PhoeniQ
Measure your Resilience REDiness
Back to the scans

About PhoeniQ

Measure your Resilience REDiness

PhoeniQ is a brand of RED Management & Consultancy. It brings our resilience scans together in one place. Each scan is a short self-assessment that shows an organisation where it stands today and where it wants to be, in crisis management, business continuity or risk management. The scans are aligned with ISO 22361:2022, ISO 22301:2019+A1:2024 and ISO 31000:2018 respectively.

So why a bird? The name and the logo come from an old story about a bird, fire and coming back: the phoenix.

The phoenix

The oldest written account we know of is by the Greek historian Herodotus, in the 5th century BC. He describes a sacred bird of Egypt that he says he had only seen in pictures. According to the people of Heliopolis it came only once in five hundred years, when its parent died. Its feathers were partly red and partly gold, and in size and shape it was close to an eagle. It was said to carry its dead parent from Arabia to the temple of the Sun, sealed in a ball of myrrh. Herodotus adds, quite honestly, that he does not find the story credible.

There is no fire in his version. The fire came later. In the medieval bestiaries, such as the Aberdeen Bestiary (England, around 1200), the phoenix turns to face the sun and beats its wings to fan the flames that consume it. On the ninth day it rises from its own ashes. That is the phoenix most people know today, and it is the one in our logo: upswept wings and a tail of flame, in RED crimson.

What the phoenix means to us

This is our own reading of the story, not part of the old texts themselves.

The phoenix is about recovery. Even a well-prepared organisation can be hit by a crisis, and what counts then is how it comes back (and how quickly).

According to us, that is where a scan comes in. A scan doesn't fix anything on its own. It shows you where you stand today and where to start, so that when a crisis does come, the way back is shorter. Your own people do the work. The anonymised results also help build a benchmark per sector, so that what one organisation learns can help others prepare. And yes, the tagline plays on our own name: RED.

And the Q? It stands for quartermaster: in an army unit, the person who makes sure everyone has what they need before they set out. We'd like PhoeniQ to play that role for you.

Who is behind PhoeniQ

PhoeniQ is a brand of RED Management & Consultancy, founded by Raman Madan, who has worked in crisis and disaster management as a project manager and trainer since 2001.

The scans are aligned with ISO 22361:2022, ISO 22301:2019+A1:2024 and ISO 31000:2018. These standards are published by the International Organization for Standardization. PhoeniQ and its scans are independent tools of RED Management & Consultancy and are not affiliated with, endorsed or certified by ISO.

Sources

  1. Herodotus, Histories 2.73, as summarised with the Rawlinson translation in Wikipedia, Phoenix (mythology): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology))
  2. Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 55v (turns to the sun, fans the flames, rises on the ninth day): www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/ms24/f55v
  3. Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 56v (consumed by fire, born again from its ashes): abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/ms24/f56v
  4. Smarthistory, the phoenix in the Aberdeen Bestiary (England, around 1200): smarthistory.org/?p=5823
  5. Wikipedia, Quartermaster (the role in land armies): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartermaster