Ideas, insights and inspirations.

Welcome to your new adventure. You may have been invited into this crucial governance role as a steadying force, a change agent or a contributor of your expertise. No matter your role, get ready to play it by focusing on … Continue reading

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The goal of marketing is to win the hearts, minds and trust of people. If you win them over, you might win their business too. It has taken a lifetime of experiences to learn these timeless laws of marketing. Being … Continue reading

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A familiar Chinese proverb instructs: “To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.” The current situation in higher education defies that enduring wisdom. Change arrived suddenly, with little regard for institutional history or might. In this respect, all colleges stand … Continue reading

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Like every market, the audience of college-bound high school seniors is responding to change and uncertainty with… more change and uncertainty. Very recent surveys show roughly a quarter of next year’s class feeling uncertain about whether they will attend their … Continue reading

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This manifesto for effective enrollment management is a distillation of our key learnings from our team serving more than 100 colleges and universities in the last 25 years.

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In the past 25 years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with more than fifty college chief marketing officers. Whether they are recruited as a change agent or a strategic visionary, they are increasingly expected to liberate new growth for … Continue reading

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In working with over 100 colleges in the last 25 years, we have learned that website projects are a catalyst for transforming a college — stakeholders are aligned, power structures are reconsidered, the organization is energized, a new inflection point … Continue reading

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As I waited in the supermarket checkout lane the other day and took in the tabloid headlines, it occurred to me that fake news isn’t new at all. We’ve been inundated with it for decades. However, given our recent election, … Continue reading

In our professional lives, we’re constantly in motion. We serve our clients by solving tough problems, meeting their needs through strategy and innovation, and often under shorter and shorter deadlines. Amidst all of that lies the research, experimentation, client collaboration, endless tweaking, … Continue reading

As the band Led Zeppelin aptly put it—way back in 1969: “Communication breakdown. It’s always the same.” Truer words may have never been spoken; or wailed. Just search the phrase “communication breakdown in an organization” and you’ll get over a … Continue reading

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