My time at Shell was a most valuable experience because it taught me to look at the world in a long-term way. Shell takes a 20-year view on events and plans for different scenarios. It makes you see the world as a kind of large matrix.

It just seemed too weird to me. I don't know maybe they were smoking a joint in the car downstairs from their parents' apartment. I had to go that far to put together a scenario of how they could have possibly recognized me.

We have some worse scenarios for which we need to prepare as companies. For the moment we're planning for the worst and the worst is now and the car market is down more than 15 percent in France. There is so much uncertainty.

As you watch the world crumble try taking your Armageddon with this sprinkling of irony: Over the last three decades business has got virtually everything it wanted and its doomsday scenario from the 1970s has come true because of it.

When you see a struggle that you may be having personally put on a big screen and in a roomful of people then it makes you feel less crazy or alone because you're seeing that other people are dealing with it too. You get to see in this imaginary scenario how people might try and answer some questions or deal with some problems.