[jawns]

I think some companies recognized that it's possible for once-in-a-generation and once-in-a-lifetime disruptive events to occur, but they crunched the numbers and decided that they could squeeze more from lean practices over the long term than they stood to lose in the disruptive events.

Like, suppose you could make $X in profit that is highly resilient to infrequent disruption or twice that with the understanding that every 20 years or so, you're going to have a few bad years because of black swan events. You might determine that you're willing to take your lumps during the chaotic times.

[mywittyname]

Planning for black swan events would be really dumb: they will never go exact as you plan them to. What if they planned for a GFC-like black swan event where nobody bought cars? Or one where gasoline suddenly went to $400 barrel?

There are a million possible black swan events and there's a million ways to plan for them.

[londons_explore]

Few companies plan that far ahead....

You'd get the same outcome by hiring someone and telling them they get a bonus proportional to increased profits, and no bonus in bad years.