TL;DR (for those short on time)
This is my honest, personal reflection on my first full year as Head of Transformation and Digital in Somerset. It isn’t a delivery update or a “look what we achieved” post. It’s a look back at what the work has felt like over time – the momentum, the pressure, the self‑doubt, the kindness, the difficult conversations, the constant call for “pace,” and the slow learning that sustainable change is built through clarity, trust, boundaries, and care. It also names what hasn’t happened yet, and what I’m carrying into year two.
I also want to be explicit about framing: Somerset is doing really hard work, in really difficult circumstances – like many councils post‑reorganisation, under sustained demand and constraint. No organisation is doing this perfectly, and these reflections are not a judgement on individuals. They are intentionally focused on the gaps, the opportunities, and the reality as it has landed for me in this role – and there are many, many other stories and perspectives that would sit alongside (and sometimes challenge) this narrative.
I also want to acknowledge that this is a very long read, it has been pulled together by reviewing my weeknotes so is built on a richness of reflections…maybe I need to make those public as part of the next year intention…
Opening: The River and the Crossing
A year ago, I joined Somerset Council as Head of Transformation and Digital.
It didn’t feel like stepping into a job. It felt like stepping into a moving river – fast, already carrying weight, already mid‑current, and not pausing just because a new person arrived. I wasn’t drowning, and I wasn’t paralysed, but I could feel it in my body: the cold of the unknown, the strength of the current, and the sense that the story had started long before I stepped into it.
Here’s the truth that’s hard to admit out loud. Some weeks this year I’ve felt steady – grounded, present, useful. Other weeks I’ve been surprised by how close I’ve come to losing that steadiness, often without anyone noticing. It’s strange how much can be happening internally while you still appear “fine” externally.
Leadership doesn’t only happen in meetings. It happens in the space between meetings. It shows up in what I carry, what I absorb, what I don’t say, and what I quietly translate into “it’s fine” when it isn’t.
Pace doesn’t land in plans. It lands in people.
There’s another image I’ve carried this year too – not the river, but the crossing. That moment at a busy road when you wait for traffic to stop and it never does. Eventually, you realise the crossing isn’t granted – it’s negotiated. You watch how others do it, you learn the rhythm, and you step out hesitantly at first, then with more confidence.
That’s how organisations can feel. Unspoken rules. Invisible signals. The way pressure changes behaviour. The way culture moves faster than any programme.
A Note Before I Go Further (Because It Matters)
I’m able to write this because I feel safe where I am.
Safe enough to be honest. Safe enough to be unfinished. Safe enough to say “I got that wrong” without it becoming a character judgement.
I feel supported – and not in a superficial way. In a real way: through challenge, care, generosity, feedback, and people who actively want me to become the best version of myself.
The work is hard work. And I’m not sure I would have lasted the year – at least not in a healthy way – without the kindness of those around me.
Not just kindness as a tone, but kindness as a practice: people making space, people being patient, people saying the hard thing with care, people not letting me disappear into self‑judgement when I wobble, and people reminding me I’m human when I’m most tempted to perform as if I’m not.
That support hasn’t made the work easy. But it has made it possible to stay in the work without hardening.
I also want to name this clearly: This reflects the pressures many councils face post‑reorganisation; it’s not unique, and it’s not a judgement on individuals. Somerset – like many places – is doing hard work under real constraint. My aim here is not to create a verdict on “the culture” or “the organisation,” but to be honest about what this year has felt like for me, what I’ve learned, and what I’m accountable for carrying into year two.
What I’m Trying to Do in This Reflection
I’m not trying to create a neat storyline. I’m trying to tell the truth about time.
Time doesn’t move in straight lines; it moves in cycles. Some periods felt like expansion, others like contraction. Some felt like momentum, others like repair. There are seasons in organisational life whether we name them or not – not as a structure to force, but as a way to honour the shifts: the times things accelerate, the times they settle, the times they crack open, and the times they begin again.
So this is simply a reflection on the year as it unfolded.
And one additional thing I want to be transparent about: these reflections are intentionally tilted toward the gaps – the places where friction, pressure, and learning were most visible to me. That doesn’t mean progress hasn’t happened. It means I’m using this as a way of making sense, naming opportunities, and owning my part in what happens next. There will be other accounts of this year – and they will be true too.
The Ground We Travel (Naming the Terrain)
Somewhere in the middle of this year, I realised I needed a better way of naming what we were actually experiencing.
Not a new strategy label. Not another programme headline. A better description of the terrain beneath us – because the terrain was shaping everything.
I started calling it The Ground We Travel.
Because this year hasn’t just been about what we’re trying to do. It’s been about the conditions we’re doing it in: grief after a restructure, uneven trust, pressure sitting in bodies and diaries, and a culture that is sometimes brave and honest, and sometimes cautious and armoured.
The Ground We Travel is my way of saying: transformation isn’t only a plan. It’s the lived experience of the people doing it.
And that’s where my own leadership intention came back into focus. I joined with a belief that relationships aren’t the soft stuff around transformation – they are the operating system. If we redesign roles, systems, spaces and even technology without redesigning the quality of connection between people, we get movement without meaning. We get progress that doesn’t stick.
Naming The Ground We Travel helped me shift the question from “how do we move faster?” to something more honest:
- What ground are we on right now?
- What is this system actually carrying?
And what pace is possible without losing trust, relationships, and the very people who have to make change real?
Putting that frame into words – The Ground We Travel, and the Chrysalis Work (part one, part two, part three, part four and part five) – was my way of grounding what I’d learned over years in this space, in what I could now see and feel in Somerset.
Arriving Mid‑Story: Care, Noise, and the Search for Firm Ground
In my first weeks, I noticed two things immediately: people care deeply, and people are tired.
Not “end of a busy week” tired, but a more structural tired – the kind that comes after years of change, pressure, and relentless demand.
It’s the tiredness that doesn’t always show on the surface. I could see it in how quickly meetings became transactional, in the way people braced for critique, and in the quiet calculation of “what’s safe to say here?”. I also felt the longing for clarity – not always spoken, but present – like people were holding their breath waiting for something to settle.
Alongside that, I felt something else too: noise. Not just busy diaries, but organisational noise – the background hum of competing priorities, old stories, new structures, half‑landed decisions, and the constant sense that the system is asking too much of people at once.
In that kind of noise, people don’t only want progress. They want ground. Something stable to stand on. I could feel that in myself too – that instinctive search for firm footing.
Culture, Grief, and What Was Sitting Under the Surface
Alongside the care and commitment I noticed early on, there was something else present that took longer to properly understand.
This organisation had been through a profound change. Not just structural change, but emotional change. A whole‑council restructure doesn’t only reshape charts and roles – it reshapes identity, belonging, and trust. People had lost familiar teams, leaders, and colleagues they trusted. Some of those colleagues had left altogether.
There was grief in the system – even if it wasn’t named as such.
I could feel it in the language people used.
In the tone that crept into conversations under pressure.
In the frustration that sometimes surfaced quickly and intensely.
That grief sat underneath many of the frustrations I encountered early on. And once I recognised it, a lot made more sense. Unacknowledged loss doesn’t disappear – it shows up sideways, often as tension, defensiveness, or distrust.
Understanding that helped me soften my own judgements. It helped me see resistance not as opposition to change, but often as loss looking for somewhere to land.
Being New: Naming What Had Become Normal
Being new gave me a particular vantage point.
I could see things that had quietly become normalised – not because people thought they were ideal, but because they’d become familiar enough to feel inevitable.
Ways meetings were run.
How pressure was spoken about.
Which behaviours were excused as “just how it is right now.”
Where pace replaced clarity.
At times, it felt like landing on a fast‑moving conveyor belt. The work was in constant motion, and there were moments early on where I genuinely couldn’t find the controls – not to stop it entirely, but even to slow it down enough to understand what was being carried forward and what was being lost along the way.
If it felt hard to find those controls with a Head of Service title and some positional influence, I kept asking myself: what must this feel like elsewhere in the system?
That question has stayed with me.
How the Culture Felt, Not Just How It Was Described
One of the biggest cultural lessons for me this year has been the difference between how culture is talked about and how it is experienced.
I’ve been in spaces in this organisation that felt genuinely safe. Places where people could be honest, disagree without consequence, and admit uncertainty without fear. Those spaces gave me real hope.
I’ve also been in spaces that didn’t feel safe at all – even when leaders explicitly said, “it’s okay to be honest here.”
For me, safety isn’t created by instruction.
Safety is felt, not declared.
It’s felt in how challenge is received.
In whether questions are met with curiosity or defensiveness.
In whether mistakes are explored or quietly remembered.
In whether people leave meetings more grounded or more tense than when they arrived.
Just because honesty is invited doesn’t mean it’s safe. People trust their lived experience far more than our words – and they adjust their behaviour accordingly.
This distinction has stayed with me all year, and it has shaped how I think about leadership, culture, and my own responsibility within the system.
Chrysalis Work: The Protective Shell We Build Under Pressure
Once I had language for the ground, I also needed language for the phase we were in.
That’s where Chrysalis Work became important to me.
Chrysalis Work is that in‑between space where the old shape of things is still visible – structures, roles, habits – but much of what we relied on no longer fits, and what’s emerging isn’t yet clear. It’s the moment when transformation stops being a slogan and starts to get real.
And in that space, something predictable happens: we start building a protective shell.
Not always consciously. Sometimes it looks like more reporting, more control, more certainty, more performance. Sometimes it looks like leaders saying “it’s safe to be honest” while the room quietly teaches the opposite. Sometimes it looks like pace being used as reassurance.
In organisational life, that shell isn’t a governance diagram. It’s psychological safety, honest conversations, and a felt sense of “we’re in this together,” not “this is being done to us”.
That’s the tension I’ve lived this year: building enough safety for people to speak, learn and redesign – while resisting the drift into protection-as-default that keeps the old pavement in place.
Because you can’t protect psychological safety and protect every existing hierarchy, comfort and certainty at the same time. Sooner or later, something has to give.
Clarity and Kindness: The First Thing I Learned (Again)
Very early on, a phrase kept returning: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
It sounds obvious until you live the consequences of the opposite. Without shared purpose, outcomes, ownership, and boundaries, you don’t just lose time – you lose energy, trust, and the willingness to try again.
I saw moments where days of effort were spent and then quietly wasted because we hadn’t done the hard work of getting clear upfront. What struck me wasn’t just the wasted effort. It was the emotional residue left behind.
People don’t shrug when work gets undone by ambiguity. They carry it. It becomes another small reason to protect themselves, another reason to stop volunteering ideas, another reason to do only what’s asked and nothing more. I noticed how quickly that residue turns into caution, and how quickly caution becomes the default.
Clarity isn’t just a project tool. It’s emotional regulation for a system under pressure. It creates breathing space. And in pressured environments, breathing space is not a luxury – it’s the difference between learning and survival.
Perfection: The Expensive Disguise
The second early pattern was how often perfection shows up as a form of protection.
Perfection can masquerade as quality, but often it’s fear – fear of scrutiny, fear of blame, fear of being the one who gets it wrong. And that fear is expensive.
It slows decisions. It delays sharing. It narrows who feels safe to contribute. It turns learning into performance. The strange thing is: perfection often looks responsible. It can sound like diligence and high standards, but underneath it can be a way of trying to stay safe in a system that feels unforgiving.
Good enough – shared early – is not lower standards. It’s an invitation for collective intelligence. It’s a way of moving with each other instead of waiting until something is “bulletproof,” only to discover the organisation can’t absorb it anyway.
The Private Edge: Feedback Loops, Self‑Doubt, and the Invisible Weight
Alongside the visible work, there was a quieter internal theme running through the year: a heightened sensitivity to feedback, a need for reassurance, and moments of scanning – “am I doing enough? am I missing something?”
This wasn’t constant, but it was persistent. And it matters, because senior roles don’t automatically bring confidence – they often bring exposure.
The higher the accountability, the fewer clean answers exist. The fewer obvious feedback loops you receive. The more you have to make meaning for yourself – in real time – while the system keeps moving.
There were days where I could feel myself holding two realities at once. Outwardly, I was composed, useful, engaged. Inwardly, I was questioning, tightening, replaying conversations, wondering if I’d missed a crucial signal. Sometimes it was a physical sensation first – a tightening in my chest, a rush of thoughts, a subtle bracing – and only later did I realise I’d slipped into self‑judgement.
The work asks you to lead in public while recalibrating in private. That gap has been one of the costs of this year — and also one of the growth edges. Because if I can’t face my own uncertainty, I will unconsciously export it. Usually as urgency. Usually as control. Usually as pressure disguised as “pace.”
One of the things I’ve been learning is to tell the difference between two kinds of frustration. There’s the frustration that comes from learning – when we’re genuinely stretching into new ways of working and it feels clunky before it becomes fluent.
And then there’s the frustration that comes from something being structurally “off” – unclear ownership, overloaded priorities, misaligned governance, pace outstripping capacity. They can feel similar in the body, but they ask for different responses. One asks for practice and patience. The other asks for redesign and courage to name what isn’t working. I’ve not always got that right this year. I’ve sometimes treated a structural issue like a personal growth challenge, and I’ve sometimes treated a learning edge like a crisis. Both misreads cost energy.
Trust: The Quiet Limiter of Everything
As the year progressed, trust moved to the centre of everything.
I still believe deeply that relationships are built at the speed of trust, and change happens at the speed of relationships. But believing it and living it are different.
Under pressure, people become narrower. Conversations get sharper. Defensiveness rises. Listening shortens. Trust – which takes time to grow – can be damaged quickly.
One of the hardest truths I’ve learned again and again is this: how we talk to each other is not separate from the work. It is the work.
It’s the way we respond to frustration. The way we handle disagreement. The way we make room for emotion without making it unsafe. The way we challenge without humiliating. The way we repair when things don’t land well.
Culture is made in those moments. Not in programme names. Not in presentations. In moments – especially the moments when pressure is high and everyone is tempted to armour up.
Meetings: The Overlooked Battlefield
At points this year, I found myself thinking about meetings more than I ever expected.
Meetings are where pressure becomes visible. Meetings are where hierarchy hides. Meetings are where trust either grows… or quietly erodes.
I’ve been in meetings that felt rushed, positional, performative – where you can almost feel people waiting for the safest moment to speak, or speaking quickly to protect themselves. I’ve also been in meetings where something shifted – where the room softened, people listened differently, and the conversation became more human.
I’ve noticed how much changes when someone simply does the basics well: clarifies purpose, names the decision needed, invites real participation, creates space for reflection, and holds the tone when it wobbles. It’s not dramatic, but it’s rare enough that when it happens, people feel it. You can see shoulders drop. You can hear the pace of the conversation change.
When meetings are purposeful, inclusive, and well‑held, they can generate energy. When they aren’t, people leave depleted – and then wonder why “pace” feels impossible.
A day without meetings being described as “joyous” should tell us something. It doesn’t mean meetings are bad. It means many meetings are not designed as places where humans can think, learn, or breathe.
The Ground We’re Actually Travelling: Forks in the Road and Micro‑Collusions
The reason I keep returning to meetings is because meetings are where the ground reveals itself.
This is the ground we’re actually travelling – the everyday micro-choices that either breathe life into Chrysalis Work or quietly reinforce the old pavement.
This is where culture is made: in small forks in the road.
When the numbers don’t add up, do we feel that physical tightening and default to deficit thinking – or do we breathe into the discomfort and name what isn’t being said?
When someone speaks an awkward truth, do we treat it as a gift – or do we quietly file it away and teach people that honesty is a liability?
Where does the real conversation happen – in the room where decisions are made, or in the shadow chat afterwards where courage arrives too late?
I’ve also become more aware of micro‑collusions – small moments that feel like connection but are actually extractive. The eye‑roll. The side‑bar comment. The after-the-meeting honesty. They give a sugar hit of belonging while leaving the shared space more brittle.
I don’t write this as someone above it. I write it because I recognise the pull of complicity. And because if we want a different culture, this is where it has to be built: in the moments where it would be easier to stay silent, to perform agreement, or to protect ourselves.
And this is the part I don’t want to underplay: these micro‑choices aren’t just “culture observations”. They are the mechanism.
They are how a system protects itself from change while telling itself it is changing.
A shared eye‑roll is not neutral. It’s a micro‑vote for cynicism. An after‑the‑meeting truth is not harmless. It’s leadership arriving too late. A shadow chat might feel like relief, but it drains the room where decisions actually get made of the very honesty required to build something better.
That’s why this ground matters so much. It’s not the big announcements that determine whether chrysalis work becomes metamorphosis. It’s whether we keep choosing comfort, belonging and self‑protection in the small moments – or whether we’re willing to choose truth, clarity and repair while it still feels risky.
Learning to Resist Urgency for Its Own Sake (and the Cost of Boundaries)
There were moments this year where I felt the pull to speed things up simply because speed was expected – before sessions, before decisions, before difficult conversations.
That voice is persuasive: don’t slow the room down; people are impatient; pace is what’s being asked for. And sometimes that voice isn’t just internal – it’s in the room. You can feel it in the shifting weight, the clock‑checking, the subtle frustration when something doesn’t move quickly.
Some of the most important moments this year came when I didn’t listen to it. When I stayed with learning instead of rushing past it. When I trusted that slowing a group down slightly was more productive than pushing them through.
Again and again, I was reminded that sometimes the bravest leadership move is creating just enough space for understanding to catch up.
But there’s a cost to that choice, and it’s important to say it plainly.
Holding a boundary. Saying “not yet.” Saying “not like this.” Or saying “no.” Those moments don’t always land as wisdom or care. Often, they land as obstruction.
When you slow things down in a system that is anxious to move, you can become the blocker – the thing people quietly talk about as “what we need to get past.” That is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable to know that by trying to protect clarity, capacity, and trust, I may be temporarily seen as the reason progress feels harder.
And it’s tempting in those moments to soften the boundary, to win back approval, to prove I’m not the problem.
But I’ve learned this year that boundaries aren’t about stopping progress. They are about protecting the conditions that allow progress to last.
A boundary gives the work somewhere to land. It prevents ten competing urgencies cancelling each other out. It reduces rework, misalignment, and quiet exhaustion. It helps the system move in the same direction, not just move.
So when I slow things down, or say no, or insist on clarity, it isn’t to be difficult. It’s to keep us moving toward what we all care about – not just moving fast enough to feel better in the moment.
Learning to hold that line – especially when it makes me unpopular for a while – has been one of the hardest and most important parts of this year.
A boundary can look like a blocker right up until the moment you realise it prevented the collapse.
Influence, Power, and the Work of Clarity
Another learning edge this year has been about influence and power – and my discomfort with the second word.
For most of my career, I’ve led through influence. I’ve worked laterally, nudged, persuaded, built consensus, and relied on relationships to bring people with me. That’s a muscle I value and one I’m proud of. But in this role, I’ve had to confront something that was strangely uncomfortable to admit: I hold power. There is legitimate authority that comes with the accountability of the role.
And when I avoid stepping into that authority, I leave a vacuum. Sometimes I’ve treated uncertainty like a sign I should keep negotiating, keep seeking agreement, keep influencing – when what people actually needed was clarity. A simple yes. A no. A boundary. A decision. Firm ground to stand on.
This isn’t about “power over” people. I have no interest in command‑and‑control leadership or ego‑driven authority. But I am learning about “power with” – using the legitimacy of the role to provide steadiness, to hold boundaries, to stop uncertainty being pushed down the system, and to make it easier for others to do their best work without having to fight for clarity every step of the way.
That has required me to let go of the comfort of influence‑only leadership. To trust that clarity can be a form of care. And to accept that sometimes leadership means making the call, not because I know best, but because the organisation needs a decision more than it needs another round of negotiation.
Rethinking “Pace” (Without Pretending It’s Simple)
I’ve heard the word pace probably more this year than any other: move at pace, more pace, we can’t afford to slow down.
At first, I accepted it as a virtue. Over time, I started hearing it as a signal.
Often, pace is standing in for anxiety, pressure, a need to feel in control, fear of being seen as ineffective, and a desire for visible movement in ambiguity.
Speed becomes reassurance: if things are moving quickly, maybe everything is okay. But speed on its own doesn’t tell us that.
When pace is treated as constant acceleration, a few things happen. Work becomes more transactional. Handovers become messier. Decisions move faster than understanding. People spend increasing time correcting, re‑explaining, and re‑doing – not because they aren’t capable, but because the system is moving faster than clarity.
What looks active can quietly become friction‑heavy and exhausting. When pace becomes constant urgency, the work moves – but not cleanly.
The alternative I’ve come to trust is this: pace isn’t something you demand; it’s something you design for.
It lives in clear priorities, deliberate sequencing, boundaries that protect capacity, capability that grows alongside delivery, and trust that the baton will be received.
That kind of pace doesn’t feel frantic. It feels steady. And it lasts.
Unlearning, and the Discomfort of Becoming a Beginner Again
One of the quieter challenges this year has been unlearning.
It’s easy to assume that experience means certainty. But I’ve found that experience can also become a safety blanket. Familiar language. Familiar tools. Familiar ways of framing problems. All of it can feel reassuring – even when the work is asking for something different.
There have been times this year where I’ve felt the pull to translate something new into old language too quickly, because fluency feels safe. But I’ve been learning to resist that impulse. To stay with the discomfort of not knowing, long enough for something genuinely new to form. To let new approaches challenge my reflexes rather than forcing them to conform to what I already understand.
There’s humility in being a beginner again. There’s also vulnerability. It means admitting that the next stage of the work might require me to be less polished for a while. And that’s hard – especially in environments where people associate leadership with certainty. But I’m learning that sometimes the most responsible thing I can do is to stay open, unfinished, and curious.
The Work Beneath the Work: The Deeper Personal Shift
Alongside the visible work of transformation, another kind of work has been happening – quieter, more personal, and far harder to explain.
This year has surfaced tensions in me that I didn’t always have language for at first. Tensions between wanting to be supportive and realising I’d slipped into rescuing. Between wanting consensus and knowing a clear decision was needed. Between leading with influence and stepping into the authority of the role. Between care and control. Between steadiness and anxiety.
There were moments where I felt solid and grounded – and moments where that ground simply disappeared beneath me.
I’ve used the word “wobble,” but it doesn’t always capture how it feels. It isn’t collapse. It’s the sudden tightening in my chest, the internal volume turning up, the inner voice getting sharper and more unforgiving. It’s the quiet questioning of competence, impact, and worth – often triggered by something small on the surface.
Outwardly, I could still function. Inwardly, there was turmoil.
And here’s the part I don’t want to sanitise: this wasn’t steady, gentle growth. It was more like muscle growth.
Muscle doesn’t grow because it’s treated gently. It grows because it is pushed to its edge, torn slightly, and then given time and support to repair stronger than before.
That’s what this year has felt like.
There were moments where parts of my leadership identity tore under pressure. Old habits exposed themselves. Defences showed up. Patterns I thought I’d outgrown resurfaced when the stakes were high. I’ve felt shame. I’ve felt the “I should be better than this” voice. I’ve felt the gap between who I aspire to be and how I actually showed up, and I’ve had to look at that gap without either collapsing into it or pretending it isn’t there.
There’s one moment that sits clearly for me. I was mid‑sentence, explaining how I was going to “fix” a situation that had disappointed me, feeling that familiar tightening – that frantic, noble‑sounding energy that says: grab the wheel, take control, sort it. And then someone I trust said, with care and clarity, that they weren’t seeing me as the rescuer in that moment – they were seeing me as the persecutor. That word hit me like a physical blow. It landed in my body before it landed in my mind.
It was a mirror. And I needed it.
Because it showed me how quickly “helpful” can become controlling when I’m anxious. How easily my drive can become a shadow. How fast I can start telling myself a story about other people’s intent in order to justify my own grip.
It took me time to calm the defensiveness. And then it took me honesty to own it.
And this is where the support mattered.
Because growth at this level doesn’t happen in isolation. It happened because I wasn’t left alone with those tears. Because people around me noticed, named, and challenged me with care. Because I was supported to reflect without being judged. Because I had permission to admit when I got it wrong, repair, and try again.
The support didn’t remove the discomfort. It made it survivable. More than that – it made it meaningful.
Without that safety, I would have defaulted to armour. To tightening. To performing competence instead of developing it. To becoming harder, faster, less human – because that’s what pressured systems reward.
Instead, the tearing became part of the growth.
I’m not finished. The patterns still show up under pressure. But I’m more aware. More honest with myself. More willing to pause, repair, and choose differently.
This year hasn’t just asked me to lead change. It has asked me to let the work change me.
If I’m honest about where I am in all of this, I’m still in the chrysalis.
Not at the beginning, where everything still looks familiar.
Not at the end, where something new has fully formed.
I’m in that uncomfortable middle – where parts of the old shape have already softened or broken down, but the new way of leading, relating, and working isn’t fully stable or consistent yet.
Some days I can feel the difference. Other days, under pressure, I can feel myself reaching back for the old form – the need to control, to rescue, to move faster than the work is ready for.
That’s the truth of chrysalis work for me right now: I’m not observing it. I’m inside it. And I’m still being changed by it.
And I’m learning that this isn’t just personal.
When I lose clarity, the system feels it. When I rush, the system rushes. When I armour, the room contracts.
My nervous system doesn’t stay contained inside me – it leaks into meetings, into tone, into pace, into whether people feel safe enough to think. If I tighten my grip, others grip. If I rescue, others wait to be rescued. If I perform certainty, the room becomes less honest.
That’s part of the responsibility of this role that I’ve understood more fully over the year: I’m not just in the system. I’m contributing to its conditions – especially under pressure.
Scaffolding, Governance, and the Quiet Power of Coherence
Over time, the work shifted – not away from delivery, but toward coherence.
There was more attention to how things join up, more care in how decisions are made and carried, and more focus on what holds when the pressure rises.
There’s a kind of work in transformation that isn’t glamorous: governance, cadence, roles, clarity, sequencing, assurance, business cases. It can look like bureaucracy from the outside. But done well, it’s scaffolding – it’s what keeps the work from collapsing under the weight of itself.
I’ve learned that people don’t only need inspiring language. They need firm ground. A sense that there is a method. That decisions have a home. That urgency isn’t the only operating system. That the organisation can move without relying on heroics and personal sacrifice.
Coherence doesn’t create headlines. It creates sustainability.
Five Dimensions, One Honest Check
One of the risks in transformation is that we tell ourselves a “butterfly story” while still running a caterpillar system.
That’s why I’ve found it useful to hold up a simple mirror – not as a model to present, but as an honest check against our habits.
- Are we genuinely outcome‑focused, starting from what matters in people’s lives and working backwards – or are we still designing around services and organograms?
- Are we looking end‑to‑end and cross‑system, redesigning journeys rather than optimising individual teams?
- Are we treating prevention as a business model – the logic of how we create public value – rather than a project we talk about when we have time?
The harder part isn’t whether we can describe these shifts. It’s whether we’re making choices that prove we mean them.
When did we last stop, pause, or radically reshape a piece of work – not because it was failing on paper, but because, in truth, it wasn’t improving outcomes?
Where are we still optimising individual services, individual targets, and internal processes, even when people’s lives don’t join up that way?
And where are we still telling ourselves that we can keep everyone comfortable – hierarchies intact, certainty intact, familiar ways of working intact – while also claiming we’re doing something fundamentally different?
I’m not claiming we’ve “arrived” on these. We haven’t. But this frame has helped me be more honest about what kind of change we’re actually making – and what is still, quietly, a better caterpillar.
It has also shaped how I think about coherence. Coherence isn’t just governance and scaffolding. It’s whether our structures, decisions and behaviours are actually aligned to outcomes, trust and lived experience – or whether we’re still optimising the wrong things more efficiently.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth that sits underneath that mirror.
If I’m honest, some of what we’ve called transformation this year is still a better version of the system we already had – a better caterpillar rather than a different form.
I don’t say that as a criticism. I say it as a sign of maturity.
Because recognising the difference between “better” and “different” is part of how organisations grow up. It’s the moment we stop performing certainty and start telling the truth about transition.
And that’s where the way we’re framing Inspiring Innovation has helped me. Thinking in terms of waves gives us permission to be in motion without pretending we’re already somewhere else.
Some waves are about stabilising, creating coherence, building shared language, and making the work survivable.
Some waves are about learning what doesn’t work, what creates friction, what people can’t absorb yet, and what needs redesign.
And later waves – if we’re brave enough – are where deeper shifts can actually take hold: roles and relationships redesigned around outcomes, not inherited structures; trust and honesty becoming real operating conditions, not statements; and “pace” becoming something we design for rather than demand.
So if the honest diagnosis today is “better caterpillar in places”, the point isn’t to be disappointed. The point is to keep learning, keep building foundations, and keep moving wave by wave – until the organisation has the safety, capability, and coherence to genuinely become something else.
Relationships as Cultural Infrastructure
One of the strongest intentions I brought with me when I joined was a belief that relationships are not peripheral to transformation – they are the infrastructure that holds it.
Without relationships, change might move on paper, but it won’t land in the system. Without trust, even well‑designed change becomes brittle. Without the ability to have difficult conversations well, pace becomes pressure and delivery becomes extractive.
That belief has guided many of my choices this year.
I’ve paid close attention to how teams and services relate to one another – not how those relationships are described, but how they show up in practice. Early on, there were clear tensions and pockets of distrust. That wasn’t surprising after such a large‑scale workforce change, where roles, responsibilities, and expectations were still settling.
Over time, I have seen movement. More curiosity. Earlier conversations. Less guardedness. More willingness to reach out rather than retreat. These shifts are fragile and uneven, but they are real.
They are built interaction by interaction – and easily undone if pressure spikes and behaviour reverts to sharpness, blame, or transactional exchanges.
That’s why I’ve been intentional – and at times uncomfortable – about naming tone, behaviour, and relational dynamics when they tip into something that undermines trust. Culture doesn’t live in statements. It lives in the next interaction.
What I Think Has Shifted (Without Pretending It’s Done)
I’m cautious about claiming impact in a neat way, because transformation doesn’t “finish,” and some of the most meaningful shifts are subtle.
But I do feel changes have happened. Not everywhere. Not evenly. But enough to matter.
Some of that is visible in what people would have seen over the year.
We’ve moved from talking about transformation in broad terms to putting something more concrete in place: the transition into the Inspiring Innovation Programme, the publication of the plan, and the development of a clearer, more coherent approach that brings together service redesign, digital, data, workforce and culture into a single frame.
There’s been real work behind that – developing the specification, appointing a strategic partner, and working through a whole‑council diagnostic that has started to turn ambition into something more tangible. That has started to show up in the shape of the work. An opportunity matrix has been created. Priority areas have been identified. Business cases have started to emerge. Investment decisions have been made. Thematic boards are now in place. And the introduction of a wave‑based approach has given us a way of thinking about progression over time – from immediate pressures, through redesign, into longer‑term change.
None of that means the work is done. But it does mean we’ve moved beyond intent into something that has form, structure and direction. Alongside that, there’s been something quieter but equally important happening beyond the organisation.
South West Local Camp in June 25 was a moment that mattered. Not because it solved anything, but because it created space for people to come together differently – to share practice, to be honest, and to connect beyond organisational boundaries. Building on that, we’re now working with Dorset and the LGA to develop a South West test-and-learn network. That feels significant to me – not as a programme, but as an attempt to create something more relational, more experimental, and more rooted in shared learning across the region.
And then there are the shifts that are harder to see on paper, but just as real in the ground we travel.
I’ve seen stronger clarity emerging in how we frame work. I’ve seen more people asking “what are we not doing right now?” – and feeling relief when that’s answered. I’ve seen people step into harder conversations earlier. I’ve seen moments of genuine generosity – people assuming positive intent rather than reaching for blame. I’ve seen language and practice start to align in pockets: learning becoming real, not just stated.
I’ve seen it in small, everyday ways too.
In some spaces, conversations are happening earlier – not perfectly, but earlier – which means fewer things are carried silently until they become unmanageable. I’ve seen clearer framing make meetings more useful: purpose stated, decisions named, and fewer people leaving unsure what just happened. I’ve noticed a gradual shift, in places, from private truth and public silence to a bit more willingness to say the thing in the room. And I’ve seen more honest conversations about capacity and sequencing, rather than pretending everything can be done at once.
None of these are universal. None of them are complete. But they are real signals that something is shifting.
And I want to say this clearly: none of this happens because of one person.
The team has achieved a huge amount this year – far more than I can do justice to here. They’ve delivered, adapted, challenged, and held the work in conditions that are often demanding and uncertain. They’ve also challenged me – to be clearer, to be more consistent, to lead better.
I’m proud of them. And I’m grateful for them.
And I’ve seen a shift in myself too. I’m less seduced by speed. More committed to coherence. Less eager to rescue. More willing to hold a boundary and let others grow. More willing to make a call when a call is needed, rather than endlessly seeking agreement and leaving people without firm ground.
That isn’t a victory story. It’s a practice story – A “still becoming” story.
What Hasn’t Happened Yet (and Why It Still Matters)
There are also things that haven’t happened yet. I want to name them carefully – not as criticism, and not as defeat, but as honest markers of where the work is still forming.
We haven’t fully broken the reflex that speed is the answer when pressure rises. We haven’t made learning feel consistently safe everywhere; blame and defensiveness still appear at times. We haven’t stabilised roles and handovers across the system enough to stop energy leaking through rework and uncertainty. We haven’t made “whole‑council” feel real in every interaction yet; transactional habits and silos still pull hard.
Some of this is simply the in‑between space: the phase where old patterns loosen but new ones aren’t fully embedded. But naming what hasn’t happened yet matters, because what we normalise quietly becomes culture.
And exhaustion should never be the price of ambition.
I also want to hold the nuance: naming gaps doesn’t mean nothing has improved. It means these are the edges I think matter most for sustainability – and I’m accountable for how I help address them going forward.
Rest, Recovery, and the Part I Used to Treat as Optional
One of the clearest shifts in me this year is how I now see rest.
I used to treat rest as something I’d earn once the work was “under control.” But this year has made it clear that the work is rarely under control in a way that grants permission to pause. If I wait for that moment, I don’t rest – I just run.
I’ve learned that rest isn’t a luxury. It’s a leadership discipline. When I return with more clarity, I benefit, and the organisation benefits. When I don’t, the organisation feels the fog too. The difference isn’t just productivity. It’s tone. It’s patience. It’s the ability to stay curious rather than slip into judgement.
And it’s not only about me. If I model constant acceleration, I teach others that their limits don’t matter. If I protect recovery time – in small practical ways – I quietly legitimise sustainability for others too.
This is one of the hardest lessons of the year: urgency will always try to take the space. If I don’t protect recovery, nobody else will do it for me.
What I’m Carrying into Year Two
Year one was about learning the system from the inside – its rhythms, its pressures, its strengths, and its scars.
Year two feels different. It feels like accountability.
I no longer have the protection of being new. I understand the terrain now – which means I can no longer attribute friction to unfamiliarity or assume time alone will resolve what feels hard. My presence shapes the system more than it did a year ago, whether I intend it to or not.
That shows up in what I reinforce.
In what I interrupt.
In what I tolerate when things get uncomfortable.
And in what I normalise when pressure rises.
This is where culture becomes unavoidable.
Because culture isn’t something I get to comment on from the edges anymore. I am part of it. My behaviour – especially under stress – teaches people what is safe, what matters, and what will quietly be absorbed without challenge.
So the provocation I’m carrying into year two is sharper than it was a year ago:
If the way we create change requires people to override their judgement, suppress their unease, or accept exhaustion as normal, then we aren’t transforming anything. We’re just relocating harm to a quieter place – and calling it progress.
I don’t want to build that.
Which means year two asks something more demanding of me.
It asks me to keep holding boundaries when it would be easier to smooth things over.
To keep slowing conversations down when pace is being used as a substitute for clarity.
To keep naming behaviour when it undermines trust – even when that feels counter‑cultural or personally costly.
To use the authority of the role when clarity is needed, rather than hiding behind influence and leaving uncertainty to leak down the system.
And to keep treating relationships not as a by‑product of delivery, but as the infrastructure that makes delivery sustainable.
It also asks me to stay alert to my own patterns.
To notice when care slips into rescuing.
When urgency tightens my grip.
When my discomfort tempts me to move too quickly or speak too soon.
Because year two won’t be kinder by default. The pressures haven’t gone away. What changes is my responsibility to choose how I respond to them.
So the pace I’m carrying forward isn’t faster.
It’s cleaner.
Pace that compounds rather than drains.
Pace that survives handovers.
Pace that doesn’t rely on heroics or silent sacrifice.
Pace that makes it safer to tell the truth, not riskier.
If transformation is real, it has to feel human while it’s happening – not just impressive when it’s written up afterwards.
That’s the standard I want to hold myself to in year two.
And that’s the work I’m committing to continue.
Carl's Notepad 