Herding Cats with Katie Caiger

Why do so many brilliant scientists and engineers get labelled as difficult, resistant, angry, or disengaged? In this episode of Herding Cats, Katie starts with a familiar Sunday-evening scene. She follows it into a deeper question about resilience, empathy, and what science-led organisations are quietly getting wrong. Drawing on years of work inside space, engineering, deep tech, clean energy and...

If a multinational with tens of thousands of engineers can admit its own name was working against it, your business probably isn’t immune… In Episode 4 of Herding Cats, Katie starts with a European aerospace case study where a technically accurate name became a trust liability – described by critics as “a disease” and loved only by engineers. From there, she jumps to a very modern red flag she kee...

Why do some space, defence and dual-use companies scale belief - while others collapse under it? In this episode, Katie breaks down two real post-2000s case studies from the global space sector. Both had world-changing ambition. Both aimed for the same destination. Only one survived. This episode explores: Why storytelling is a strategic asset in space, defence and dual-use tech How over-reliance...

Dual-use technology has a branding problem and it’s costing founders trust, talent, and traction. In this episode, we break down what dual-use tech actually is (and what it isn’t), why it carries a strange and often negative reputation, and how founders unintentionally sabotage credibility by leading with the wrong language at the wrong time. We explain why dual-use is a strategy, not a category,...

Investors don’t ghost you because the tech isn’t good enough but because the story doesn’t line up. In this episode of Herding Cats, we unpack why promising investor conversations quietly die after “great meeting!” emails - and why throwing more slides, detail, and jargon at the problem makes it worse. We are talking about coherence and how fragmented internal narratives quietly erode trust, and w...

Welcome to 2026, and welcome to a brand new podcast on communication, culture and all things tech storytelling! This podcast is for Founders, CEOs and leaders in the tech SME world and sits at the intersection of people, psychology, thought leadership and business growth. I’m so excited to have you on board - please feel free to send me your questions, topic ideas and feedback to: Katie@hausofword...