Accept, Adapt, Accelerate — Or Atrophy

Another parting thought…

I haven’t read Robert Dilenschneider’s book, “Power and Influence,” and I don’t plan to, but his phrase “accept, adapt, accelerate — or atrophy” — mentioned recently in PRSA’s Strategist — provides a helpful three-pronged approach to avoiding atrophy in higher ed marketing.

Marketing efforts atrophy because one or more of Dilenschneider’s criteria is not met. Take an atrophying Web site, for example. Accepting the idea that the Web site needs to change and be more dynamic isn’t enough. Acceptance also involves understanding that 1) it will require money, 2) it will require staff, and 3) it will require change. The first two deal with resources, the third deals with attitudes and behavior. And this is where most colleges get hung up. Their acceptance is in the believing, but not in the doing.

There is almost a religious aspect to this failure on the part of university administrators to act according to their beliefs. But I believe it is due, in part, to the abstract theoretical nature of most academic administrators’ thinking. They live in the world of ideas. But marketing elements, like Web sites, exist in the world of the here and now, and they are all too often atrophying because administrators have merely given assent to the idea of the need for change and have passed it off as acceptance. But real acceptance, the kind that leads to adaptation and acceleration, comes only from a true belief that is followed by budget, manpower and will to change. Anything less leads to atrophy.