Before Catalys

At A.T. Kearney I supported clients across a wide range of industries on group strategy and mid-term plans, business due diligence, and cost sourcing and optimisation, solving management problems and driving the change and growth that came with them.

Every one of those projects was stimulating. Being able to debate with board-level people at large companies regardless of my age, and help steer them somewhere better, was a rare thing.

At the same time, I increasingly felt like a cog inside a machine that was already built, and I began to want to be on the side that creates the business. I wanted to be involved from the point where the client relationship is formed, and to get into setting the theme and the scope of the work.

Why I joined

What matters to me is who I work with and whether the work excites me, and that was how I ran my search. That was when I met our two founders. As I listened, I became convinced that here was a young firm that could win strategy work on its own terms without dropping quality, and that this would resolve the doubt I had about my own value. So I joined.

I joined when there were only the two founders and I was the first employee, so honestly I was anxious. But their conviction, and how big-hearted they were as people, quickly overrode it: I wanted to work with these two, and I was sure the company we built together would be a good one.

Growth and results

Since joining Catalys my growth curve has clearly changed. I am far more often out in front across the whole arc of a project, from the proposal through delivery, relationship building and winning follow-on work. For better or worse, the results of my own decisions come back to me straight away, so every project brings a pile of lessons and regrets. At the same time those results feed directly into how the client sees us and into my pay, so I work with a healthier kind of pressure, and a clearer sense of what my output is worth, than I did before.

Our relationships with clients are getting longer, not only in terms of project orders, and in that sense too I feel I have achieved what mattered to me when I moved.

What it means to be the first employee

Coming in as the first employee was, honestly, daunting. What tipped it was the founders’ determination to build a genuinely good company, and the sense that I could trust them as people. Once I joined, I found myself deeply involved not only in projects but in the foundations of the organisation: the evaluation system, hiring policy, how we share knowledge internally. Working out from zero what a large company simply has, trying it and correcting it, is hard work, but it leaves you with the feeling that we are building this company ourselves. That feeling is what makes being the first employee worthwhile.

What I want to achieve at Catalys

What I want to build at Catalys is more relationships where we carry a client’s management problems with them and stay involved in creating value over the long run. Rather than finishing with a single project, I want to work alongside clients for years on the questions closest to running the business, and build the business with them. I also want to make Catalys a place where the next generation of CxOs and business leaders grows, not just myself. Becoming a group that has a positive effect on both a client company’s growth and the careers of the people in it is my big goal right now.

* Roles and details are as they were at the time of the interview.