With COVID-19 cases growing worldwide, business leaders are scrambling to deal with a wide variety of problems

With COVID-19 cases growing worldwide, business leaders are scrambling to deal with a wide variety of problems, from slumping sales and stalling supply chains to keeping employees healthy and making sure they can continue working.

We asked professors of Harvard Business School how the coronavirus pandemic is likely to change how companies do business. Here’s what they said:

The coronavirus challenge demands an organization-wide, honest conversation that enables truth to speak to power about the corporate response to the challenge. Think of it as a new strategic initiative facing huge execution challenges. These require senior management to get the best information they can about barriers to execution, and it requires trust and commitment. That comes about when everyone in the organization knows that senior management wants to hear from lower levels about barriers to execution that might include their own leadership.

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.