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How can businesses survive and thrive in our age of disruption? Dr Jonathan Trevor’s new book Re:Align provides the blueprint

Published

In a post Covid world the prefix ‘re’ has taken on even more prominence in our lexicon.

Words like reset, reboot, rebuild, repurpose and reorganise are all now liberally sprinkled into headlines and into our conversations. For Jonathan Trevor, Associate Professor of Management Practice here at Saïd Business School, the most important word is realign.

Realignment for Jonathan is not just another catchphrase or a reaction to this moment of disruption in our lives. He points out that unfortunately, there will never be a period of stability or a period without any disruption and so ‘the trick for organisations is not to fixate about Covid-19 or a potential recession but to focus on how to respond effectively.’ In his new book Re:Align Jonathan has sought to explore one issue: ‘How can leaders make better choices to align and realign their enterprise to overcome disruption and improve performance on a sustainable basis?’

In Re:Align - A Leadership Blueprint for Overcoming Disruption and Improving Performance, Jonathan provides a plan to help leaders ask good questions, have better conversations and make the best possible choices, to realign their enterprise to be fit for purpose. Re:Align offers both a thoughtful and compelling message, as well as an effective toolkit to help leaders everywhere to overcome disruption and improve enterprise performance.

 

 

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Dr Jonathan Trevor

This year at Saïd Business School we have been marking our 25th anniversary and looking ahead to the challenges business and business leaders are facing in the next 25 years. Jonathan reflects that, ‘to look forward to the next 25 years it helps to look back.’ As a business academic he reflects on the 19th century lessons of Maximilian Weber, one of the most influential thinkers about the modern organisation, and argues that his teachings on how rationality underpins organisational effectiveness are as pertinent today as at any point in history; but today we would call it ‘strategic alignment’.

This book is about strategic realignment, a leadership process to overcome disruption and secure high performance on a sustainable basis. As Jonathan explains, 'Given that change is a constant and disruption to the business environment ever more likely, strategic realignment must become a core competency in order that all enterprises and leaders can succeed in the future.'  

Jonathan’s insights and expertise on how organisations can improve their effectiveness informs his teachings at Saïd Business School. In addition to his work on the MBA and Executive Degree programmes he also leads the Oxford Enterprise Leadership Programme. He believes that ‘the purpose of our leadership education is to equip leaders at all levels with skills and leadership to align their business in a changing environment.’

The concept of Re:Align was developed from Jonathan’s previous book Align published in November 2019, just before the covid-19 pandemic. His conversations with top business leaders at that time gradually changed from optimism about the future, to the impact of the pandemic on millions of lives, to how to emerge from an episode of disruption stronger than before.

He says that enterprises that chose to not wait until the pandemic was over to introduce significant, long-term changes, were in an advantageous position to survive future disruption.

Re:Align is published by Bloomsbury on 9 June in the UK, 2 August in Australia and 8 August in the USA.

Read the first chapter and read more of Jonathan's expertise in his Oxford Answers article Back to the future; (re)aligning ends and means in an age of disruption.