Welcome and thanks for visiting. This blog is where I write about projects I am working on, capture my research in progress and generally organise my thinking in public. It helps me enormously to have a place to do this – I hope you also find it useful. I’ve also started a running post with some definitions and background reading that may be helpful.
Current lines of enquiry are captured in this enquiry map but I tend to roam between designing for democracy and more general thinking about technology driven change and the digital mindset. You may find it helpful to read this ‘why I blog blog’ but suffice to say that this a place where I share my thinking in public but that means its subject to change and may look quite different when its actually applied in my role at Adur and Worthing.
If you are looking for my professional bio then you need to head over to LinkedIn . If you are trying to find me online for a more research orientated discussion then you can find me on twitter as @curiousc. If you want to contact to me about speaking at an event then you can contact me via either of these routes.
Dr Catherine Howe
Here are some of the things I am currently working on:
Latest posts
Why we are not setting the why on fire
We are working hard now on how we take the detail of Our Plan and the next stages of our change work out to the members and wider organisation and we have circled back around to the why question – why exactly are we doing this? It’s a good question ...
Decisions….decisions…
I’ve been thinking about governance a lot recently – how and where we make decisions – and specifically how we make them robust and trusted how we make them fast enough to get stuff done rather than admiring problems How we manage the tension between these two things How you ...
In which everything is STILL extremely very important and urgent
I wrote about our approach to prioritisation a while ago and we have been progressing the work. Spoiler alert: its still really bloody hard and there is still more stuff to do than time (or people) to do it. The cost of living crisis that we see unfolding in front ...
The end of the beginning
I’ve written about what we are doing on strategy / not strategy and I’ve come to write more about it again a few times but backed away as it didn’t feel ready, but we are moving into a new phase of the work now and making it more open internally ...
Design principles and being kind
If design is the bringing together of form and function, then design principles are the organising statements that help us to navigate the myriad decisions that we are faced as we create anything, be it a product, a building or in our case an organisation. Design principles can also help ...
Designing for democratic systems
I was sitting down to prep for my workshop at NotWestminster in a few weeks when I came across the write up I did for my 2020 session and clearly failed to post – oops. Looking back there is much of this which is alive in the work we are ...
Hopeful if not mindful diary
As I told someone the other day, one of my ‘tells’ for when I am busy is the fact I start musing about my diary and how I spend my time (my other one is excessive stationary accumulation as what project isn’t improved by a new notebook?). I treat my ...
Is it actually a theory of change?
We are now properly up and running with our strategy / not strategy work and clusters that I wrote about here are now starting to have a really productive conversation about the work they are doing now, aspirations for the future and the way in which we could organise ourselves. ...
January pre-notes
I’ve been doing some thinking around some of the work we are doing at the moment mainly as a way of organising my thoughts: this piece outlines our strategy (or not strategy process) This is a short piece of on planning/prioritisation process And this is one on participatory practice which ...
In which there is always more work than you have time to do
There is always more work – the challenge is really in how you decide what not to do. This is particularly true in local government where we can’t chose not to serve a particular group or delivery a particular service – we are here for everyone. We are doing work ...
Digital Leadership All posts
Decisions….decisions…
I’ve been thinking about governance a lot recently – how and where we make decisions ...
Field Notes All posts
In which everything is STILL extremely very important and urgent
I wrote about our approach to prioritisation a while ago and we have been progressing ...
NHS Citizen All posts
NHS Citizen design – agile but structured
I wanted to capture my first reflection from the final NHS Citizen design workshop last ...