I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to help people get started with AI. Not the technical side — there are plenty of people better placed than me for that — but the more fundamental question of how to approach it. What mindset do you bring? What’s the skill that unlocks it? I’m seeing …
We are calling our strategy paper our ‘North Star’ paper* – the thing that will set out our intention as to where we want to be as an organisation. It’s a phrase used in a workshop which has really captured people as a way of expressing a direction and intention but still leaving space for …
How we go about the business of change makes a huge difference to the results you get. Similarly understating why you are changing can either drive purpose or set up resistance. This post is a bit about unpacking that. Change is a really layered thing and when I talk about it I’m looking both at …
I am something of a methodological magpie and I am trying to properly integrate a few different domains that I have been using to develop an approach to change. We will be working to change Dorset Council over the next few years and I want that to be a participatory experience where, within the constraints …
I’m really excited to see the shift in the Test, Learn and Grow work as Nick Kimber and the team put the focus on movement building. If we want to get beyond pilots and make test and learn ‘how we do things round here’ across the sector then its time to lean in and take …
I’m 4 months in post at Dorset Council and I’m coming out of the new girl haze with a real sense of purpose and clarity about what needs doing. Highly dangerous as clearly I still have a lot to learn about the place and the organisation but the world doesn’t wait for you to catch …
Warning! This is one of those more geeky think pieces as I’m trying to make sense of, and dreaming a bit, about three connected strands of thought: the importance of community power as a foundation for any kind of democratic or public service renewal the need to weave this into the narrative of public service …
My lovely husband and I have spent the last couple of weeks sorting out the move down to Dorset and getting set up in our new place. It’s a process of working through which bits of our old life we want to bring with us and which we’re going leave with love behind in Sussex. …
Starting back at the DCN conference I’ve been talking about design a lot as I try and make the case that we need to design our new unitaries before we start to measure them. I’ve also been part of some really thoughtful work from the Policy lab on this and also some research carried out …
I’ve been really touched by the comments I’ve had on LinkedIn about as well as the notes and messages from my staff I’ve been sent the result of announcing that I’ll be leaving Adur and Worthing in July to take up the post of Chief Executive of Dorset Council in August. Thank you. As I …