Trust, we believe you’ve been busy recently, burdened by challenges swirling around one of your biggest fans. Let’s call them a friend of ours in the aerospace industry. 

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These are turbulent times for them, and they’ve got some real work ahead in order to restore their relationship with you. So they’ve asked us to reach out on how to win you back.

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You’ve never been the easiest of partners. Earning your nod of approval takes years of dedication, integrity, and consistency. For some, your relationship comes naturally born from character. For others, you christen it through hard-earned, repetitive performance, quality and focus. Like our friend.

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Put frankly, you’re very difficult to earn. But you're also far too easy to lose.

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Perhaps it's best to bring you up to speed on their situation, since you two have had some distance lately. Their most visible issue has been managing the age-old balance between quality and production speed. Of course, they’ll tell you that balance isn't unique to them; many industries grapple with it. But in their realm of aerospace engineering, the stakes are undeniably higher. 

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We're not just talking about churning out widgets or apps; this is engineering that can carry people across continents and even into space. The details really matter—every rivet, every bolt, every line of code. When human lives are at stake, sacrificing quality for the sake of speed is simply not an option. Not if a company wants to keep you on their side.

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Admittedly, our friend’s incredible feats are easy to take for granted. Their work allows us to hop on a plane nearly 45,000 times a day, over 17 million a year, just in the US alone. That’s a mind-boggling test of your relationship every day, especially with Mother Nature always having something to say. 

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Behind every smooth takeoff and safe landing, we all expect meticulous attention to detail and unwavering commitment to safety. This is where you come into play—not just for the passengers within our friend’s products, but also for regulators, stakeholders, and the wider public. They have rightful fears that you may be slipping away.

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Where, dear Trust, did your relationship breakdown have its beginnings? It couldn’t happen overnight with just one event, no matter how benign or how gravely tragic. You might trace the strain to a big merger years back our friend had with another large company—perhaps one whose relationship with you may have been on different terms. 

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Navigating through such transitions is never easy. It's especially essential that core values of safety and quality remain steadfast. When they slip, that demands introspection and recalibration, and a time to reaffirm our friend’s commitment to excellence in engineering and manufacturing.

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Complicating matters further is our friend’s role in national foreign policy and critical infrastructure. Its products are far from commodities; they are strategic assets with far-reaching implications. Ensuring the reliability and integrity of these assets goes beyond mere corporate responsibility; it's a matter of national interest. They feel this pressure, and privilege, every day. So repairing a strong relationship with you couldn’t be more timely.

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So, Trust, how can we help our friend? We’d like to think it's not about placing blame on past missteps. Rather, it's about learning from those experiences and charting a refreshed business agenda. Restoring a culture of transparency, accountability and continuous improvement. And by demonstrating, through actions more than words, a steadfast commitment to safety and quality above all else. 

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Trust, our friend’s next chapter all comes down to you. You are the bedrock upon which their reputation and legacy are built, and the foundation for their future. While the challenges to restore your relationship are humbling—requiring countless minds and methods beyond The Indelible—we’ always stand ready to help a vital friend in need. It’s serious work, to be sure, but also a tremendous opportunity to see beyond the current crisis and rebuild brand belief upon the essentials that endure.

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We appreciate you listening, as winning you back will be key to a more promising future for our friend—and in the end, for all of us. They send their thanks for your relationship thus far, and we hope they’ll do their part to repair it.

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Indelibly yours,

Jeff, Thom, Matt and Mike

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