Warning! This is one of those more geeky think pieces as I’m trying to make sense of, and dreaming a bit, about three connected strands of thought: the importance of community power as a foundation for any kind of democratic or public service renewal the need to weave this into the narrative of public service …
Good questions get to the essence of the problem you are exploring, provide a way of understanding what is happening now and give us the tools we need to measure whether or not we are making progress in developing an answer. Good questions help people convene around problems and when the right question gets under …
I was talking the other day about potential visions for future public services. I was asked what mine was and I didn’t give one. Instead I talked about culture and method and behaviours because how we go about shaping the future is critical, how we work will determine what is within reach. I have passionate …
This is an action research post and very much me thinking in public. As I write this it occurs to me that I am perhaps less of an innovator and more of an experimenter – at the moment I am experimenting with ways to get things done. I’ve been thinking about collaboration a lot – …
I moved jobs last May because I was ready for a new challenge and I wanted to focus on understanding how to better effect system change – this blog is largely about the kinds of changes I want to see in the world but I am also starting to reflect on what system change means …
This post is by way of a warm up for LocalGovCamp – its to help me shape what I want to pitch. There is no guarantee I’ll actually pitch it of course but best to be prepared! Localgovcamp is, for me, a chance to work on ideas which are personal projects so this post is …
This post is really just a sketch of something I have been calling the democracy stack. The idea behind the democracy stack is a believe that representative democracy needs to be seen as just one part of a democratic system and that participatory and deliberative ‘layers’ are also needed. The diagram above is an attempt to …
I wanted to do a quick capture of my thoughts about #PDDigital15 on Thursday – it was such a brilliant event I wanted to reflect on what made it so good. Here are some thoughts: Collaborative leadership: The event wouldn’t have happened without the amazing Victoria Betton but she is very clear that she didn’t do it …
There are no good answers without good questions. The spaces in-between which connect different concepts are often relatively unexplored – I think this is the lure of multi-disciplinary work – these spaces express the tension between ideas but are also the connectors and bridges between different groups of thinkers and practitioners. I have for a …
This is my half of a conversation that @Sarahlay and I had at @Localgovcamp. She has written an excellent piece about it here which you should probably read first. Its also the next post in my thinking around networked or digital leadership which you can read about here. Sarah and I were jointly frustrated by …