Services
Our services are designed to help teams and individuals harness the power of imagination and apply it to the business of change.
Group Facilitation
Change is hard. It requires shared vision, commitment, and teamwork. It also requires creativity, which in its simplest, most widely accepted definition, means the generation of new and useful ideas. But new ideas are often overlooked without a process in place to cultivate and accelerate them into workable solutions.
Catalyst Muse shapes a process to generate and build on new ideas in a judgment free environment. We blend in humor and trust, so that participants build on each other’s ideas and take imaginative leaps that lift the deepest thinking to the surface, shedding new light on complex challenges, problems, and opportunities.
At the core of our facilitations is Creative Problem Solving (CPS), which weaves together divergent and convergent thinking into a powerful, productive process. In other words, CPS makes space for ideas of all kinds to emerge in large quantities. From wacky and silly to obvious and practical, new thoughts are used as material for participants to pause, consider, and select those that hold the most promise.
It’s natural for humans to solve problems, and CPS’s simple structure leaves space to layer in different tools and techniques to create a custom experience designed to meet each client’s needs. Click here for a better understanding of how the basic CPS process works.
Case Study
It Takes a Village to Find a Problem
In Topanga, California volunteerism is deeply embedded into civic life. Essential services, such as emergency preparedness and senior care, are partially funded by Los Angeles County and fully conceived of, initiated, staffed, and operated by volunteer groups. Individuals coordinate effective efforts to provide recruitment, training, and operations that directly serve the mountain community. Yet, burn out has set in after many years of continuous work. Volunteer leaders are ready to pass the torch. But to whom?
With a lack of ready successors to take on enormous responsibilities, Bonnie Morgan, business manager at MESSENGER MOUNTAIN MEDIA GROUP (MMMG) created a volunteer portal on the media group’s website to connect potential volunteers to the more than 40 public benefit entities in the canyon that rely on unpaid people power. She invested countless hours collecting information and posting organizational profiles, but very few people took advantage of this ready source of information. To help Bonnie understand why, Catalyst Muse lead a Creative Problem Solving session.
At the beginning of the session, Bonnie felt that the problem was hers alone and stated, “It would be great if MMMG could inspire an ethic of volunteerism in the community.”
The discussion evolved from the belief that the problem started with lack of marketing into a deeper understanding of the issue. After the session, Bonnie had many new, invigorating ideas to consider, a working solution, and a new perception of her involvement, stating: “What I see myself doing is…spearheading an education/information campaign to inspire more community awareness and involvement in our volunteer organizations. This has multiple legs – comprehensive.”
In follow up, Bonnie is reaching out to potential community partners to develop the campaign.
Individual Facilitation
Making meaningful change requires digging deep to identify and confront obstacles. We guide our clients to bring creative products to fruition, remove barriers to achieving dreams or realizing goals, to find more satisfaction and agency in their lives. We use facilitation, which is slightly different than coaching, in that we don’t impose a prescribed outcome to the client’s process. Instead, we structure the facilitation to empower our clients with tools and techniques that enhance their explorations, dig deep for all the possibilities, and provide guideposts for the future.
Case Study
Moving a Manuscript from Computer File to Marketplace
ROBIN LITHGOW retired from an influential, satisfying career as an arts education leader and sat down to write a book about a subject that had long fascinated her. She wrote about educator, humanist, and philosopher Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Most of us don’t recognize his name. But, we do recognize the name of his most famous student – William Shakespeare. In energetic prose that delights the senses, Lithgow illuminates the power of Erasmus’s teaching method, which has sustained the influence of a singular playwright for more than four hundred years.
To help Lithgow liberate her manuscript from the depths of her laptop, Catalyst Muse partnered with Precocity Press to offer a full complement of services. After 12 weeks, she had a marketing and social media plan, in-depth research into potential publishers, and a query letter to introduce Good Behavior and Audacity: Humanist Education, Performing Arts, and a Generation of Genius. The extremely positive response to the manuscript and its marketing plan is very promising, which for a book that wasn’t going to see the light of day, is a great place to begin.
Research
Like facilitation, ethnographic research starts with asking questions. We begin with discovery, where we learn more about the client’s goals and what they seek to learn. We approach research design collaboratively with the client employing multiple quantitative and qualitative methods. We then plan and implement data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting. A Catalyst Muse study results in key insights, findings, and recommendations that richly inform decision making.
Our team has worked together for almost a decade, beginning at the Centers for Research on Creativity, founded by the late Dr. James Catterall, where our clients included the Alameda County Office of Education, Collaborations: Teachers and Artists, Educational Theatre Association, Inner-City Arts, Louisiana A+ Schools, P.S. ARTS, Royal Blind School of Scotland, The Wooden Floor, The Walt Disney Company, and Tree People.
In addition to creativity, we investigate related dispositions, attitudes, and behaviors, such as collaboration, critical thinking, creative self efficacy, and empathy. We maintain an active network of cross-disciplinary researchers throughout the country and around the world and welcome inquiries about how we might collaborate with your organization.
Case Study
Growing Leaders for Change
Los Angeles County’s Generation Earth environmental service learning program (GESL) is managed and presented by Tree People Center for Community Forestry. Located in the serene forest of Coldwater Canyon, the organization has grown from one teenager’s passion for saving trees into a leading force in environmental preservation, restoration, and integration. For over 40 years, the organization has taught multiple generations about how to care for, protect, propagate, and enjoy nature.
Many public, private, and charter schools throughout the County have adopted GESL curriculum. From planting trees and gardens to reclaiming water and reducing pollution, today’s students are developing valuable skills, the ability to collaborate and care, and a deep appreciation for individual and collective action.
External evaluation is integral to the continued effectiveness of the program. Catalyst Muse partners with Imagination Group to conduct student and teacher focus groups, observe teacher PD workshops, and report on the findings. The goal is to inform teachers and administrators about what’s working, what’s not, what has the most impact, the least, and what their peers and students value most.
Evaluation provides a solid foundation for making improvements and adjustments to maintain the vitality of the programs, which ultimately touch the lives of millions of people. This is some of the most hopeful work that Catalyst Muse engages in!