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. If you are new to this space you may find it helpful to read my ‘why I still 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 Dorset Council.
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.
If you are looking for my professional bio then you need to head over to LinkedIn .
Dr Catherine Howe
Here are some of the things I am currently working on:
Latest posts
The why I blog blog
This is just a short intro to this blog to explain what its about. Its also a bit of a user guide for people I work with so you can understand what I am doing here. It started as effectively the field notes for my doctoral research. As I was ...
The one about Community Mapping
Understanding how we at Adur and Worthing show up in place and work with our communities is a central question for our Thrive work and key to how we want to organise ourselves in the future. Showing up in place for me is about the ability to be in ...
Some definitions
I use a lot of what you can either call buzzwords or you could call specialist language. I try to plain English stuff as much as possible and am happy to be called on it if I fail to do that but this is a list of some of the ...
What does it mean to Thrive?
What do you need in order to thrive? Its a question that I always ask myself at the start of the year, connected to the thinking I do around setting my intent for the year which I wrote about here but its meant at a deeper level to ask what ...
The everlasting hunt for the hum
I’ve been thinking about meetings a lot this week…..while in a lot of meetings. It’s been odd joining an organisation during what we can officially refer to as Strange Times. The thing I have found most difficult is in finding the rhythm of the place. Every team and organisation has ...
Thrive?
Back again for more week notes…. Really pleased to see our Climate Assembly getting up and running with Demsoc as our delivery partner. We had a big milestone this week with our participants being finalised which is brilliant and makes it all very real. Or rather virtual as we are ...
Creating capacity for change
Conversations with both Cassie Robinson and Noel Hatch have made me resolve to try and get back to my weekly blogging habit and do some proper week notes. These are going to be a bit of a shopping list I think to start with as I’m still all over the ...
Can we define a difference between volunteering and active citizenship?
Over recent months we have seen an explosion in both active citizenship and in volunteering. These both bring tremendous value to the fabrics of place and society and I am interested in the acts that are at the boundary as well as the connections between the two. We can see ...
Enquiry Map July 2020
I am talking about enquiry a lot at the moment and I want to unpack what I mean partly as it’s a good habit in your practice to reflect on these terms you use a lot and partly because I am meeting a lot of new people at the moment ...
People get stuck….until they don’t
I have a theory that people and systems tend to get ‘stuck’ at the point at which they have their digital moment and realise that the world could actually be different and that looking at how you change ways of working as well as the underlying technology could be part ...
Digital Leadership All posts
We need new feedback loops
I’m really excited to see the shift in the Test, Learn and Grow work as ...
Field Notes All posts
Change is a layered thing
How we go about the business of change makes a huge difference to the results ...
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 ...