I became a minister already in the midst of a battle. The crisis had begun, and many sectors had almost come to a standstill. There was no time for much learning; I had to jump straight into the fray. Results were demanded of me. If you have arrived [as a minister], then what will you do now? It was clear that we would have to develop a crisis mitigation plan at the ministry, and my previous experience in politics gave me an understanding that a basic document is always needed to put on the table. Everyone may bark at it, but it is the product upon which one can build further. Such a product had been prepared by the entrepreneur Ošlejs and his group. This plan had reached the press and seemed compelling enough to me to serve as a basis for starting a discussion. I invited him to act as an intermediary (moderator) for representatives of various sectors and directions because, in my opinion, officials should be in this working group, but they do not have to be the leaders. Forgive me, but they are not practitioners. Often, none of them has ever been a real entrepreneur. We brought in business organisations, as well as entrepreneurs who are not in any of these organisations, representatives of Latvijas Banka, and during the crisis, we worked by meeting three or four times a day. A big thank you to all of them who responded to me, back then a still very green minister.