May/June 2020

Leading Insight
Leadership Lessons from the Pandemic

Almost overnight, as illness has spread across the globe, businesses have been forced to adapt. The way we work has changed, perhaps permanently in some ways.

The impact of Covid-19 has forced a rethinking of leadership and management. Working Knowledge, an online publication of Harvard Business School, recently asked the school’s professors for their thoughts. The following are excerpts from the article, “How the Coronavirus Is Already Rewriting the Future of Business.”

“The coronavirus challenge, like any crisis, provides senior management a huge opportunity to develop a trust-based culture rapidly or, conversely, if not handled with an organization-wide honest conversation, to undermine their ability to develop a trust-based culture for years to come.”
—Michael Beer, Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus; cofounder and director of TruePoint Partners, and the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership

“I hope we will come to learn that hiding bad news is never a good idea. That will mean recommitting ourselves to mastering the leadership skills to tell the truth and to engage people in the hard work of creating solutions together.

Mastering the design and management of teams will become an even more critical focus—or more accurately, mastering what I have called teaming—working in flexible groups with shifting membership, often from different locations, to address particular challenges.”
—Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management

“It’s important that people feel that there is something positive they can do to be useful and regain some control over routines and skills. Renewing and reinforcing good workplace practices can make a big difference to productivity as well as well-being. For example:

• Abundant communication. Regular briefings, communication from many levels, town hall dialogues.
• Cross-training, so people can fill in for one another.
• Flexible work schedules, start and stop times that fit life needs.
• Goal clarity. Measurement of results and impact, not simply time spent.
• Empowerment of people at lower levels to make quick decisions.
• Broad purpose. An emphasis on mission and values that drive the company and how employees can contribute.”

—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration