Thought Leadership
“A tour de force. Jonathan Trevor argues powerfully that the alignment of purpose, strategy and organization are the bedrock of successful performance. He provides a wealth of examples and sets out the questions which leaders need to ask if they are to overcome disruption and intense competition.”
Lord Richard Wilson GCB, former Cabinet Secretary and former Head of the Home Civil Service
Book
New Edition!
Re:Align:
A Leadership Blueprint for Overcoming Disruption and Improving Performance
The Covid-19 global pandemic turned many aspects of business on their head – but why did some companies thrive while many others struggled?
In our new age of disruption, a key reason is a failure by many leaders to realign all of the moving parts of their enterprise to reflect the new realities of their changing business environment. From their business strategies to how they are organized to best support their enduring purpose, thousands of enterprises worldwide are operating below their potential simply because they’re poorly aligned or have failed to realign. This book aims to change that.
Re:Align is about strategic realignment, a leadership process to overcome disruption and secure high performance on a sustainable basis. Once mastered, strategic realignment is an effective way of turning adversity into an advantage, regardless of sector. Drawing upon active research at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School (with contributions from the joint works of Dr Jonathan Trevor and Dr Barry Varcoe), Re:Align offers a thought-provoking and compelling message and an effective and practical toolkit to help leaders everywhere overcome disruption and improve enterprise performance.
by Dr. JONATHAN TREVOR
Praise for Re:Align
2020 BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS FINALIST
Align:
A Leadership Blueprint for Aligning Enterprise Purpose, Strategy and Organisation
Publications & Media
Financial Times
Jonathan in the Financial Times:
Bureaucracy cannot curb Boris Johnson’s chaotic culture by Andrew Hill
European Business Review
How To Design an Ambidextrous Organization
How can leaders today design and manage their organization to make it deliver both efficiency and flexibility? The authors explore the emergence of the ambidextrous organizational form, and propose a new concept called “the Enterprise Ecosystem” as a response to address the challenges facing companies in the 21st century.
By Jonathan Trevor and Peter Williamson
Future Work: Changes, Choices & Consequences
Despite enabling widespread automation of routine tasks, mechanical technologies have created many more job opportunities than they have replaced in our Industrial Age past. How will the rapid progress of digital technologies affect work in our Information Age future?
By Jonathan Trevor
Oxford University
How To Align Your Organization In Times Of Change
The disruption stemming from the COVID-19 global pandemic presents leaders of established businesses with a rare opportunity to change the fundamentals of their organization for the better, in ways that would not be possible or palatable in ‘normal times’.
By Jonathan Trevor
Harvard Business Review
Strategic Human Resource Management: An Agenda For Japanese Companies In The 21st Century
In this article, drawing upon expertise in human resource management and strategic management, as well as the extensive joint research with leading Japanese and Western companies, we frame the future of Japanese human resource management and offer a set of new principles that combines the best of the ‘old’ and ‘new’, ‘East’ and ‘West’, to thrive in a 21st century global business environment that knows no boundaries.
By Jonathan Trevor and Masahiro Kotosaka
How Aligned Is Your Organization?
Most executives today know their enterprises should be aligned. They know their strategies, organizational capabilities, resources, and management systems should all be arranged to support the enterprise’s purpose. The challenge is that executives tend to focus on one of these areas to the exclusion of the others, but what really matters for performance is how they all fit together.
By Jonathan Trevor and Barry Varcoe
Acknowledgement of Collaborators
Jonathan wishes to offer special thanks to his former doctoral supervisor, and long-term mentor, Dr Philip Stiles, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Professor Scott Snell, Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia, also deserves gratitude for the many valuable discussions. Jonathan is grateful to Dr Barry Varcoe for the special contribution he made to the development and grounding of the Strategic Alignment concept upon which some of the ideas in Align: A Leadership Blueprint for Aligning Enterprise Purpose, Strategy and Organisation published by Bloomsbury are based. Others collaborators who have generously given of their time include Professor Kazuhiro Asakawa, Keio University, Keio Business School; Professor Jusuke Ikegami, and the late and very much missed, Professor Emeritus Masataka Ota, both of Waseda University, Waseda Business School; Professor Peter Williamson, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor Sandy Pepper, Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science.