Harnessing The Power Of Catalysts: Driving Innovation And Change With Shannon Lucas And Tracey Lovejoy

How do we harness the power of catalysts to drive meaningful change? In this thought-provoking episode, Tony Martignetti welcomes Shannon Lucas and Tracey Lovejoy, co-founders of Catalyst Constellations, to explore the world of catalysts—those dynamic individuals who thrive on driving innovation and positive transformation. Shannon and Tracey share their personal journeys and offer insights into how catalysts can avoid burnout, maximize their impact, and create lasting change in organizations. They also discuss their bestselling book Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. and why understanding the unique traits of catalysts is essential for fostering sustainable growth. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone looking to unlock their inner catalyst and lead with purpose.

---

Listen to the podcast here

Harnessing The Power Of Catalysts: Driving Innovation And Change With Shannon Lucas And Tracey Lovejoy

 nIt is my honor to introduce my guests, Shannon Lucas and Tracey Lovejoy. Shannon is the Cofounder and Co-CEO of Catalyst Constellations. She has over twenty years of experience working with startups, launching her own ventures, and driving innovation into the world's largest companies. She is the bestselling author of Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst Guide to Working Well. She is a passionate thought leader about creating sustainable organizations in every sense of the word for people, planet, and profit. The three Ps, I love it.

In her previous roles as EVP of Emerging Business at Ericsson, senior innovation architect at Cisco's Hyper Innovation Living Lab and director of innovation at Vodafone's Global Enterprise, Shannon empowered Fortune 500 businesses to stay agile, competitive and sustainable through the adoption of new technologies and organizational structures.

Now I’ll introduce you to Tracey. Tracey is a Catalyst Coach, Anthropologist and Cofounder of Catalyst Constellations, where she empowers change agents to accelerate positive transformations. With a rich background in anthropology, she has dedicated her career to understanding and nurturing the unique qualities of catalysts, those dynamic individuals driven to create significant change. Amazing.

Throughout her career, Tracey has worked with some of the world's leading companies, applying her expertise to drive innovation foster environments where catalysts can thrive. Her approach combines anthropological insights, with practical strategies, helping individuals in organizations effectively harness the power of change agents.

She's the co-author, with her lovely partner, Shannon, of the bestselling book Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst Guide to Working Well, which offers invaluable guidance for catalysts on managing their energy, maximizing their impact, and avoiding burnout. Tracey's anthropological studies gave her a deep understanding of human behavior and cultures. This foundation allowed her to, to recognize the distinct patterns and challenges faced by those driving innovation in various environments. It is truly an honor to welcome both of you to the show.

Thanks for having us, Tony. It’s lovely to be here.

It's so fun to be here with you, Tony. Thank you.

Of course. As I bring you into the room and read your bios, it's like it doesn't even capture the true essence of who you both are. There's so much that you bring to the world and I just love that you're great community builders, but also you have such a wealth of background that really backs up the power of what you are doing in the world. I'm thrilled.

That's so sweet. Thank you.

I’ll take all the compliments. Thank you.

Yeah, bring it on.

We like a gold star.

As we're going to do, and this is what I have the esteem pleasure always to do, is to really go on a journey with both of you and explore what brought you to be doing this work and what was the journey that revealed you to the world. We do this through what's called flashpoints. The flashpoints are the moments that ignited your gifts into the world.

In a moment, I'm going to turn it over to you and have you share some of those moments that really defined you or made you who you are. We'll pause along the way and see what themes show up. When we have two guests, it's really special. I want to take a moment to maybe turn it over to one of you and you can start and then we can pause and go to the other one and we can go back and forth. I think we drew straws and Tracey said she was going to go first. Tracey, why don't you get started? What are your flashpoints?

Tracy’s Flashpoints

I love that as a guide. To me, I’ve learned the flashpoints will be different depending on what you're talking about, which is interesting. You get to 50 years old and you realize that you can tell your own story in so many different ways. The flashpoints I'm going to highlight is how Shannon and I came together and how we came to supporting catalysts in the world.

The background, you mentioned the word anthropology in the bio, I think of myself still now as a researcher. This is really pivotal to the story in our flashpoints. At Microsoft, I served as a researcher working innovation, product development. In that journey, I went out into the world. I would study people, I would understand systems, how people use technology, come back and help Microsoft think about what are the white spaces, what are the opportunities? How do we improve what we already have?

In that journey, one of the things that I learned about myself is that I really love the connection with people. When I move from being an individual contributor as a researcher to first being a people manager and then a team manager, I learned that I love doing that even more when I'm supporting that way of being, that mindset of figuring out what's going on and how do we make things better for the person in front of me.

This was a really pivotal flashpoint to where I am now. This led me to taking a coaching training class to support me in my growth as a leader. It was an incredibly disruptive flashpoint because while I thought of it as something to help me grow internally, it really launched something in me that I had to listen to that said, “This is a sense of calling. There's something different here than you intended.”

That led me to pursue my credential in coaching, though I had no idea what I was going to do with it. It was just low hanging fruit of how to keep going. I was lucky enough to be allowed to coach internally as a fraction of my job as it an option. It helped me get that credential and I just, every minute that I spent doing it, the love of it grew.

Finally, after several years of doing this internally, I had to have that moment we all do with ourself of a full honesty and say, “What is it that I really feel like I'm meant to be doing right now?” That led me to leave corporate life to start a consulting agency. That was not an intuitive decision for me in my past. I didn't have folks in my family that I had learned from that did this. This was a very scary thing. I loved being a well-kept zoo animal within the corporate world.

My husband was really supportive and I went out on my own but really didn't know how to start a business and didn't know who I wanted to serve. I started working with my own coach who was pivotal in saying, “You need to figure out what you really want to focus on. Who are the folks, what are the key challenges that they have?” Luckily, as a researcher, it was easy for me to go out and do these studies, but I kept picking new populations. I looked at small business owners, female-owned small business owners, tech executives. There were different groups. I kept going out and doing a set of interviews and in any population I talked to, I was like, “There's a few of them I really like and their challenges but not the whole group.”

I approached it a different way and I said, “Who are all my favorite clients over the past several years? Who were the folks who popped for me across those interviews?” That was the magical moment flashpoint happen of seeing that there were themes across those people, no matter their industry, no matter the role, no matter the gender, no matter their age. I looked across that and was actually sitting with a client telling him, because he was one of the people that I had included. He's like, “Yeah, I'm a catalyst.” I was like, “Yeah, you are.” That's literally where the name was born from, was my client at that time.

Once I saw that pattern, I started doing more structured research. At first it was really lightweight and then, yeah, I was lightweight because I was like thinking about branding. It was a very selfish endeavor, actually. I had two questions that I thought were really easy, which were, how do you relate to this concept of catalyst and what are the key challenges? I thought those would be like five minutes in my half hour interview guide. Twenty-five minutes in, people are crying. They're still talking about all the challenges that no one's ever asked about. I realized, “This is something different than I thought.”

I went and looked on my proverbial shelves. In 2015, there was nothing about the people of innovation. There were beautiful frameworks we were using, agile different things, but not who we are, who are the people who are starting the fires. I started doing really deep structured research that really build the bridge to where we are now. One of the people that I asked to interview was a favorite client at the time and that amazing human was Shannon Lucas. It was in that interview that our journey of becoming business partners began. I will stop my flashpoints there and throw the flashpoint ball over to Ms. Shannon Lucas.

Before she gets started, I want to make some, a couple of observations because I think when I hear you sharing what you shared, the words that come to mind for me is the refinement of our tools, like as an anthropologist is a sense of like think about the evolution of where did we come from and where understanding behavior.

Your journey is almost like a refinement of where you came from was this sense of, of understanding people and doing the research. You started to build tools and new ways of understanding, adding, coaching, adding in other elements that became refinements of who you are and what you do. The catalyst moment, which was a catalyst moment, that really made you explode into saying, “This is what I need to do. I need to turn the lens of innovation, not on innovation itself, but on the innovators and understanding those players so that we can understand what makes people innovate.”

That process of what you're talking about, the iterative learning, is key to what we see in catalyst themselves and how we work with people out in the world. It's a beautiful catch, Tony.

Iterative learning is key to what we see in Catalyst themselves and how we work with people out in the world.

Shannon, let's take it back to you and tell us your journey of your flashpoints.

Shannon’s Flashpoints

Just picking up on the last thread that you had, it's the iteration but also the self-knowledge that is so transformational in everything that we do. I think that's powerful for everyone no matter whether you're a catalyst or not. That flashpoint for me was that moment where there's a bolt of lightning on our book and that's how I described the moment. I remember where I was sitting, I remember what the weather was like. I remember like the embodied experience that I had.

I still get goosebumps as Tracey was telling me about going through the research and sharing out some of her initial thoughts. Talk about the dominoes going all the way back to starting the recycling program in high school because that didn't exist or becoming senior class president in college. There was a problem I needed to fix and the only way that I could fix it was be becoming senior class president. It wasn't becoming senior class president for itself.

The reason that I was had hired Tracey at that particular moment was because I was leading the global innovation, enterprise innovation program at Vodafone and I was burning out and it was my dream job. There was a flashpoint before there where I also remember where I was sitting, where it was when I got the job. It was like this dream job and it was so hard to feel at the same time that I was burning out. It was really perplexing too because in so many ways we were so successful in the innovation program. We had tens of millions of in-year revenue. We completely changed the face of the customer that we were talking to from IT and procurement to the C-suite, products to market, everything. Yet, I was burning out.

The reason that I was burning out was because the hypothesis that we built the program on was that we didn't want an ivory tower of innovation. Three of us were in Silicon Valley, one was at HQ in London. The thesis was let's find the positive troublemakers around the world. We know who the first eight of them are. We'll connect them. We'll create a shared language and tool set and some of the things that you are talking about to stop reinventing the wheel into accelerate the positive change.

We were super successful and we had grown from a ragtag group of 8 positive troublemakers to over 100 certified innovation champions. The reason that I was burning out is because not all of those innovation champions were showing up the same way. I was leading the program, so I was feeling like a failure for that. My go-to is, “Let's just work harder. We'll brute force it. I’ll get on more planes. I’ll spend more time with people,” and all the things.

One of the things that I started doing was I started making the application process harder and harder. I was like, “How do I cultivate in this particular group?” It was probably 30% of the people or what I would now call catalysts who showing up. I didn't need to convince them to do a thing. I didn't need to convince them to move into action. I could provide tools and support them and remove barriers. The troubleshooting the other 70%, how do I get those people to lean in in the same way? That was the friction that was causing burnout. When Tracey sat me down and was like, “This is what the research is showing,” I was like, “That totally describes me.”

I had several data points for saying like, “Yeah you're totally onto something,” because I can immediately apply that to what I have been witnessing, building and running into at Vodafone. Also, I had this other community that I called the Global Intrapreneur Salon because they didn't have a better word for it. They weren't all in innovation roles, but they were creating change in their organizations. My thought around that was like, “We'll co-create it. I don't need to own another community. This is a support group. Every month or every quarter someone can bring their burning issue and get some work shopping or whatever.”

The same exact thing was happening there. I was like, “Now I can apply that lens wherever I go.” I said to Tracey at the time, “This group is burning out. We need some support.” I was going to rent a couple houses up in Northern California, hot tub, good food, good wine, unconference and let's recharge. I said, “Do you want to do that with me?” That was the birth of the company. Just to put a bow on it, now we're really committed. Both Tracey and her are like, “These are the people that we want to support.” It doesn't mean that we're great change makers. It just means that we have this undeterminable burning to create positive change in the world.

Your story, first of all, is so common. Meaning like that it's common to everybody, but there's so many people who go into the world of wanting to make an impact but they burn out. It seems like those two things are almost inextricable when we go into wanting to do something big but then realize, “Why do I constantly get in my own way or burn myself out?” As you described it, I could feel it viscerally myself. That's something I see a lot.

Realizing that the language you use, the troublemakers, the needing for support group, it's almost like we always have this negative connotation that goes along with being someone who drives change. I hate when that happens. I hate when we always have this negativity that goes along with that. I love how you said positive troublemakers, that we need to understand them. We need to understand what wires them to do the things they do and how do we support them in a way that understands well they're not here to cause trouble. They're here to make something positive happen and how to support them.

I think there's two sides to that. If we go back to the self-awareness piece, so I'm sitting there, I'm having the realization with Tracey and after all of the awesome things that I'm feeling, there's this moment of, “What have I done to all those people around me,” because they just didn't have the same relationship with change that I did. Part of it is for us as catalyst, the self-awareness so that we can slow down and bring people along and do all of the things. I love your invitation to other people who may not be identifying as catalyst but say like, “If there's friction in the system because someone is like this troublemaker and trying to get stuff done,” some awareness on their part to help engage and support the catalyst is also an incredible way to unlock this latent potential in organizations.

Growing Up

I want to take a moment to go a little further back for both of you to say let's talk about the environment that you're brought up in. I know, Tracey, you hit on it a little bit, but tell me about who are the people around you? Were they entrepreneurs? Were they not? Where did you come from? Tracey, you want to start and then we'll go back to Shannon?

Absolutely. My mother was a flight attendant, and for all intents and purposes, a single parent. My dad was alive when I was a kid but I saw him very sporadically. I started traveling about seven years old. We would go when my mom had long layovers, especially in Western Europe. We would hop on the airplane with her and go to London or Paris for the weekend. I was a 1970s child and those of you out there that know this timeframe, you totally understand the asking the parent for the check for child support like that, that was my life. My mom really was bringing my sister and I up on the single income. While we lived this insane extravagance of going to London for the weekend, we also were pretty much the lower middle class in the area where I grew up in.

It was such an interesting dichotomy. It was all women in the house, my mom, my sister, all the pets were female when we were growing up. I was having these extraordinary experiences that really you can see that connective.to anthropology, like seeing that the world is different in different cultures was so real to me and in my body from a very young age.

This really connected to a natural talent. This isn't so much the family, but I remember the first time I had awareness, I was sitting in second grade on the floor and someone's mother had come in to talk to us and like the whole time she spoke, she talked directly to me. That's such a through line is I see that there's a natural way of being that I bring comfort to people. People want to open up. People share things with me.

I can see that that definitely is something that both my mom and dad had as well. A lot of the training that I’ve done since then has been cultivating that very natural talent because the flip side of that is that people will give you a lot of things that maybe you're not prepared for. That was really true when I was young. I would hear a lot of things and I didn't know what to do with it. Now I invite it at the moments I want to invite it.

My dad was an entrepreneur, he was a lawyer but honestly I had no insight into what he did. I can tell you that that happened but it didn't have impact on my life. The story of childhood with my dad is more one of trauma, which also connects to part of the really seeing people. I grew up very hypervigilant in a way so that I could feel safe. Shannon and I have talked about that there may be a correlation, at least a good percentage of catalysts who have that hypervigilance in some way in their childhood because it causes you to scan your environment constantly.

When you do that, you're looking for things in a way that maybe others aren't. I'm a believer, I should say I'm a hypothesis maker that one day when we have the tools to test it, I think that catalysts have sensing mechanisms that are either more active or bigger than other folks. I think that's one of the statistical differences that we'll end up seeing. Whether that's from our brain, from our body, both, I don't know, but our ability to just be constantly looking at what's happening, what's changing, what's new, that was developed for me at a very young age.

Catalysts have sensing mechanisms that are either more active or bigger than other folks.

Scanning your environment and looking for part of its safety but also understanding what is influencing me at this moment and creating possibilities, if you look at a more positive way.

That's the flip as you begin to cultivate that and understand how to transition that, if you do.

How about you, Shannon?

I’ll start with the last point. Also grew up hypervigilant to different households, different challenges to navigate in both of the households. The joke in my family was that I was doing laundry when I was in the womb because my mom was so determined to make me self-sufficient and independent in a way that she thought that her family didn't prepare her. It's like that hypervigilance with the get stuff done and the over-functioning for some of the adults around you. We'll talk about it later, but there's also, whether it's the nature nurture, like the empath, the sensitivity to all of the things, which is definitely physical and stuff. My parents were very different. My parents were hippies. I was conceived on a commune literally. I was almost named Sunshine but got Shannon.

I was raised really mostly again by my mom going to demonstrations and doing outreach. I was raised trying with a real premium on making the world better and an anti-focus on money making and business. That was an interesting journey that I had to go on by my own. That seemed like the antithesis, like you couldn't make money and make the world better. It was really how some of the things that I was brought up with.

I think the other interesting thing is partway through my life I got another mom, Rosemary Talmage, and she's a catalyst. My mom has catalytic tendencies but Rosemary was definitely a catalyst. Both my mom's got their phds in Organizational Development. Rosemary at 60 and my mom at 70, so it’s just amazing. My mom doesn't stop. That's one thing I will say.

At 80, she still spent two weeks in Paris with me and so she's like in the world, engaged with community and with friends. I'm in the world all the time and doing the community building. It was great to have a catalyst mentor who was also a mom who showed me different ways that you could create change but also really introduced me to a lot of like Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer and appreciative inquiry and all of these great modalities that really helped me particularly as I moved into my own leadership.

The final part I’ll say just because it's fun is so my parents were super supportive of me studying whatever I wanted to study. I ended up getting a degree in Art History in Paris, spending three years in Paris, and then pretty quickly became a network engineer, which blew their mind like, “What?” I'm just super grateful for that because it's so prevalent now and so much innovation and the ability to create positive change in the world is built on the technology. I was really glad to have the depth like I was building out the internet peering at the most fundamental layers at places like Microsoft.

Coming Together

What I really love about what you shared, it actually is reflected in both of your stories is a sense of, sure, your backgrounds are very different but you've had people who have been really good role models along the way that have shown you that you can do amazing things in the world. You have both have a humanities nature to you both but you also have this tech element that has been part of your DNA as well which is really cool and obviously led you to doing what you're doing now. I want to talk about that element now. We've talked about your separate backgrounds and what brought you together initially, but tell me about the true element of coming together and working together. What were the challenges of building what you've built together? Who wants to answer that one?

With Shannon and I, we were working together already so we had that foundation of knowing each other. One of the challenges, though, is that the relationship of a coach and a client is uneven. I knew Shannon much better than she knew me. That's just one challenge that I’ll name. When we were doing the interview that we both mentioned earlier, she said in that call, “Do you want to run a retreat,” with the group of people she was mentioning? That was our first foray together.

As we did that there were things that we realized had to happen like actually setting up a company because you can't take money and be able to deal with it without doing it. There were these baby steps that weren't about building what is now Catalyst Constellations or writing a book. It was tactical of, “We're going to have to take money.”

Back then it was like, “If I take it all in, I have the tax hit. How do we do this?” There were just these things that would come up and we'd solve them in the moment. We had a really amazing moment where we came together and did a visioning exercise and neither of us expected it to be as powerful as it was.

I remember we were sitting in the basement of my old house. Shannon was kind enough to come out because my foot was in a boot after a surgery and we were separately thinking about a visioning question. I don't even remember the question right now that we used. When we read out together, the overlap was shocking to us both. It's those moments of coming together where you say, “There's something here. We see the same thing. We want the same things. Each time, that would give us the fuel to say, “Let's keep doing more.”

We ran a retreat together. It was transformational for us and for the people that we ran it. We loved doing the iterations and making the retreat better each time. It was taking one step at a time. Eventually, we did another visioning and we began to let ourselves dream of being together. We had a vision of writing a book one day of actually each of us leaving our separate work that we were doing and coming to work together one day. That visioning, over time, would iterate and grow and became more true. Once we officially became a company together, which was early 2020 where we both were trying to leave our separate identities and come together fully as Co-ceos, Shannon was brilliant and suggested that we work with a coach that specializes in working with partners.

The headaches and migraines we both had. It was some of the hardest work we've ever done. I think that marriage counseling is something that a lot of people have experienced in the Western hemisphere. This is another form of marriage counseling. It took us to those fundamental questions of what are your values? Even some of the things you're asking but at a deeper level, what was it like growing up? What are the ways that you really fear in the world? How do you operate? What are the things that that drive you crazy? Going to those absolute basics of first understanding where we're going to hit problems and then talking about the stuff you don't want to talk about like money, anger, dealing with conflict, and failure.

We both were running a business so we'd show up and be like, “We're running a business,” and then the next day, we'd have the coaching call and we'd have had all this homework and we'd be both sick texting each other of like, “I feel sick with a conversation we’re going to have tomorrow.” She's like, “Yeah, me too.” It was this process of getting married and it was really F-ing hard. It was hard and the commitment to keep that honesty and keep coming back with really hard conversations. In the States, workplaces don't typically deal with the emotional, you cannot have a life partner if you don't allow the emotional and the pain and what hurts you.

Family systems, like all the stuff that you bring in to a dynamic where we spend more time with each other, even though we're virtual, than we do with our families. So much of our identity and what we're manifesting in our life writ large is connected to the foundations of this relationship. She wasn't just a coach, too. She was actually a licensed therapist. It was an important distinction because it was marriage counseling but she focused on partnerships for small businesses. It was like the best investment ever. I will double down on how hard it is, but you also see the commitment. You're like, “Yes, we're in this. It's super uncomfortable but we want to do this.”

I love that you said the commitment is such an important part and the hearing you describe this, there is an element of if you want a strong business, if you want a business that's going to create an impact, then investing in a strong foundation of really getting to know each other at a really personal level, it's a personal business, then this is what you do. What you want to create is a strong container of trust, understanding and knowing each other. That's where this has really been a good foundation. It’s being able to start there and then other people see that and feel that when they come into the space. I can speak to that because now I’ve experienced it.

That's lovely. Thank you.

It's important. I think that's a message for other people who want to start something together with a partner. If you are wanting to do this, you have to commit to really getting to know that person

The things you weren't saying are the things that will be your own doing.

The things you aren't saying are the things that will be your undoing.

A Love Letter To Catalysts

I want to shift gears a little bit because like time's like just whizzing by. I don't you know where it's gone. I want to shift into the book and talk about some of the ideas in the book because I'm just blown away. It's such a really wonderful book and it covers a lot of ground. Tell me about the process of getting you there. What was it like to write a book with someone else? Obviously, you guys have had a good relationship building up but talk about the book and then the key concepts that you want to share with people who are reading right now.

Tracey mentioned earlier, the visioning process was always just so fun and interesting and it's so great to get to go back and look now because very early days, at some point, we did have a book in our vision. Connected to that, after the first or second retreat, we were like, “We need an advisory board. This wasn't our full-time gig. We need people who are smarter than us to help us grow.” Dustin, who now works with us, but really the whole board, were like, “You're creating a cult and you need the bible for your cult.” We were like, “That's true.” It wasn't a totally foreign concept to us and we pivoted that a little bit to make it the personal operating manual for catalysts.

It was really our love letter to Catalyst. It was the book that I wished I had had years ago that would've just made me so much more effective and saved so much heartache and burnout. That was really the intent behind it. Obviously, if you have a business like we're creating, when Tracey did the research, there wasn't a market segment or demographic that fit these people. If we want to help support Catalyst which we want to do to help accelerate positive change in the world, they have to first self-identify as a catalyst. That was also a foundation to the business because it's like, “How do we help you understand who you are so that you can understand how we can help you?”

The process was interesting as we were coming into 2020 and knowing that we were going to be moving into the business full time, it was also like, “Now it's time to start exploring the book.” In the fall of 2019, we talked with everyone that we could and we got asked a lot of great questions. One of the best questions I think that someone asked us was like, “Do you want to be authors?” We had to answer that question and it wasn't a super hard question for me. I don't think it was for Tracey.

We were like, “No, that's not the identity.” The reason that we're writing the book is for all of the reasons that I just said, not because we want to be prolific writers in New York time bestsellers. Once we answered that, then that helps to be like, “We’re hiring someone to help us write this,” especially bringing two people's experience, creating a single voice, helping us through the process, knowing that we didn't want to do the heavy lifting just became really clear.

We are so grateful to Brennan who helped us write the book because she's also a catalyst. She went through her own transformation and so it was a really great process of having a catalyst have to understand all of the things that we were talking about to help provide clarity. We also knew that we wanted to share really transparently and vulnerably. It had to be authentic. That was one of the gifts that we wanted to give in the world. We also wanted to help people on their own journey lean into the challenges.

We have gotten so many letters about people breaking down and crying as they have or after reading the book and I get it because that was my reaction when Tracey first told me about the research. That's the story of the book and like I said, we still get people reaching out to us about how it's changed their lives on almost weekly basis.

What I just want to reflect back on that is, is a sense of like when you write a book like this, not only is it a love letter to catalysts everywhere, but also it's a book that changes you as you write it because you're sitting down to really codify all the things about yourself that you probably never thought about. I think that's the important part of doing this. It's like people often say, “Who are you writing this book for?” “Yeah, I'm writing for the catalysts,” but you're also writing it for yourself selfishly, let's be honest.

It was definitely therapeutic, Tony. There's that, too.

I think that's important to acknowledge. Obviously, it's hard to say because you're like, “I don't want to seem conceded,” but it's a therapeutic process to really get yourself to put pen to paper and really organize your thoughts around who am I, what am I doing and how did this all come to be?

There is a weird side effect. Tracey was talking about the imbalance of like the coach-coachee. When we meet people now, there's things like me talking about burning out 27 days of migraines in 30 days. There's a lot of really raw stuff that's in there and people will be like, “They know these really deep things about my life.” It's an interesting dynamic sometimes.

You also ask the question like, “What do we hope that people will take away from it?” The first one, I keep going back to that general self-knowledge. If you don't remember anything else out of the book but you understand that you have a different relationship with change than those around you and that the title is Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out., which is our default mode. People think that we're advocating for that and it's like, “No, that's not what we're advocating for.” That's what we do when we lack that self-awareness and some of the other tools and supports.

The next layer is underneath that self-awareness is how do you slow down just enough to bring people along on the journey so that you're not breaking the wrong stuff. You're bringing people with you to break the right stuff. We're not convinced that you can totally eliminate the burnout, but how do you learn the sensing skills? If you've reduced the friction in the first two steps, you're much more likely to have the amplitude of the burnout reduced but also the frequency. How do you start to develop some of the self-awareness and sensing skills to minimize burnout?

Catalyst Constellations

I'm so glad you shared that because titles don't always tell the whole story and I think we need to be able to get down and understand more for people to say, “What am I going to get from here?” We're coming to the close here, but I wanted to make sure we had a moment to talk about you've been running the Catalyst Constellations for a bit now and so you've had the chance to have a front row seat to some amazing people and to work with them. Tell me what's top of mind these days through the work that you've been doing with people that you want to share? Maybe even in the process of answering this question, talk about what it is that's so important about the mission right now.

A couple meta themes. One, everyone knows the pace of change is accelerating. The impact of the change is accelerating. We've all experienced this and so even catalysts who have the most positive relationship with change are experiencing change fatigue. I guess I’ll tie this back to you. There's one other thing that I personally. If people are like, “What do you want me to take out of the book?” It's the self-compassion piece because being a catalyst is hard, but for everyone right now, just self-compassion because the never normal is really destabilizing.

With that, then a next click down into a macroeconomic thing is we have this doing more with less. We have less time, we have less energy, we have more things that we have to do. Our mission is to really help organizations identify these powerhouses that do have the most positive relationship with change and make sure that that's the talent.

Not every company should be all catalysts, but make sure that they're identifying these people who are the most loyal, the most engaged. You can identify and activate catalyst to help them navigate this. It helps organizations do more with less because catalysts generally are like, “Our 100% is everyone else's 150%.” Just connecting them so that they're not the negative troublemakers or disruptors. They're the positive troublemakers that are really helping you navigate change.

Did you want to add anything to that, Tracey?

My brain is in so many directions and Shannon said it so beautifully. It is such an incredibly tough time for all of us in the globe right now. What's really top of mind for me and Shannon is not only supporting that change fatigue as she said that is surprising to us to hit catalyst themselves. How do we help catalysts and organizations that are downsizing but setting bigger goals that are asking them to lead people through change without giving them the resources that are useful in leading people through change?

These are tough, difficult times. The number one thing that we've been leaning into is helping organizations find the catalysts because we just see them as the engine and answer to so much of what's happening. If you have to do more with less, then find the right people that can be the ones that are going to help you understand what to do with every new twist and turn.

If you have to do more with less, then find the right people that can be the ones who are going to help you understand what to do with every new twist and turn.

We can't keep bringing in consultants in the do more with less timeframe and we all have untapped resources in their catalysts right in-house. As we have the compassion, we know that we have these amazing people right in front of us that maybe haven't gotten the training so that they can be as effective as possible to shift from just being a troublemaker to being a positive troublemaker calling on what you two picked up on. The organization hasn't set up the systems to be able to leverage them.

If we have a new massive global disruption every quarter, and actually, it's way faster than that, whether we're having tax brackets change or cutting off imports from a particular country. We have a bridge that falls down and so things aren't making it to the warehouses. We have a strike that happens. You are having these things happen all the time, so how do you have that cadre of people at the ready that can help you resolution and creatively imagine at every corner? They're there. We just don't know that they're there.

Impactful Books

I love what you're both sharing. This comes back to this idea of refining their tools so that they start to come to the surface of we can now see how to utilize what is already there, these catalysts, and tapping into their strengths, their abilities and motivations to really use that talent to its best of capabilities. We're coming to the close, but I have one last question for both of you and this is the one I always enjoy. What are 1 or 2 books have had impact on you and why? I’ll start with Shannon and then we'll go back to Tracey.

Isaac Asimov, The Foundation series. It was the first sci-fi book I ever read and I went way down the rabbit hole and it completely changed my life. I was always a nerd. I think that it's super interesting how many nerds are in the catalyst world because there is this thing about imagining new futures and how that actually feeds into our ability to imagine new futures that we want to manifest. Thank you, Isaac Asimov.

The other one is The Highly Sensitive Person book. I had the reaction and I read that during the pandemic actually while we were writing our book. I had that same reaction that people talk about. I bawled my way through it. I read parts of it to my husband, he was like, “Yes, I know about this about you, honey.” The fact that he knew that and was totally willing to support those parts of you is why it was so great. I think there's a huge overlap between the HSP world and the Catalyst world and all the things that Tracey was talking about earlier.

Thank you for sharing. Tracey?

Both of what I'm going to share is in relationship to business, but there's personal overlap. The first is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni. It's such a baseline and yet it's old now. Sometimes, newer folks haven't been introduced to that book. Even though Shannon and I come in and we work with the catalyst leaders, the basics that he lays out there of ensuring teams have trust, the ability to have discussion, that they're creating commitments together, that they're holding each other accountable and driving toward results.

It just never goes away, whatever framework you're going to use to think about those. Every team we come into, we still like to reference that because it's so foundational. I am someone who really struggles to read the business books that don't have a story. Patrick Lencioni, almost all of his books, except for one, are a story. He really helps make it accessible for me.

The second one I’ll share, it'll have a corollary. When I was young, I was introduced to self-help but spiritual, different books in that realm. Richard Bach, in particular the book One was really meaningful to me, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck as well. The reason I bring those forward and say that I'm talking about business is that as a coach, one of the things I find that are the most important, which is laced in the conversation we're having, is the ability to see yourself and pay attention to the signs. I talked about earlier that coaching class was telling me that there was something more to that class than my leadership. Shannon was talking about this. I became class president to support this. Looking for what the world is telling us and how to read our bodies and the introduction to spiritual work was the first time I had that.

Nowadays, we have Brené Brown, we have the ideas of emotional intelligence. Those are books that can help you begin to think about that, too, if that's new to you. What I find is that with anyone I work with that has these amazing things that they want to manifest in their own life and in the world, until we're able to slow down and see ourselves and see what our body is telling us, what the world around us is telling us, it becomes really hard to move forward in a fluid way. Those books were really jumping off points for me to have that journey. It doesn't make them the books that will get other people there.

Yeah, I agree. That makes a lot of sense.

What are yours, Tony?

I’ve gotten so many, I don’t know if you have time to go through all of them, but two of my favorites are The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander just because I love his style of looking at things from a different angle and seeing the possibilities and everything that's around us. He has a just a very engaging style, both of them.

The other book that always comes to mind is Think Again by Adam Grant because even just in the title is this idea that we have to always be thinking again. We have to keep ourselves open-minded about what's possible and never get too stuck in our ideas and ideologies. Think Again is always been on my list. I guess if I were to add one more in the mix, A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer. He's a director named Brian Grazer. They were part of Imagine Entertainment.

Basically, Brian Grazer had these conversations with people that were called Curiosity Conversations and he'd go out and have these conversations to find out more about people and it really changed his life. For me, it was the same thing. I had curiosity conversations throughout my life that have led to new opportunities, new roles and new ways of seeing the world. I think when I read that book, I was like, “This is what I’ve been doing all along.”

Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you all for this conversation. This has been just truly wonderful. I thank you for all your insights, your beautiful stories and everything you're doing in the world. Thank you for coming and joining me of this conversation.

Thanks for having us. This is a blast.

Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where to find out more about you. What's the best place to find more information?

Definitely check out the website, CatalystConstellations.com and reach out to us on LinkedIn. We love to connect with people.

Thank you for coming on the journey with us, readers. I know you're leaving with so many great things to think about. Go pick up this book. You will not regret it. It is a wonderful book. Do reach out to both Shannon and Tracey. You're going to love to talk to them. Thanks for the conversation. That's a wrap.

Important Links

• Shannon Lucas
• Tracey Lovejoy
• Catalyst Constellations.
• Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst Guide to Working Well
• The Foundation
• The Highly Sensitive Person
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• One
• The Road Less Traveled
• The Art of Possibility
• Think Again
• A Curious Mind

About Shannon Lucas

With over 20 years of experience in global innovation, I am a Catalyst of Catalysts, helping changemakers and leaders transform the world's largest organizations to be more sustainable in every sense of the word; for people, planet and profit.

I am the Co-CEO of Catalyst Constellations, a change accelerator that leverages research-driven insights and executive experience to catalyze innate changemakers to build future-proof companies that thrive. I am also the co-author of the #1 Amazon best seller "Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. The Catalyst's Guide to Working Well", a book that empowers Catalysts to harness their unique strengths and avoid burnout.

In addition, I am the Managing Director of the Catalyst Leadership Trust at Samudra Group, a purpose-driven, invite-only executive community that supports Catalyst leaders in driving the change needed for the world and their organizations.

I have a proven track record of delivering transformational technology solutions, driving innovation and intrapreneurial culture, and facilitating co-creation and sustainability across various industries and roles.

My passion is cultivating more catalytic leaders and developing a global network of Catalysts to create bold, powerful change in the world.

About Tracey Lovejoy

I unlock people that change the world. I am a Catalyst of Catalysts.

What are Catalysts, you may ask? Those with myriad ideas and a deep drive for action that makes the world around them better. I help Catalysts harness their confidence and clarity to more powerfully change the world.

I do this by helping them fully embody their super powers, get clear on their vision and take intentional steps toward that vision. I work 1:1 with catalysts, helping them unblock barriers and manifest their visions. I also support teams led by Catalysts, ensuring they have the resilience and health to be ready for change and action.

I have supported Catalysts and their teams in a wide variety of large organizations such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Steelcase, Microsoft, Intel, Vodafone, Tommy Bahama, as well as movers & shakers, entrepreneurs and small business owners across many industries like healthcare, education, technology, professional services, retail and food service.

Change agents the world over work with me to:

• Get crystal clear on the vision they want to manifest

• Build action plans to get there

• Test and iterate the action plans by DOING

• Develop their leadership so they can better help others help them manifest

• Grow the health and resilience of their teams so they are ready to change the world together

I spent 12 lightning-fast years at Microsoft where I worked at the intersection of technology, design and innovation. I am an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation, an award winning faciliator, and the co-founder of the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference.

As a trained social scientist, I am able to identify patterns that allow me to get to the heart of the matter—both with individuals’ behaviors as well as with teams and systems. I sees things others do not. I am known for directly sharing what I see with compassion, warmth and an eye toward results. In my everyday life, I am known for optimism, big energy, a drive for results and a bit of irreverence.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.ipurposepartners.com/podcast