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

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 ...

Liminal space

This is quick personal note about leadership and ambiguity. I’m just about to step into the interim CEX role. I’m excited about this and feel very fortunate to be so well supported by by Martin and Paul, the other 2 directors as well as feeling grateful for the thoughtful and ...

Transition

Even when we are way beyond school age summer feels like a time of transition and this summer more than ever. It seems both endless and goes in the blink of an eye. Time has been distorted by our year of pandemic and I am feeling that sense of summer ...

Technological chicken meet social change egg

This is the text I wrote for a session I did for the Leadership Centres’s Future Vision programme – clearly its not what I actually said but hopefully close enough. I’ve used it to work through a couple of questions and also drop in the references I used in the ...

Being Human

I wanted to spotlight this wonderful piece from @georgejulian about curative candour. George always writes with huge passion, rawness and insight but this piece about the effect that real honest and painful candour had when her mum was diagnosed with cancer is – and I don’t say this lightly – ...