Dear reader, 

As I'm writing this piece (March 10th 2020), the virus is raging through the economy. Stock markets are heading towards catastrophic losses, and governments are forced to take draconic measures. The virus is going to hit the economy hard. How do we make sense of this all? And what's the best way to respond as businesses and as a society?  The most useful mental models that come to mind are the concepts of 'Black Swan Events' and 'Anti-fragility' by Nassim Nicolas Taleb (see picture below). 

As always, I hope you find this Behavioural Design lens insightful, 

Tom

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Covid-19 is a Black Swan Event

This brings me to the Corona virus. This is a classic black swan event. Out of nowhere, it suddenly threatens the global economy, the unstoppable rise of China, the American elections, etc. Trillions of dollars of values already evaporated in the course of days. And we're just getting started. 

The virus is ruthless in bringing to the surface which systems are anti-fragile and which ones are not. Let's look at some observations of how obviously fragile our economy is: 

• The world economy, with its just-in-time delivery of goods and services, is very vulnerable. All industries that depend on Chinese production capacity are now screwed. 
• The obsession with ferocious growth through enormous amounts of corporate debt, suddenly becomes highly problematic, now that investors want to get out of high-risk value papers as soon as possible. Debt-filled companies don't have reserves for dealing with crises. 
• Most health care systems in the world are utterly unprepared for a pandemonium. In our collective free-market obsessions with cutting away redundancies, we optimized to cope with Normalistan. If the spreading of the virus continues as it does today, the US will run out of hospital beds within two months. 
• Lot's of SME's are rapidly getting into trouble: Orders get cancelled, and incomes drop sharply, while at the same time it's not that easy to cut costs quickly. You can't fire your staff with a snap of your fingers.
• The travel industry is not anti-fragile. Airlines are getting big blows. The first airline Flybe has already gone bankrupt. Airline margins are very low, competition is killing, and the business model can only function through continuous growth. 

The efficiency maffia holds a firm grip on the economy. And they usually get away with it, until they get surprised by a black swan event. They collectively shout in despair that they had never seen in coming.

The problem is: There are always going to be Black Swan Events. You never know when, but they'll happen. We have to design our systems - society, work, our personal lives,… - with the expectation of black swan events at heart. 

Anti-fragility in the face of Corona

What do anti-fragile systems look like? Who will get stronger from this virus-induced economic recession in the making? Here are a couple of principles 

1. The ability to change course fast: anti-fragile systems benefit from a capability to coordinate for rapid change. Singapore got much credit for being the world standard for how to deal with the virus. The government has set up a massive fever-surveillance system, so nearly nobody can remain under the radar for too long (and infect others). Their capability for massive mobilization makes them slightly less fragile.
2. Companies that have no debts and healthy cash reserves: In times of optimism, it's very tempting to listen to your accountant and pay dividends. I'm glad we nearly always politely listen to our accountant and then do the exact opposite. We try to protect ourselves against our own optimism bias. We expect bad times to happen and plan for it.
3. A diversified product offering: Airlines are very vulnerable because, in the case of a pandemonium, people will stop flying for business. But they'll still need to talk to the business partner they were going to visit in the first place. If airlines would have invested in high quality video conferencing, they might have helped a lot of companies and event organizers to solve a huge problem. The Job-to-be-done of business traveling is not the journey, but to facilitate high-value meetings. It's not because people stop traveling, that their underlying motivation for traveling has disappeared. For more on Job-to-be-Done: See our post on The Influence Framework.
4. A Culture of Experimentation: This is a unique moment in time to experiment with video conferencing and collaboration software. Companies that are already used to working from home and video conferencing have an advantage. We are now rapidly experimenting with software tor virtual classrooms and for virtual sprints. If people can't travel, then we'll have to redesign our learning experience within a couple of weeks. 
5. Speed up innovation: If your staff now suddenly has time on their hand, then use this opportunity to invest in your content, brand, reputation. Never waste a good crisis, because it allows you to invest in the things you usually don't have the time for while the economy was going strong.
6. Take a lot of small risks, instead of one big risk. When the world becomes highly unknown, embrace fast experimentation. Prototype ideas, run pilots and try to get promising signals as soon as possible.

I don't know how this crisis will evolve, and of course, we didn't see this one coming. And to be honest, there's no way to tell if this will play out well. We have to embrace it and practice anti-fragility. 

Watch the complete overview of our blogs on behavioural design.

Contact me: tom@suebehaviouraldesign.com.

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