The ecosystem behind Catalyst: small core, big impact

In my previous contribution, I wrote that Catalyst is not a software company, but a service provider that also brings applications into the process. This is what that choice looks like in practice, organisationally.
Collective actions rarely move at a constant rhythm. They come in waves: long stretches of relative calm can suddenly turn into a week where a summons must be finalised, a registration flow needs to go live, or an email campaign has to reach tens of thousands of participants. That kind of pace is difficult to accommodate within a traditional organisation built around fixed capacity. Either you pay for people you do not always need, or you find yourself short of resources precisely when it matters most.

The ecosystem around Catalyst is built around that reality.
We work with a trusted network of specialists: a designer, developers, technical infrastructure experts, process optimisation specialists and strategic advisors. Every one of them is a senior professional, the kind of person who has earned the right to charge a premium rate. And because I do not need them full-time, I can afford that level of expertise. The result is not only better execution, but also the insight and judgement that come from someone who has been doing this work for twenty years.
That last point is often underestimated.

A good developer does not simply build what you ask for; they also tell you when the request itself is flawed. A good designer does not just make something look attractive; they recognise where participants hesitate, drop off or become unnecessarily confused. A strong back-office professional does not merely answer emails; they spot patterns in incoming questions that may later turn into legal or communication issues.
That is where the real value lies. Not in extra hands, but in people who think along because they understand the broader context.

Sometimes a case suddenly requires far more capacity than usual. That is where Knikkers comes in.
Knikkers is another company I own: a flexible staffing organisation designed to scale up and down quickly. That fits collective actions remarkably well. Even today, you still come across boxes full of paperwork, forms that need manual processing, and files that have to be scanned and verified. AI can take you a long way, but there still needs to be someone directing and validating the process.
Through Knikkers, we can deploy two thousand hours of capacity within a week if necessary, and then scale back down again just as quickly. Scaling up and scaling down, in the same rhythm as the case itself.

What keeps all of this together is mutual loyalty. I can call someone on a Saturday evening because something needs to go out on Monday, and it will get done because the people around me know I do not create false urgency. I ask the same of every law firm we work with: do not tell me something is needed by Monday if the partner is not planning to review it until Thursday. That honesty, in both directions, is what makes this model work. From the outside, clients see very little of this, and that is exactly as it should be.

But the reason we have organised ourselves this way goes beyond an organisational chart. There is a broader conviction underneath it, about how collective actions should be run and who they ultimately serve.
That is what my next contribution will be about.