It was Friday and we were in Toronto for my nephew’s Bar Mitzvah.
Right before Shabbat candle lighting, our hostess thoughtfully offered my young kids some chicken soup to bridge them to dinner. Steam rose off the bowls. While feeding them, I took a sip.
I’ve had chicken soup my entire life. This one made me stop mid-spoon. Layered, rich, almost shocking in how much flavor it carried.
Back in Baltimore, I was still dreaming about this soup. With her recipe in hand, I filled my 16-quart pot and let it simmer. The house smelled heavenly.
It was a full pot. Enough to carry us for the next two months. After it was done cooking, I asked my housekeeper to portion the soup into freezer containers.
A few hours later, I saw the counter lined with neat rows of plastic tubs, each filled to capacity with vegetables and chicken. But no soup.
Pot- empty. Nothing in the fridge.
I turned to my lady and asked- “Where’s the soup?”
She looked up, genuinely puzzled. “You mean the water? I poured that down the sink.”
I felt my stomach drop. All that flavor. All that work. Down the drain. Quite literally.
And in that moment, I realized we weren’t living in the same zip code. To her, the vegetables were the soup. To me, the broth was. Same word. Different worlds.
That’s the trap in leadership. Shared words don’t mean shared meaning. People do what makes sense to them- and the broth disappears fast.
Clarity isn’t repeating the word- it’s defining the meaning.
What’s one word in your world that needs a definition before the outcome you want goes down the drain?
