From about 2006-2011 my main career activity was as a senior headhunter, as a result of which I met very many high achieving people who were grappling with their career choices. This post is about one of the key things I learned and used then, and which I’ve developed alongside my own career thinking. I’ve…
Category: strategy
The Agonising Privilege of Now
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…
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…
The Growing Chaos and Complexity of Local Government
(This is based on a talk which I gave at the recent mySociety Company retreat) Summary This is a future-based look at the chaos and complexity of local government. We are a very centralised nation but we are becoming more localised in ways which change the nature of the complexity that people have to deal…
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…
Four Futures of Local Government
My Guardian Professional, Local Government Network, piece about Four Futures for Local Government is here, and the more detailed paper can be downloaded from here.
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