Failure and What it Means to You

This article appeared on my reading list:  https://goo.gl/9NdgmT.  It had a sentence I found enlightening:  “...failure is only failure if it happens in the last chapter; otherwise, it's a plot twist.”  

I think of failure as the result of FOD to one of our turbos—or all of them. Turbo failures are NOT plot twists, unless you consider catastrophic engine damage a new and unwanted part of the plot of the worst novel you’ve ever read. Chapter 7 should be the perfect point to start accelerating the story toward a positive resolution, but instead it is more of the same.  Chapter 13 can be a pivotal one because that turns out to be the best place to hide from reality because everyone is afraid of the number 13.  

Someone said that there is a saying in Silicon Valley that failure equals experience. I like that because AcMo has failed a lot. It is reassuring because it means I am now an expert on turbos.  Since I have achieved expert status regarding blowing up engines, it seems like the logical conclusion would be to throw all of AcMo’s resources at engine building.  Unfortunately, my logic boards appear to have melted under pressure.

It has become clear that AcMo has been the victim of several terrible plot twists. I’m a fan of plot twists when they happen in a novel I’m reading, or when they happen to you, but it isn’t as much fun when one of my crafted plans crumbles to bits in front of me.  It tends to impact morale and make simple things more difficult.  I said that we were victimized, but the truth is that AcMo has been a victim as a result of how we chose to respond to them. Of course, playing the starring role of victim changed the day I discovered 900+ pound sharks existed.  Life is too short to worry about anything other than the likelihood of being accosted by a rogue shark in my professional opinion.

My time away was not wasted.  I learned about stuff that is important to have for a functional business, such as a scalable and repeatable model that creates revenue, and maybe even products that can be sold to customers instead of excuses and platitudes.  That last part is still a bit unclear.  I still maintain that selling excuses is a viable business plan.  I also understand that with my limited viewership, I can’t afford to lose any readers. This is why customer satisfaction is so important to me.  If I had millions of readers, I wouldn't need to care what any one of them thought.  

All of AcMo’s endeavors have been scrutinized and savagely cut.  What remains are only those items that both produce value for our customers, and revenue for us.  That meant we had to ditch everything and start again with a customer-centric focus.  That’s hard to do when our customers are so unpredictable.  I don’t mean that they’re unpredictable in the crazy sense of the word, but more that they won’t buy anything that has an AcMo label, yet they’ll buy the exact same product with some other company’s logo!  That, to me, is the definition of unpredictable.

 The decision to outsource all vehicle performance modifications and maintenance to actual licensed facilities was agonizing. I consulted with several leading authorities before deciding that these “authorities” didn’t have all of the facts.   All of them told us not to give up our product line, but to continue to refine it until it worked.  It was too easy for a group of people who don’t have to purchase new engines to tell us to keep going.  The number of unsolved engine failures we’ve had put us in a difficult position. Frankly I’ve become tired of taking the blame for circumstances that were out of my control because I don’t know how to build engines. Now I have the luxury of sitting back and pointing the finger when the situation goes pear-shaped. That helps me to sleep easier at night.

This upcoming track weekend is an important test for AcMo’s new philosophy and workflow.  I hope to be able to report back that we did not experience any plot twists because at this point, I think they will become permanent failures.

BUT, it is important to stay positive and look at the situation through that lens, so I will say that even if we do suffer an engine failure, it won’t be my fault—this time.

This raises an alarming point that I hadn't considered before just now:  who is building and maintaining the engines of your jet?  Ponder that the next time you're cruising at 50,000 feet.  And now I just realized we have a new market we can conquer once we figure out this engine thing.  The skies will never be the same...

Coming Soon:  AcMo Air