Should businesses require their employees to get vaccinated before they can return to work? Rebecca, Mihir, Rawi, and Felix debate the pros and cons of mandatory vaccinations. 

According to new research conducted by the authors, C-suite executives and upper management often don’t agree on how their organizations need to remake themselves for a post-COVID world. As a result, when CEOs and their teams begin implementing their plans, they are likely to encounter considerable resistance from upper managers — and they’ll need to develop new strategies for overcoming it. The authors close by recommending three approaches to change in this new era.

Digital platforms for highly skilled freelancers are set to broker more strategic engagements for businesses needing extra capacity and flexibility. How can employers adapt their approach to talent and align management incentives to benefit from this trend? What are the implications for workers and what choices are policymakers weighing?

Boris Groysberg and colleagues look at the tactics and techniques that business leaders are leaning on to manage stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boris Groysberg and colleagues peer into the minds of 10 global CEOs trying to steer their businesses through the upheaval of COVID-19.

Many business leaders are convinced that large-scale change is necessary to bounce back from difficult times. But a professional soccer team's surprise success shows that smaller measures can work better, write Boris Groysberg and colleagues.

Few could have predicted how deeply the COVID-19 pandemic would upend life and business. Our most-read stories and research papers reflect the challenges of a year we won't forget.

As cost-cutting continues across the turbulent economy, companies are challenged to be creative when managing their human capital, say Boris Goysberg and Sarah Abbott.

To help people navigate the profound challenges posed by a global pandemic, a fragile economy, and social unrest, leaders at all levels of organizations in the public and private sectors must be more sensitive than ever to others’ situations and needs. Most breakdowns in workplace interactions are caused not by bad intentions but rather by a lack of leaders’ awareness of the impact of their behaviors on people in their organization, whether it’s a project team, a business unit, or a large corporation. Given these turbulent times, leadership self-awareness is especially important.

The pandemic has challenged managers as never before, but one powerful leadership strategy is being overlooked, say Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson: Be kind.

Humility, transparency and urgency are the keys to successfully steering an organization -- big or small -- through the challenges that come your way. Leadership expert Amy C. Edmondson provides clear advice and examples to help any leader rise to the occasion.

Your employees’ needs are always varied. But right now, as many companies navigate returning to an office in some shape or form, your team members are likely contending with vastly different situations. Some have limited or no childcare or are managing their kids’ online school; some have health issues that preclude them from returning to in-person work; and some are eager and excited to get out of the house and head back to their cubicles.

Here are recent ideas for managing through the pandemic on the topics of people management, strategy, marketing, and organizational design.

A year after 181 CEOs pledged their companies to better serve social goals, critics find they have failed to do so during the pandemic. Is stakeholder capitalism in the wrong hands? asks James Heskett.

Leaders today face two great questions: how to survive and how to capitalize on new opportunities. Insights from Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden.

The Stockdale Paradox and survival psychology contain wisdom for how leaders can manage the coronavirus crisis, according to Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams.

If you are like many of the executives with whom we’ve been talking over the last few months, you and your leadership team invested years cultivating an effective culture — one that is both strategically relevant, because it prioritizes the behaviors essential to the success of your business, and strong, in the sense that employees trust that it is real and value it. Such cultures help companies attract and retain great people and contribute to fantastic bottom-line performance. But the COVID-19 pandemic could weaken your organization’s culture.

Ashley Whillans and colleagues offer managers solutions to ease the stress many employees are experiencing in the new workplace.

Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, is a leader in workforce development, combining original economic research, employer partnerships, and pragmatic programs for reaching its student population. Recognized for its worker training acumen by the Aspen Institute, Monroe continues to innovate in the delivery of marketable skills. Todd Oldham, VP of Economic Development, Workforce, and Career Technical Education, has spearheaded the colleges’ efforts in this area for the past decade. He discusses Monroe’s responses to the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and how the college is helping to shape the future of technical education.

The start-stop nature of business during the coronavirus pandemic demands flexibility and innovation. This is especially true for physical places of work. CIC maintains offices, shared workspace, and labs. It specializes in building hives of creative and productive activity and fostering entrepreneurial communities. Founder and CEO, Tim Rowe, explains how COVID-19 has spurred CIC to find inventive solutions to the challenge of working safely amid a viral outbreak and to extend its networking events online.

COVID-19 has made robots a welcome sight for many by hastening the adoption of autonomous cleaner-bots, greeters, personal assistants, burger-flippers, classroom aids, and more. SoftBank Robotics' Kass Dawson talks about the role of robotics in combatting COVID-19 and in changing the world of work. Rather than a wholesale replacement of human workers, he says, we can expect more cobotics—human-robot collaboration—and new robotics jobs.

How can businesses move from awareness to action on systemic racial discrimination? In a wide-ranging discussion, Laura Morgan Roberts, an organizational psychology expert and professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says it begins with frankly acknowledging the extent of the problem, fostering open discussion, and committing to meaningful change, both internally and in the wider community. As she notes, business schools have a long way to go as well.

Top restaurant operators share their experiences attempting to survive the pandemic, and how they see the future. Research by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery.

Is the triple bottom line a liability in a crisis? The question is anything but theoretical for John Pepper, who co-founded restaurant chain Boloco in 1997 while still in business school. The pandemic has brought his company to the brink. Boloco has sought to establish a profitable model that includes paying a living wage and providing workers with opportunities for more gainful employment. CEO Pepper reflects on running an enterprise whose business plan includes social and environmental goals; navigating the public health and economic crisis; and engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement.

VIDEO: Ken Frazier, one of only four Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, speaks with Professor Tsedal Neeley about the search for a coronavirus vaccine, how racism at the workplace holds back America’s progress, and his own upbringing just one generation from slavery.

Clear decision-making in a crisis depends on sound methodology and gathering information from a variety of sources. Advice from Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott.

Every leader knows that communication during a crisis is critical. When leaders communicate with urgency, transparency, and empathy, it helps people adjust to the constantly changing conditions crises bring. A tone of urgency encourages people to make quick decisions to mitigate harm. Transparency builds trust in leaders and conveys respect for employees by implicitly recognizing them as capable of coping with what is being shared. And showing empathy and conveying a compelling message of hope can foster resilience in facing the challenges that lie ahead.

The wholesale shift to remote work in response to COVID-19 is a radical change and most organizations are scrambling to adapt to the complex realities. Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley has spent decades studying distributed organizations. Author of the forthcoming book Remote Work Revolution, she explains that getting it right depends on clear communication, routine, work-life boundaries, common purpose, and inclusion. She also discusses the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on African Americans and other minorities, and the systemic change needed to bring more diversity to businesses, particularly the upper echelons of professional organizations.

Wolfgang Puck, the celebrity chef, has been facing many of the same challenges that restaurateurs all over the world are dealing with: How do you preserve and even grow your business during a lockdown? And how do you begin to reopen safely? In a conversation on May 11 with Boris Groysberg, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, Puck shared how he is steering his businesses — Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc. — through the COVID-19 crisis

Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith doesn’t do euphemism. He is adept at making the complex comprehensible and he states his position unambiguously. One of the most prominent observers of the economy and politics, the former finance professor weighs in on a wide range of topics, from trends in economics to immigration, the social safety net, and urban land use. In this episode he shares his views on the pandemic, race, presidential politics, immigration, police reform, inequality, global tensions, and more.

Khan Academy’s polyglot and free online courses seem tailor-made for a pandemic-struck globe. Not surprisingly, the platform has seen massive increases in signups and use. The education nonprofit, founded in 2008 by HBS graduate Sal Khan, now serves over 100 million students in 190 countries. As schools contemplate reopening, it is developing tools for getting students ready for the next grade and providing a mix of in-class and online instruction. To handle the surge in demand, the donor-funded operation will need a corresponding boost in investment in search of social return.

Will COVID-19 overwhelm the care industry and rob workers of an essential means of maintaining work-life balance, if not simply working? With the haphazard reopening of the economy and civic life, the demand for care center spaces and in-home services is expected to swamp the diminishing supply. Stephen Kramer, CEO of Bright Horizons and a graduate of HBS, has been at the center of the care crisis in the US and internationally. He discusses the state of care—as a universal need and as an industry.

As COVID-19 has made remote work the norm, DocuSign and other e-signature companies have provided the digital architecture within which parties can seal agreements and process documents. CEO and HBS alumnus Dan Springer talks about the digital infrastructure for striking and managing agreements and how DocuSign has weathered the pandemic. The experience has led the company to help its employees work better from home, including subsidizing remote work setups.

The past four months have provided an opportunity to study a once-in-a-lifetime moment — how companies function during an unprecedented global pandemic while also navigating an accelerated shift to digital operations. We conducted a series of 20 in-depth, in-person interviews, as well as a large-scale survey of more than 350 senior executives, to ascertain how the Chinese corporate world has adapted, innovated, survived — and even thrived — through this uncertain time.

Working from home doesn’t mean working all the time. Ease the numbness induced with back-to-back video calls and a long to-do list by reinventing vacations and time off, and encouraging your team to do the same.

Social entrepreneur Joe DeLoss discusses how his company, Hot Chicken Takeover (HCT), has negotiated the coronavirus pandemic. As a fair-chance employer, HCT hires workers who have faced a variety of challenges. Joe says this is in fact a significant competitive advantage. He describes the HCT COVID-19 stability guide for employees and explains how the restaurant chain’s reopening strategy prioritizes the safety of both customers and employees.

The United Nations warns that the pandemic could almost double the number of people facing food crises in lower-income populations by the end of 2020. Howard Stevenson and Shirley Spence show how organizations are responding.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented leadership. In this multimedia article, HBS Professor Linda Hill, Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative, and HBS alumnus Dr. Rakesh Suri, the CEO of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, explore what it takes to build and lead an agile and resilient organization.  Dr. Suri and his colleagues have been part of her longitudinal research on digital transformation, agility, and innovation. Since the COVID-19 crisis, Professor Hill has been checking in with Dr. Suri on a regular basis.  During their candid discussion, he shared his thoughts about a range of topics relevant to all leaders: how to manage yourself, how to manage your ecosystem, and how to lead your organization virtually.

Can we take leadership lessons from turbulent times in history and apply them to the COVID-19 pandemic? Professor Nancy Koehn shares tools that all great crisis leaders in the past and present have utilized.

600 CEOs tell Boris Groysberg what coronavirus worries keep them up at night. Now comes the hard part: preparing body and mind to meet the challenges.

Now that we have learned the basics of working from home, managers need to relaunch their teams, advises Tsedal Neeley.

Is reopening the country in the near future crazy or necessary? No matter your stance, we can all agree good leadership will be essential when the time comes. Professor Ranjay Gulati shares insights about how leaders need to think through the country’s reopening and navigate through these still very uncertain times.

“In the crucible of a crisis, in all that calamity and uncertainty—when those waves are rolling and high, and the winds are strong—leaders get better in these moments.”  This encouraging message was one of many delivered by Nancy Koehn, the James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), in a recent virtual seminar (pdf) to mayors and municipal leaders around the world.

The COVID-19 crisis has reconfigured how we work, parent, and care for ourselves and our communities. It remains uncertain how a post-pandemic society will function, but already a consensus is emerging that the global pivot to working remotely will likely change how many companies think about face time and rigid work schedules.

“We really need to have a name in the envelope as soon as possible.” So begins many of the discussions we’ve been having lately with board members who are frantic about CEO succession planning. Given that the median age of S&P 500 CEOs is 58 — putting many executives at higher risk of COVID-19-related illness — it’s no wonder that inquiries we’ve received from companies around the world focus intensely on best practices in running a “quick” CEO succession process.

Flex CEO, Revathi Advaithi, and Professor Willy Shih discuss the company’s response to manufacturing disruptions due to coronavirus, lessons learned in China, and leading a global manufacturing company in this time of crisis.

This article examines the critical steps taken by automaker Ferrari, from the earliest signs of the COVID-19 pandemic, to protect its workers and begin the process of reopening its factories.

Professor Juliette Kayyem and Professor Dutch Leonard detail what crisis management looks like in a COVID world, with unprecedented challenges, and how effective leadership can turn the tide to flatten the curve.

It wasn’t the first pandemic. Ebola had plagued other parts of the region before. But leaders of a green energy company in West Africa were not expecting it to strike again, at least not in their area. So when a new Ebola outbreak emerged, the company was still focused on growing the sales of its low-cost solar cells to consumers through retail outlets and a partnership with a union serving agricultural workers.

Physicians around the world must make daunting decisions in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Chief among their concerns is that there might not be enough of a scarce resource, such as ventilators, ICU beds, or vaccines, for all of the patients who need them.

When institutions let us down, look for leadership outside of hierarchies, says Rosabeth Moss Kanter. These leaders "don’t wait to be asked; they just get moving."

Furloughs are often a much better alternative to layoffs for both companies and employees. However, until COVID-19, they were infrequently used in the U.S. During the Great Recession only 0.5% of the U.S. workforce participated in furloughs, while one in five workers experienced a layoff. Today, in the most uncertain time any of us have ever known, many companies, including Tesla, GAP, Macy’s, and Marriott, are turning to furloughs, creating a road to return when there is once again work to do.

As they try to ride out the coronavirus pandemic, people are stressed and scared — nervous about others’ and their own health and the state of the world.  Leaders of organizations can help their people get through these trying times by coaching them as they reevaluate their lives and rethink what they add to the world.

What can toilet paper tell us about bigger supply chain problems? Professor Willy Shih explores how supply chains work, why many companies (like toilet paper and mask makers!) don’t have a lot of surge capacity, and what leaders can learn about their supply chains from this pandemic for the future.

The Agile methodology used to speed complex software development is also helpful for managing decision-making in today's crisis environment, says Euvin Naidoo. Drawing on lessons from the battlefield is common practice for business leaders seeking tested strategies to succeed against adversity. Today, the battle against COVID-19, an invisible enemy, feels to many observers like a military engagement.

Leadership now is more important than ever, and you don’t need a fancy job or title to lead during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Bill George says leaders today must be focused, resilient, intuitive, and adapt quickly, among having other important skills.

The speed and scope of the coronavirus crisis poses extraordinary challenges for leaders in today’s vital institutions. It is easy to understand why so many have missed opportunities for decisive action and honest communication. But it is a mistake to think that failures of leadership are all we can expect in these grim times.

Leaders are under extraordinary pressure right now. They are expected to make decisions quickly with incomplete and rapidly evolving information. And unfortunately, being in crisis mode can cause even the most intentional and well-meaning leaders to fall into patterns of bias and exclusion.

In this final session of the offering we will use the Chilean Mining Rescue case study to consider how the crisis response team confronted an unprecedented problem. What were the conditions at all three levels--senior executives, experts on the surface, and front-line workers trapped in the mine--that resulted in real-time problem solving. How do leaders confronted with the impossible present reality and give hope? The session will conclude with a discussion focused on what we have discovered through this series of conversations about identifying and managing novel risk and leading in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Slide Presentation | Executive Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has been highlighting some flaws of capitalism—mass purchasing of hand sanitizer and toilet paper comes to mind—but is it true that capitalism, particularly during a global crisis does more harm than good? Professor Rebecca Henderson explores how capitalism may help solve many of the problems we are currently facing and how we can make it work for us in such uncertain times.

Youngme Moon, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, and Mihir Desai discuss companies that are standing out during the coronavirus crisis. They also discuss breakout phenomena associated with the widespread shutdown.

We will explore multiple different organizations' responses to novel risk in the midst of a crisis. Examples will include Ericsson’s and Nokia’s responses to Albuquerque fire, Nissan versus Toyota after Fukushima, Swissgrid, and Airbus. We will use these examples to consider a series of actions and their effectiveness both in the specific context of the case and, more importantly, in the context of the crisis presented by COVID-19. Slide Presentation | Executive Summary

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve, the damage to the job market looks likely to be deep and long lasting. Managers are not only dealing with the stress and sadness of having to let go of a large number of their workers, many of them are also feeling underlying anxiety about their own positions.

We are living through a global health crisis with no modern-day precedent. What governments, corporations, hospitals, schools, and other organizations need now, more than ever, are what the writer David Foster Wallace called “real leaders” — people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

Returning to the framework introduced in Session 1, we will delve into issues of process and workflow management in crisis situations. Through the consideration of the Columbia Shuttle case study we will ask and discuss the question of how to lead productive and problem-solving discussions in crisis situations and the importance of maintaining an emphasis on inquiry during these important group deliberations. Slide Presentation | Slide Presentation | Executive Summary

Is it possible to prepare for a Black Swan event like COVID-19? What are the lessons for leaders in today's pandemic? asks James Heskett.

Social distancing and being forced to work remotely due to the coronavirus has us feeling a range of emotions every day, from happy or sad, to anxious, nervous, disconnected, and sometimes even grief. Professor Arthur Brooks shares tips to help you remain positive during such uncertain times

An effective response to a crisis requires access to resources and thoughtful allocation of those resources. Liquidity constraints can become binding very quickly as cash needs spread through supply chains and sources of revenue and funding vanish. In this session, we will discuss processes that organizations are using to evaluate their current liquidity needs and to make wise financial choices. Slide Presentation | Executive Summary

In the wake of COVID-19 some small businesses are closing their doors, maybe forever, but there's hope on the way in the form of the new relief package from Congress that potentially promises a brighter future. Professor Karen Mills, a former U.S. Small Business Administrator, took a quick break from actually helping to pass the bill through Congress to talk through how it can help, some of the challenges small businesses are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer some advice.

The current environment is like none that we have ever encountered before. After a discussion of the facts and characteristics that define the COVID-19 crisis we will consider the implications for leaders and discuss how the challenge is not one of execution but rather one of innovation. Through the introduction and discussion of a risk management framework, we will consider the central elements of this process for supporting leaders in identifying novel approaches to responding to the realities of this crisis. Slide Presentation | Executive Summary

Now is the time for leaders to inspire their organizations to help the world through the COVID-19 crisis. Bill George has a list of authentic leaders who are up to the challenge.

In such uncertain times, we look to our leaders, but how do you manage an organization through COVID-19—a crisis unlike any we've ever experienced? Professor Dutch Leonard and HBS CMCO Brian Kenny use Zoom to discuss crisis management and what actions leaders can take now.

HBS Professor Emeritus and Miami Herbert Business School Dean John Quelch lays out how leaders in business need to respond to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Coronavirus has forced many organizations to suddenly take the plunge into remote work with many unanswered questions. Professor Tsedal Neeley and CMCO Brian Kenny use Zoom to discuss everything from creating a routine and connecting with colleagues to using virtual presentations and flex work time to make the most out of working from home.

Few problems improve with age, and public health crises are no exception. Transparency is “job one” for leaders in a crisis. Be clear what you know, what you don’t know, and what you’re doing to learn more. You can’t manage a secret, as the old saying goes.