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’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

2019: setting intent and seeing what happens

I try not to make new year’s resolutions but I do spend the first week of each year getting myself together, setting an intent for the year and generally becoming set up for the year I want to have. Its a companion to the firebreak that I had in the ...

Big programme design and the willing suspension of disbelief involved

I haven’t written a lot about my time at Capita but I wanted to capture some of the thinking that I did in the last year I was there as its work that I am drawing on a lot at the moment and hopefully it will help people understand where ...

Mindful system and finding our hum

I went paperless about 9 years ago when I started my PHD and realised that I might actually end up being buried under mounds of articles if I didn’t take action. However I have never ever managed to crack my addition to stationary and you can tell when I feel ...

Week notes: Taking a breath

This is a quick week note to keep me on track as I have a few longer posts in draft and that is usually a sign that I have too much going on in the brain and need to download a bit. One of the reasons for the back up ...

What happens if no-one is right?

Dogma: “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” This is part of my exploration of my own theory of change and perhaps a bit of backstory for my team when I am banging on about how we could approach things…… I have no ...

Mindful diary: and still she persisted

We’re down in Cornwall for a week enjoying walking, eating and a daily attempt to capture the perfect sunset shot from the local pub. Its been a hectic 6 months so its also time for some reflection and some thinking about the intent that I want to set for the ...

What makes a good decision?

Its easy just to think that a good decision is one that has the right outcome but that’s magical thinking and assumes we make no mistakes. Good decisions are taken when we bring together knowledge, accountability and the views of the people who are most effected by the decision in ...

Thinking in public

I’m just wrapping up after a few days out of the office doing some deeper thinking than you get chance to do in the normal week – I have called it my August firebreak. It was one of the things I wanted to do as part of my personal development ...

All change is system change

All change is system change – to say otherwise is to ignore a fundamental truth about organisations being living breathing human systems. There is a lot of great thinking going on in the system change space. Rowan is leading some really interesting work at the RSA looking at the intersection of ...

Spoiler alert – there are now 9 tribes of digital

The 7 /8 / 9 tribes of digital is an ongoing observation exercise based around the different definitions of digital – usually represented by different waves of technology – that you can observe in an organisation. As part of my August firebreak I’ve also been dusting off the 8 tribes of ...