Rising from Failure

I think that phrase was written on one of the walls when we moved into AcMo HQ 1 all those years ago.  Something fails at AcMo every day.  It's been that way since the beginning even though I have numbers that prove our reliability is increasing.  On special days, more than ten things fail.  This is why we innovate and operate so fast.  We are doing everything we can to stay ahead of the failures.

During those rare moments that we don't anticipate a failure, we never let it stop us.  We always pick ourselves up and start again.  We may be considered the definition of insane, but we don't care.  In retrospect, and if I had started with a marketing department, we would have selected a phoenix to represent us instead of our peregrine falcon.  We are just as capable of self-immolating and then rebuilding from the ashes as a phoenix.  Truth be told, we taught the phoenix how to do it.

The marketing department has been trying to convince me that the kind of powerful imagery a phoenix evokes is great for our brand capital.  As if I know what brand capital means.  I'm a business man, not a marketing guru.  If I can't put it in my bank or spend it on operations, it is worthless to me.  They don't even accept brand capital at Chuck E. Cheese's.  I know because I had the son of one of my employees try.  That exchange ruined his whole birthday party.  I should have known a giant mouse couldn't be trusted when dealing with financial matters.  All that thing kept saying is, "Show me the cheddar!".  Ugh, why couldn't Compensation Package pay him a visit instead of terrorize our HQ?

A phoenix is a tough bird to catch, and they are impossible to tame.  I've only seen a few during my days, and I've only ever trapped one until it melted the trap.  We have way too much of our customer's flammable merchandise at risk to introduce a known flammable bird into a volatile environment.  I am beginning to think that a phoenix is an excellent gift to give to a competitor.  Our insurance doesn't cover fires caused by bird, and I doubt anyone else's does either.  We got lucky with Fred since he blasted through our shop window without causing a fire.  Insurance handled the first three window repairs, but then we were dropped.  It's OK.  That wasn't the first, and I doubt it will be the last time our policy is placed in permanent review in the round can file. We were planning on switching to a better company anyway.  I didn't like their commercials, and Fred kept trying to attack their talking gecko.  He and I both disliked the gecko's fake British accent.  Everyone knows that talking geckos only have Australian accents.  

Now that I think about it, perhaps Fred crashed into that particular window because we had a life-like snake drawn on it.  We had to do this to keep our former board member who is afraid of snakes from snooping around the shop.  It is all starting to make sense now.  We kept fixing the window and having the snake repainted on it, and Fred kept crashing through it in the exact same spot.  At first I thought he was dumb, but now I see how precise he was since he kept crashing within inches of the snake.  None of this explains why he has failed to hunt down Compensation Package though.

AcMo Phoenix does have a nice ring to it, and we have survived more than a couple shop fires.   Do not be concerned, these were all the result of customer error.  We have since severed ties with those customers while managing to retain their merchandise for future sale.  We were able to utilize the incredible eminent domain trick to seize the goods without too much trouble.  Between the razor wire fence, surveillance system with lasers, and strategic claymore anti-whatever mines, that merchandise isn't going anywhere--except kaboom if someone tries to trespass and steal it.

Perhaps there is room within the AcMo empire for a Phoenix division?  It would require a dedicated building with enhanced fire safety measures, and a killer insurance plan, but I think it is feasible.  I have decided to schedule a planning meeting to set a time for a working group to convene to investigate this option.  Our goal is to not leave a single untapped revenue stream.  If we do, one of our competitors might seize it, or worse yet, it may evaporate before we've been able to extract our revenue from it.

In fact, just reviewing this blog post has given me an idea for a new AcMo line of products in the fire prevention category.  This particular gem would be personal fire protection for a phoenix.  The concept is an automated fire suppression system that is attached to the bird and activates when its core temperature indicates a fire is imminent.  This way we can all skip the burning to ashes phase and move ahead to the rebuilding without having to rebuild on account of extreme fire damage.  I'll have to run it by the next phoenix I catch, but I think we may have a winning product idea.