First published at FutureGov. “The old is dying and the new is not yet born, in the interregnum many mordant symptoms are found” – Antonio Gramsci Since I first heard this quote (more on which later) I have been struck by the explanatory power of recognising that we are in an interregnum; in fact we…
Category: leadership
What might Coordinated System-Wide Climate Emergency Activity look like?
Context As we know, the response to the climate change emergency is such a ferociously complicated system problem that no-one can solve it on their own; all must play a part. But the disparate nature of different organisations and the very many different things that need to happen can mean that we end up (potentially)…
Interesting Questions
This blog is an attempt to articulate the wider questions within which the elements of my portfolio of activities sit, and for which I am (very slowly!) trying to explore relevant academic literature. The one sentence which tries to encapsulate things is: Public service governance in the era of digital approaches, sophisticated analytics and variegated…
Introducing the Improvement and Development Board
This article appears in the November 2017 edition of The Clerk – the newsletter of the Society of Local Council Clerks. Terminology: within the sector Town and Parish Councils are referred to as “Local Councils” with their larger brethren which people may more instantly think of as local authorities known as “principal authorities”. My…
Scrutinising Digital
I had a chance at the recent LocalGovCamp to find some like minded souls (including the wonderful Dave McKenna) with whom to explore a question that has been interesting me for a while: how do you reconcile 21st Century approaches such as Agile with the 20th century style governance that exists within local authorities. For…
Why Ideology Eats Evidence for Breakfast
A Bioengineer called Guru Madhavan gave a talk at the RSA this week pointing out that it makes sense to apply the tools of rational disciplines, like engineering, to the field of public policy. He gave some examples of (what others would call) user-centred design, systematic and multi-criteria decision-making. I got this stuff with my…
Four Futures for Health and Social Care Integration
A few months ago I wrote a structured future scenarios piece looking at four (deliberately extreme) possible futures for health and social care integration. (There’s also a little teaser video about it). At the heart of the paper is consideration of how the future will evolve in terms of uncertainty on two key dimensions…
Take-Aways from #LocalGovCamp 2015
Consolidating my thinking and in a spirit of sharing … The Right Conditions for Digital Paul Brewer (@pdbrewer) pitched a session about the Right Conditions for Digital (see his blogpost) based on his experience at Director of Digital and Resources at the very interesting Adur and Worthing. This could have been a longer session. Paul…
Observations of a World-Class Team Leader
Recently I went to a musical performance by the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. My seat was in the choir seats behind the orchestra and I was right in the middle so I was directly opposite the conductor and therefore able to see exactly what he was doing in leading the team…
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