Catalyz, a Design Research, Innovation and Facilitation Firm
Founded in 2016, Catalyz is a Seattle-based consulting firm that specializes in helping teams and leaders think bigger and solve problems that matter to their customers and employees, while developing the soft skills needed to thrive in the 21st century.
Clients engage us to help their teams develop a customer-centric and design thinking led approach to product and service development. We do this through our core services of workshops, facilitating design sprints, and embedding with teams as player/coaches to facilitate and lead design research and design strategy efforts. We have also worked with numerous organizations to launch new innovation teams and programs and have seen first-hand what works and where the potential pitfalls are.
Beyond supporting teams in how to apply the methods and mindsets of human-centered design, we also offer strategic facilitation for offsites, board retreats or executive ideation sessions, as well as development workshops and training for teams on the topics of 21st century Leadership and Effective Teaming. We’ll introduce shared vocabulary, mental models and tools to help your team develop their capacity for communication, collaboration, curiosity, critical thinking and creativity – the essential human skills needed in a world of AI.
Our goal is to help your teams respond to the accelerating challenges and opportunities of the 21st century by designing new experiences that delight your customers, retain and grow your employees, and design a brighter future for all.
Our Offerings
Help leaders build and scale a culture and practice of human-centered design in their team
We’ve worked with teams ranging from Kaiser, Wiley, Delta Dental, Amazon and Starbucks to help test and identify repeatable models for incorporating design thinking methods and mindsets into project and delivery processes. We often facilitate leader “Spacemaker” trainings to help leaders understand their role in supporting innovation efforts and to foster a culture that supports creativity, collaboration, and curiosity.
Provide teams with on-call design strategist support
For product leads or teams that want support doing customer discovery, synthesis, and product ideation/experimentation. We bring our network of seasoned design strategists who can pair with a product lead to help them create discussion guides for empathy interviews, moderate those interviews, and work together to synthesize the learnings into design principles or recommendations for product features, based on real customer feedback.
When appropriate, this can also include facilitating thoughtful and structured ideation sessions to help teams “think bigger”, identifying key concept territories or hypotheses from those sessions and testing them through rapid, low fidelity experiments.
For teams that need to move quickly, we can facilitate a ‘design sprint’ and help your team identify the right problem(s) to solve, generate prototypes, and get real customer feedback in just 1-2 weeks.
Strategic Facilitation
We have designed and facilitated strategic off-sites, team kickoffs, and executive level ideation sessions at the C-suite and board level. We practice what we preach when designing these and lead with curiosity, start by understanding the key outcomes the group wants to walk away with, then design and prototype creative and engaging activities or prompts. If you are looking for an external facilitator to guide your leadership team through an upcoming offsite or retreat, we’d love to help!
21st Century Leadership Development + Team Effectiveness Coaching
Whether you are looking for 1:1 coaching or a series of development sessions for your team, we bring our unique, evidence based perspective on 21st century leadership and highly effective teams. Through experiential exercises and debrief discussions (in-person or virtual) we’ll help your teams develop a shared language and approach to leading through ambiguity while fostering the 5Cs of 21st century teams- Curiosity, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking and Creativity!
Our Work
We have been fortunate to work with clients in a diverse set of industries, including healthcare, retail, finance, consulting, and nonprofits.
At Catalyz, we strive to partner with clients and co-create programs and materials that honor your existing culture, language, and industry expertise. We combine our expertise with yours to create something extraordinary and impactful together.
News & Ideas
Want to speed up your meetings? Try the Decider Protocol
Recently, while facilitating leadership meetings and offsites, one of the patterns I have observed across multiple teams is a tendency to "violently agree" with each other. What does this look like? Team member A: I think we should do XYZ... Team member B: I agree!...
Leverage team check-ins to foster a climate of empathy and psychological safety
Every Monday, one of our Catalyz team rituals is to have a 30 minute team check-in to start off the week. Because we are a distributed team and rarely in the same place, these check-ins give us the chance to sync up, learn what each person is focusing on for the week,...
2018 Economic Forecast Conference
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 28, 2018 | Seattle, WA Catalyz CEO, Ben Grossman-Kahn will be moderating a panel discussion at the 46th Annual Economic Forecast Conference entitled Cultivating a 21st Century Workforce and Workplace. Panelists will include Dr. Vikram...
Connect
Curious in learning more? Please send a note to hello@catalyz.io to set up a time to talk!