Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

by Harvard Business Review, Martin Reeves, Nancy Koehn

Lead through the crisis and prepare for recovery. As the Covid-19 pandemic is exacting its toll on the global economy, forward-looking organizations are moving past crisis management and positioning themselves to leap ahead when the worst is over. What should you and your organization be doing now to address today's unprecedented challenges while laying the foundation needed to emerge stronger? Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery provides you with essential thinking about managing your company through the pandemic, keeping your employees (and yourself) healthy and productive, and spurring your business to continue innovating and reinventing itself ahead of the recovery. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues—blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more—each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2020

Reviews

[Robert Botey Beguiristain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because is a collection of different articles, the content and ideas tend to be a bit repetitive. Others concepts on crisis management are quite common and not specific.

[Cain S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5
Pretty obvious stuff here. Apparently it is still true that leadership matters; treating low level staff well is good for morale; keeping abreast of legal responsibilities to safeguard the health of employees and clients is important; the precise consequences of a global economic downturn vary across regions based on the quality of their industries and institutions; recoveries that can be characterised in ascending order of badness as U, V, or L shaped are possible ; industries have never had the time to acclimatize to remote working at this scale before, and firms with some legroom which stay optimistic and innovate can find opportunities to survive and grow bigger on the heels of crises like this [think of Apple's success with iPods and the iTunes Store in 2003-4 following big investment in R&D and innovation even as America suffered an economic downturn in 2001].
The novel bits here aren't groundbreaking, but are noteworthy regardless because so often ignored in leadership and management literature: frequent overt expressions of empathy for those being laid off comes across as phony [well, obviously], and making promises of rehiring later is disingenuous when the financial future is uncertain.
This is the first time I've seen quotes from literary fiction novelists do didactic duty in a leadership/management book:

Here's David Foster Wallace on Leadership: “A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

And, Ernest Hemingway on trust: "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

Notwithstanding obviousness, nothing here is nonsensical or stupid. That's a good thing when it comes to this genre, but this is a bar cleared by most HBR titles.

[Alicia Robben · Rating 5 out of 5]

These compilation of articles helps the reader understand covid-19 and how their workplace can be reactive and proactive. I enjoyed Section 2 about remote teams. Even though the articles were based on how leaders can lead remote teams, I thought it was helpful from a non-leader view as well.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great collection of articles from Harvard Business Review on the current coronavirus pandemic. The insights in every article will help anyone who is struggling to navigate today’s situation.

The selection of articles are great too. HBR published a lot of articles on Covid-19 and made them free to the public. By coming up with this book, they help readers sigt through the most helpful ones.

In addition, the Take Aways part in every article helped to remind me of the important points.

This is a great one and a must read especially at this time.

[Julia Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Harvard Business for this eARC of such a valuable tool this day in age. I have now taken several “Covid related” courses now and I thought this one was very timely, spot on and had bits of motivation for what has been one of the toughest years personally and professionally for myself. I have grown immensely and learned things about myself I didn’t know. If you are a leader looking to help your teams cope and move forward and innovative in this new normal scoop this one up.

[Alicia Robben · Rating 5 out of 5]

HBR articles are one of my favorite things to read as a business professional. I thought this accumulation of articles was great for covid-19. These articles examined many different aspects of business that have to be overcome during covid-19. I especially enjoyed the sections about new managers during covid-19.

Thanks to Harvard Business Review Press & NetGalley for a copy in exchange of an honest review.

[Valentina Thoerner · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me forever to read this book, which means it's kind of... dry? Or maybe I've been thinking, writing and speaking about remote work for far too long to feel surprise by those analysis. Or maybe I am reading it too late in the pandemic? So - interesting to get a historical perspective two years in. Don't expect new insights or great ideas though.

[Axmed Bahjad]

Full of good examples what the companies can do in order to deal with the coronavirus.

The thing though is that the authors look at things from corporations' standpoint of views.

I highly recommend it.

[Alvin Soh · Rating 3 out of 5]

As many other readers have commented, the content of the book is quite expected. However I do enjoy a chapter pertaining to how we manage the customers with HEART framework:
1. Humanise the company
2. Educate changes
3. Assure stability
4. Revolutionise offerings
5. Tackle the future

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical advice and well written by various authors

[Surya Prakash · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book for this current pandemic and for all crisis with effective Leadership, Innovation and management.

[Joe Corrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this and picked it up to see what insights I could gain to pass on to my Regional Museum Network in light of the challenges management was facing in light of the Corona virus. Worth a read. Helpful but a bit uneven given the number of authors and various writing styles they employed.

[Arnold Saputra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about how to deal with unidentified crisis called COVID-19. Some of tips are still great even when I'm read it in Dec 2020. This book gave me lot insight from health protocol, deal with employee, How to adapt the business, remote working and effective meeting. The bonus point: the book are short but so fruitful.