Leading Strategic Alignment

We know that the best aligned enterprises are also the highest performing enterprises—the most change ready, and the most resilient. We must—says Saïd Business School’s Dr Jonathan Trevor—therefore be developing within our corporations, the leadership capabilities required to achieve that strategic alignment, as a matter of urgency.

In a recent IEDP webinar Jonathan Trevor opened up this very particular set of leadership capabilities—which Trevor describes as enterprise leadership—to address a very particular challenge: How to Lead Strategic Alignment?

“Enterprise leaders are not people leaders in the traditional sense; they are the system architects of their company’s long-term success.” – Jonathan Trevor. 

This webinar spoke to the requirement for 'enterprise leaders' to be:

• Joined-up (collaborative)
• Aligned to the same purpose (united) and,
• “Multi-everything” in their competencies - i.e. multi-level (enterprise level thinking and down), multi-disciplinary (know a little about a lot), multi-phased (short and long-term thinking), and multi-national (with a global outlook).

With contributions from the joint works of Dr Jonathan Trevor and Dr Barry Varcoe: adapted from Trevor, J. & Varcoe, B., (2017). How aligned is your organization? Harvard Business Review. 7 February. Harvard Business School Publishing

“Unlike mainstream ideas about personal leadership, which at their core are concerned with mobilizing people, enterprise leadership is concerned with mobilizing the resources of an entire company as a system of many moving and interconnected parts.” – Jonathan Trevor

About the Speaker
Dr Jonathan Trevor is a leading expert on strategy and organization and the author of the best-selling book, Align: A Leadership Blueprint for Aligning Enterprise Purpose, Strategy and Organization (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Jonathan is a noted management researcher, author, advisor, speaker and teacher on the subject of strategy and organization alignment. Jonathan consults extensively to executive leadership teams in all sectors and internationally to apply his research to help them to transform their organisations to be fit for purpose.

IEDP’s webinars are hosted by Roddy Millar, Co-founder and Managing Editor at IEDP Developing Leaders.

About Saïd Business School

The Saïd Business School is Europe’s fastest growing business school. An integral part of the University of Oxford, it embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education.

About IEDP

By promoting the latest research, thought-leadership, and executive programs being delivered by the world’s premier business schools and other providers, IEDP seeks to improve the performance and expand the learning horizons for our international corporate audience; while furthering the reach and impact of the sector as a whole.