Catalyst Strategic Consultants

“When I find myself in time of troubles, Mother Mary comforts me…” Well, the Beatles may think so, but… Many presidents confronted with trying to find a way through this acute petroleum market deceleration are at sea – in a storm, navigating without a compass. Of course, they can’t appear that way. Got to look […]

We have finally arrived. It’s too hot to sit out on the deck and the dreamy summer somnambulance is upon us, like a hand that has reached up from the foundations of the sunbaked house and grabbed us, drawing us down into a malaise of ennui. We just can’t get motivated to achieve anything – […]

We now have the first NDP government this province has ever seen. How did this happen? In such a conservative, free-enterprise loving province as this? We could focus on the faults of the former Progressive Conservative dynasty – now thoroughly and utterly extinct – or of the split of the right wing vote with the […]

Wolf Hall – hope you’re not missing it: PBS – 9 pm Sundays. Low born, but rose to private secretary of Henry VIII. Blacksmith’s son became Italian soldier, became servant, became lawyer, then Cardinal Wolsey’s secretary, then, an Arabesque through chance and dreams to Henry’s most inner circle. From whence, he interpreted circumstance and opportunity […]

As I bring Gazelle’s method to more new clients, I am struck with the level of jump these newly organized teams display. And I realize how often we talk about Presidents working on the business. When your executive is pulled together and zeroed in On the Biz there is an immediate bounce in company energy […]

Cash Headed Down? This Prescription is strong medicine for businesses caught in the growing impacts of our “made in Western Canada” recession. http://www.slideshare.net/DougBouey/getting-through-the-downturn-prescription Somehow, folks have to snap out of the trance. The trance that that everything’s OK. It’s not. And it’s not going to be. Affected companies need to be put on a war […]

“Still over an hour out. Last of the scotch on the tray before me. Head drooping. Crowded by the neighbour, rather portly [and talkative] lady. Delayed an hour and a half out of Chicago after running between terminals to sit on an inert plane. Missed the one chance at a between rides dinner. On the […]

Spiritus Chamber Choir pushes the envelope of choral music into mystical quadrants of unearthly beauty. The Calgary ensemble under the tireless and curious direction of Timothy Schantz delivers consistently superb singing – often of sublime repertoire – having given us the Rachmaninoff Vespers last year. But last Sunday, they went to a new edge with […]

Makes u want to spend a couple of hours though you went for fifteen minutes. Gives you a panoply of people though you were ready for – a few. Gets into a dancing mood even if you never are. Start to give in when you don’t mean to. Feel safe, like having fun. There’s no […]

May Day! May Day! We are falling off the cliff face of a made in the West recession. Well maybe it was made in Saudi Arabia, but that’s for the dark arts practitioners. Who will blink first? The OPEC oil producers, intent on a last gasp consolidation of market share? Or the Western capitalists, notorious […]