1) While innovation is happening through acquisitions (which I love and think we should do more of), internal innovation has completely dried up (not referring to HAS because it's not a sellable solution for our clients). Our operations team has created so many heavy handed processes, meetings and internal checkpoints that it's impossible to innovate and create solutions that truly benefit our client partners. We have business units that have hardly seen any success in 2-3 years and we still continue to dump money and resources into them. At the same time, we tamp down any new ideas or solutions that don't fit within our preconceived boxes of thinking and processes that we have made for ourselves internally. It's frustrating to watch. Why do we continually funnel money and resources to solutions that can't sell and haven't provided any real value for our clients? There is no process in place to pilot from the ground up. Way too top heavy.
2) We have created a culture of entitled complainers. Catalyst is an incredible place that offers an incredible benefits package and culture. Yet people still find ways to overwhelm the Q&A feeds with complaints that sound petty and ungrateful. Yes, there will always be room for improvement, but do we really need to complain about not getting our pie on pie day because the office is closed for COVID? We do ourselves a disservice focusing our efforts on addressing entitled behaviors.