2009, when Lehman Brothers went into bankruptcy, Scania was one of the affected companies. Instead of firing people, the company together with the employees decided to pay 90% of the salary, have a working week of 4 days and 60% of the time in production was spent on education. That gave Scania a stronger position when the recession was over. The employees were more loyal than ever, better educated and ready to ramp up long before the competitors that needed to spend time and money on recruitment and onboarding.
At that time, this was an unexpected solution. Today, when hotels and restaurants are empty due to the Corona outbreak, the state is offering a similar solution to restaurants and hotels. The employer will give a short-time layoff to the employees to hopefully be ready to get back to employment when the situation has changed.
In agile we assume that the reality will change. Methods, principles, the whole mindset is built for an unpredictable future. So let´s use the possibility we have now when we are exposed to so much uncertainty. We can learn more about how we can take new steps of experiment, evaluate, learn, adapt and find a new hypothesis to experiment around. We do already have good examples, stores are offering home-deliveries and companies are redirecting their manufacturing to produce healthcare. Absolut Vodka will produce ethanol for hand sanitizer and flight crew are educated in healthcare. This will give us new experiences and learnings, and give us a better position towards our competitors after the recession period is over.
