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

Another august firebreak – redux

Events, dear boy, events……as Harold Macmillan may or may not have said….. This is a bit of a check in how the week has gone. I think fair to say considerably less serenity than last year which is down to me not protecting the time enough and also to the ...

Another August firebreak

I'm taking another firebreak week - though circumstances mean that its actually a firebreak 3 days with a day in the office and a day with DemSoc in-between but the essence is there! I have a few things I want to look at and expect these to spill over into ...

6 month notes

I’ve been away this week – walking on the Isle of Wight which has been lovely. This post is a wrap up of what I’ve been working on in my head while I was yomping along by the sea. Nearly 6 months into the year I wanted to check in ...

Where system change meets agile practice; the multidisciplinary primordial soup

While we all want and crave psychological safety is it realistic as an objective when the goal of the team is system change work which means you are working at the boundaries of certainty well beyond your circle of control and perhaps influence?

Politics will not save us unless we save it first

Brace yourselves – I’m talking about Brexit and it isn’t pretty. Nearly 3 years ago I wrote about my despair in the party political system and the urgent need to reform it as a critical blocker in terms of making any kind of democratic or political process. It turns out ...

Week notes 31.03.19

It was unusual week in that I went to three different conferences – a bit like buses after having had none for a while they all came along at once. It was a mix of old and new as two of them where charity sector focused and the third policing ...

I (just about) put my faith in humans

This is the text of a speech I gave at a dinner at a digital policing conference. It is not verbatim as I never read stuff out and my ipad died 5 mins in but its basically what I covered. I wanted to post it as its reflects some of ...

Week notes and spider babies

I’m a bit patchy with week notes but a conversation with Oli this week generated an irresistible challenge. Let me tell you about spider babies……

Week notes: 24th February 2019

I've been a bit lax with the 500 words partly because I have been on holiday but partly because I have been brooding over the RBKC post which I just published. Having set that free - and also published the piece I wrote about my research interests for the year ...

Small steps of democratic change

This is a personal reflection on the work that I have been supporting at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) in my role as a trustee of the Democratic Society. I joined Demsoc back in 2010 as a governor (non-exec director) and have worked with them ever since. It’s gone ...