Harvard Business Review - Coronavirus and Business: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

1. Twelve lessons on analyzing data, communicating information, and protecting your employees.
2. by Martin Reeves, Nikolaus Lang, and Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak
3. From maximizing employees ability to work remotely to revising benefits policies.
4. by Jeff Levin-Scherz and Deana Allen
5. Its late in the game, but there are still steps you can take.
6. by James B. Rice, Jr.
7. Eight factors leaders should consider.
8. by Peter Susser and Tahl Tyson
9. Leaders can approach this challenging time with flexibility, transparency, and compassion.
10. by Atta Tarki, Paul Levy, and Jeff Weiss
11. How to maintain the flow of supplies to quarantined communities.
12. by Chengyi Lin
13. Twelve lessons for the rest of the world.
14. by Martin Reeves, Lars Fste, Cinthia Chen, Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, and Kevin Whitaker
15. A Q&A with Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley.
16. by Tsedal Neeley
17. Leaders need to adapt to the new normal.
18. by Barbara Z. Larson, Susan R. Vroman, and Erin E. Makarius
19. Twelve keys to success.
20. by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene
21. Stop the multitasking already!
22. by Justin Hale and Joseph Grenny
23. Identify your key constituents and tailor your message appropriately.
24. by Paul A. Argenti
25. Do you have enough information to take action?
26. by Art Markman
27. Three strategies for taking care of your mental health.
28. by Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, and Moses Mohan
29. Transparency is crucialeven if your reputation takes a short-term hit.
30. by Amy C. Edmondson
31. Lessons from one local banks response to Hurricane Katrina.
32. by Bill Taylor

by Martin Reeves, Nikolaus Lang, and Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak

The Covid-19 crisis has now reached a new critical phase where public health systems need to act decisively to contain the growth in new epicenters outside China.

Clearly, the main emphasis is and should be on containing and mitigating the disease itself. But the economic impacts are also significant, and many companies are feeling their way towards understanding, reacting to, and learning lessons from rapidly unfolding events. Unanticipated twists and turns will be revealed with each news cycle, and we will only have a complete picture in retrospect.

Nevertheless, given the very different degrees of preparedness across companies, the further potential for disruption, and the value of being better prepared for future crises, its worth trying to extract what we have learned so far. Based on our ongoing analysis and support for our clients around the world, we have distilled the following 12 lessons for responding to unfolding events, communicating, and extracting and applying learnings.

Events are unfolding with astounding speed, and the picture changes on a daily basis. Only several days ago, it looked like the outbreak was mostly confined to China and was being brought under control. More recently, a number of fast-growing epicenters of infection have sprung up beyond China, signaling a new phase and potentially necessitating new strategies of mitigation rather than containment. Our team initially decided to communicate updates every 72 hours, but we moved to a daily cycle, not only for updating data, but also for reframing our overall perspective.

News organizations often focus on whats new rather than the big picture, and they sometimes dont distinguish between hard facts, soft facts, and speculation. Yesterdays news is likely to frame how your organization thinks about the crisis today. When exposed to fast changing information, be it a new technology or an emerging crisis, we have a systematic tendency initially to overlook weak signals, then to overreact to emerging issues before we eventually take a more calibrated view. As you absorb the latest news, think critically about the source of the information before acting on it.