Aptonym Blog: New Ideas for Old Schools

brand
David Thiel

Quicken the Pace of Planning at Schools and Colleges

A Unified Planning Framework for Culture, Strategy, and Brand At many non-profit institutions, particularly educational institutions, strategic plans show a preference for addition over consolidation—for expansion over alignment. This programmatic and operational accretion drives steady increases in

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agility
David Thiel

Five Books for Developing Systems Thinking

See horizontal connections across operations, and learn how human factors contribute to success or failure. Systems Thinking is critical for effective strategy, communications, and creative planning. But what makes a good systems thinker? Most talented systems thinkers

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internal communications
David Thiel

All Hail the Memorandum

Purpose-built document formats in office communication can aid organizational alignment. In olden times, the Memorandum was the mainstay of organizational communication. It was a way to document something that needed to be shared and remembered; its

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change management
David Thiel

Three Design Rules (and One Paradox)

Laziness, Novelty, and Fear of Loss are Powerful Motivators for Humans. As a designer, I can rely on a single assumption to guide most of my work: humans are lazy. (This is ‘trumpian shorthand’ for “people tend

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The Importance of Brand/Visual Identity Standards

Brand standards build value at lower cost, nurture loyalty, deliver strategically—and prevent fraud. I’m sometimes asked why identity standards and consistent “branding” (in a very old fashioned, literal, logo sorta way) is important. While the answer

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