone.
An academy culture is like stone soup. We need a space and some mats, but putting mats in a space is like putting the stone in the water. The true magic is in the ingredients that make it into the soup, the people that add flavor to it. And like many ingredients, some are best when initially added but their flavor fizzles out as it cooks, some are bitter until they cook a bit. And some ingredients pair well with some and horribly with other ingredients.
Within each culture, the leader should be the stone, always observing the incoming and outgoing to keep the flavor within the preferred flavor profile. No stone makes the soup, but the conviction of the leader through the stone invites the ingredients. Doing this carefully, with the help of the other ingredients, not just once but continually, makes our culture soup worth sharing with the village. Whether we are the stone or the carrot, the salt or the potato, our synergy is our energy, and our energy is our culture.