Introduction

Innovators. Changemakers. Entrepreneurs. Intrapreneurs. Catalysts.

One of these things is not like the other.

That is to say, each of these types of people can make a whole lot of change happen in the world, but within any group of innovators, changemakers, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs, there is a subset of people we call Catalysts. Those who have a deep-rooted need to create positive change.

Among Catalysts, there is an unmet need to be seen and valued for who we are and how we show up in the world. We know because we feel it too.

We move so fast that we lose people. We can break shit without intentionality. And all of that can lead to burnout—frequently.

Catalysts feel a deep sense of drive toward a better future state. We can’t help but see potential change and set it in motion, wherever we are. We’re energized and driven by it. There’s a speed to our action that tends to outpace the people around us, for better or worse. And we are driven to create that change whether we are starting our own thing or in an organizational context—our catalyticness is who we are.

When someone asks us what a Catalyst is, the short answer is: it’s a person who takes in lots of information, sees infinite possibility, and can’t stop themselves from moving into action.

The longer explanation is why we’re writing this book.

You might have read a dozen books on innovation and change management already. We all have. Some of us—Catalysts—already have an innate drive to make change. It’s in our DNA. We are change.

So where are the books on how to manage ourselves?

If you’ve felt this way your whole life, you aren’t weird or crazy—and more importantly, you aren’t alone. You’re a Catalyst. So are we. Welcome.

Finding My People: Tracey Lovejoy

After I left my job in research, leadership, and in-house coaching at Microsoft, I decided to become a leadership consultant. At the end of a year of fearful paralysis, my own coach suggested I do research to figure out who I’d most like to support. When I analyzed the patterns of my former favorite clients year over year, the data that emerged blew my mind. I typed up a frenzied, seven-page synthesis and sent it over to my very confused coach.

I tried to explain—the attributes I found didn’t match any population I could think of. And I loved working with them, not just because they showed up well and were open to change, but because I could relate to them on a deeper level. The significant traits that they shared seemed to only belong to this group of people—to us—and we didn’t broadly share any other backgrounds or demographics. Traits such as:

• They set audacious goals in their personal and work life.
• Many goals they set are about making positive change in the world around them.
• When they share those goals, they are scared to say them out loud. They know they were huge goals, and they can’t seem to help themselves.
• By the next time we speak, they often can’t remember the goals, because they’ve already been integrated into their lives.

The list went on, and when I compared it to niches identified by the International Coaching Federation, there just wasn’t a category for my people.

Around that time, I met with a client at the old Tully’s down at the beach, and they shared a revelation: “I’m a Catalyst. I get things started, and I get things done.”

Neon signs flashed in my head: that was it! That was the descriptor for my people.

I was eager to learn more, so I set up a few interviews with existing clients. At first, I was asking questions to help me develop my service offering, but by the second interview I realized I was hearing information that I had never heard before. During my time working in the technology field, I had read myriad books on the process of innovation. But now I was hearing about the skills, pain and patterns of stumbling blocks of the people driving innovation in a richness I had not yet encountered. That led me to launch a series of in-depth qualitative interviews across 2016 that took me on a journey of discovery.

And while the data collection itself was a journey of expectation, emotion, and new realizations, as soon as I started posting about my findings, more people reached out. They told me they felt as if I were talking directly to them. As if I saw them as no one else had. As if I were helping them make sense of their experiences in a way they had never experienced before. I heard even more stories of pain and loneliness—of having always felt weird, and of how empowering the research felt for them.

We still hear this kind of feedback, over and over, to this day.

In addition to primary research, I dug into existing literature to see what existed for me and this group of likeminded people I’d found. I was particularly interested in how many Catalysts there might be to have quantitative data to correlate to my growing qualitative data. Two pieces that were foundational for me were Leadership Agility (Joiner and Josephs, 2006) which discusses categories of leaders that have mastered the level of agility needed to be consistently effective and avoid burnout in today’s turbulent global workplace (including one category they label Catalysts—it was great to see others drawn to that word as well), and 2015 research by eg.1 consultancy in the UK that identified corporate employees they call “Game Changers.”

Using these as a proxy, we estimate Catalysts to be somewhere between 5 and 11 percent of the workforce. Looking across the research and my career to that point, the numbers felt right—perhaps even more optimistically than what I’d experienced. At Microsoft, many people had positive intent toward innovation but still pushed hard against change. Even among a world-renowned group of techies and intrapreneurs, I could look back and see that Catalysts were a small percentage of that pool.

They were the ones who thrived on discussions around change, even when they realized we couldn’t manifest them all. They were the ones who saw possibility as a form of play, rather than getting annoyed or overwhelmed. I had been drawn to those people—my people—even then.

By 2017, I had a powerful research base, rich knowledge of Catalysts, and a brand-new business partnership with Shannon.

Today, working with Catalysts feels like I’ve tapped directly into my sense of purpose. As if I am bringing knowledge forward that was waiting to be unearthed. As if this information is coming through me, rather than it being mine at all.

Catalysts aren’t just parts of the innovation machine that can be replaced once they wear out, though that is certainly how they were treated during many of my years at Microsoft. Too often, organizations replace inconvenient, disruptive, out-of-the-box changemakers with people who are younger or hungrier or more malleable to the existing systems.

No, taken care of well, Catalysts only get better and more effective at creating positive change.

That’s who I’m showing up for in my work, my daily presence, and in the heart of this book.

If I can help the most effective and talented changemakers be better at tackling the world’s problems, then I am helping the world be better at an order of magnitude I never could have dreamed.

Finding Myself: Shannon Lucas

I have always felt different. In high school, I started a recycling program—but I didn’t stop there. I ignited a few close friends on the issue who, in retrospect, also happened to be Catalysts. They helped me develop a marketing campaign, and that helped us galvanize a broader group of students who hadn’t previously cared about sustainability at all.

In college, I saw a need to increase funding resources for students on scholarships. That problem could only be solved by getting involved with student government, so I became the senior class president.

I have always moved through the world thinking “What’s the next problem and how do I fix it?” And more than that, “Who can help me amplify this for maximum impact?”

Even in much less purpose-driven work, when I was a single mom just paying the bills, I always found myself on the cutting edge of technology. I wanted to know what was out there and how I could use it to make things better around me.

My first sigh of relief came with an innovation role at Vodafone. It felt life-changing—like there was finally a role for me.

Though it wasn’t without its challenges, it was my dream job. In building the Innovation Program, I knew that we had to create a movement of like-minded change agents throughout the organization. I created the Innovation Champion program, which started with a ragtag group of eight positive troublemakers from around the world and eventually grew into a CEO-sponsored, gamified, multi-level global program with over one hundred Innovation Champions. But even as these volunteers raised their hands and worked with their management structures to get permission to be part of this elite squad, not all of them showed up the same. It was the same ten people who religiously joined every call, made...