Catalyst Strategic Consultants

The Season of Returning Value Once the boomers were raving idealists. They believed in magic – just as the Lovin’ Spoonful tune suggested. The world could be transformed into a more fair, caring place with opportunity for all. And that care extended to our wounded world – and an environmental movement was born. Out of […]

A Bit Stuck? Need a Breakthrough? Case #24 I’ve run into some entrepreneurial wizards, who, for all their smarts in conceptualizing and driving a biz to a first plateau of success are frustrated. “We just can’t get seem to get beyond where we are! We growing, but there’s so much more potential. We’re just scratching […]

Admiring these small scale magnificent creations – easy! Seeing what Jeff is creating on a larger stage – difficult. But very telling. Barrier busting. Paradigm transcender. How can an artist who can fashion such divine and fanciful articles be such? Read to the end…. This is a self-described outsider artist on fire. He has the […]

Last time I talked about a pandemic of screw-ups plaguing our capability to execute even simple customer fulfillment tasks. The missing tire, the pants, the this, the that. I’m sure you thought of lots of your own. They’re not hard stories to find: they’re everywhere, in the big and the mid-market. It doesn’t do any […]

I ran into a spate of it last week. Not that I – or you – don’t get it in the teeth all the time. My summer car was in for “being put to bed’ service. “Needs new tires.” OK, it’s a rare tire. They can find 3 – one has to be couriered in. […]

Joyce is really into it. Mushrooming that is. It’s quite the cult on the coast. Here on the dry side, we don’t get nearly enough moisture to sponsor the kind of extravagant edible spore life that the Coast can engender. Like: – Lobster – Rosella – Morel and the prize: Chanterelle The picture is of […]

I have been honoured over my life time to have strong friends, abiding, enduring relationships. Recently, I’ve had cause to rejoice in them: be extremely grateful for them. Hey, there are friends and there are friends. Casual acquaintances, you would recognize them and say “hello” on the street. Work friends who relate when driven together […]

In October I was sailing with Larry Ledgerwood on San Franciso Bay when ghosts appeared. Spectral black, moving over the water at an unearthly speed. There were two of them. One minute they were in front of Fisherman’s Wharf. The next they were gone under the [being rebuilt] Bay bridge. I wondered if it was […]

Ed is my Dad’s friend.   He was a member of the above fire responder group – the raw stuff of citizenship. We forget that the folks who respond to emergency are real people – in rural B C, and Alberta – unpaid .   Ordinary members of the community who respond to the call for volunteers […]

Way off the grid in the lost corner of the East Kootenays lies Mecca. My annual pilgrimage ended last week in a mix of frustration, elation and reverence. Over the 30 or so years our nameless group has toiled the 6 hours through Cranbrook, Creston and up the east shore of Kootenay Lake as Kokannee […]