In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.

If you’re old enough, you might remember back in the 1990’s a popular business trend called process re-engineering. If you’re not old enough to remember, this is what it was: Companies would look at core processes in terms of cost, quality, and service, then pick one of those three dimensions, reinvent the process around it, and gain benefits across all three dimensions. When done well, it works. I know this from personal experience. While CEO at Best Buy, for example, we worked with vendors, the supply chain, stores, and customers to improve the quality of getting TVs from manufacturers to our stores and finally to buyers. By drastically reducing the number of TVs damaged at any step in the process (quality), we reduced returns (costs) and increased customer satisfaction (service).