Thinking and doing: theory and practice

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 try and maintain a running post with some definitions and background reading that may be helpful.

I tend to roam between designing for democracy and more general thinking about technology driven change and the digital mindset. I’m increasing thinking about systems practice as well as my own leadership practice. 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

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 ...

The participation continuum

This is a bit of a sidebar from the strategy / not strategy post here but is also part of a longer contemplation around participation, organisations and democracy – with a bit of digital stuff as well. I’ve always believed that there is real power in aligning digital/design, participation and ...

Strategy (or not)

A <something> process Strategy is a tricky word – lots of baggage associated with it and not a lot of shared meaning in my view (not quite, but almost, a broken word in fact). This view makes it a bit – ahem – awkward and rather lazy that I have ...

Setting a 2022 intent

I avoid New Years resolutions but I do like to spend the first week of the year having a think about my intentions for the year. In truth I never ever manage them all but its a really valuable reference point, written in that beautiful quiet of the slowest part ...

Starting something new

Even though I have been interim CEX since June it feels very different – and very lovely – to now be able to say I am in post and Chief Executive of Adur and Worthing Councils. I use this blog to reflect for myself on what I am doing, and ...

Mindful Diary: travelling in hope

This is a bit of a life maintenance post written during the August effect of a lot of people being on holiday and a sense that you can breath a bit. I tried to lean into this feeling a bit as things have – for all of us – been ...

Culture is still snacking on strategy

I have a long abiding belief that while culture eats strategy they both get devoured by purpose. This came back to the fore for me as we are doing some work as a leadership team to look at priorities and areas of focus and the question of strategy came up. ...

In which we can no longer afford to be efficient

Rather than running around our organisation saying ‘we need resilience’ over and over I want to unpack what I mean. I’m doing it here as a way of working and thinking in public – it helps me to develop my ideas and is part of the openness which I think ...