Pattern 01
Undersold senior capacity
Partners doing work two levels below their billable hour. The symptom is "we need more leads." The constraint is delegation discipline. Adding pipeline makes the leak louder, not smaller.
Catalyst Works runs a 90-minute structured diagnostic built for partner-led firms. One named constraint, in writing, before Friday.
Senior capacity is the thing your clients actually pay for. Everyone below the senior line is either supporting that capacity or training to become it. The firm is a delivery system for one scarce input.
Most partner-led firms run senior capacity at 65% utilization on the wrong work. Partners review files a senior associate could close. They sit in meetings a manager could run. The hours leak quietly. Margin leaks with them.
The constraint is almost never "we need more leads." It is almost always one of three things. Undersold senior capacity. Leakage in retention and expansion. Or the partner is the bottleneck for decisions worth $500.
"You think you have a lead problem. The diagnostic says: you have a senior-capacity-spent-on-the-wrong-clients problem. More leads would deepen the wound."
Partners doing work two levels below their billable hour. The symptom is "we need more leads." The constraint is delegation discipline. Adding pipeline makes the leak louder, not smaller.
The firm adds new logos every quarter to replace churning ones. Net revenue is flat. The constraint is delivery quality drift on existing accounts. Not pipeline. The bucket has a hole.
Every reversible call routes through one person. Staff wait on approvals worth $500. Firm velocity is decision-bound, not headcount-bound. Hiring will not fix it. Delegation rules will.
The session runs the five-lens diagnostic against your firm's specific shape. Practice areas. Partner count. Average deal size. Churn. We name the binding constraint and the friction signals that prove it.
Most consultants pitch a six-week discovery. Catalyst Works does not. The diagnostic is the deliverable. Ninety minutes of structured questions against five lenses. A one-page constraint statement in writing.
The work is the pitch. The deliverable is the proof. If after the session the constraint named is not specific enough for you to act on by Friday, you do not pay.
Not a vendor. A diagnostic partner. The firms that hire us a second time do it because the first session was worth more than the invoice.
A 90-minute Signal Session runs all five lenses against the thing in your firm that has stopped making sense. You leave with one named constraint, three friction signals, and one concrete action before Friday.
Book a Signal Session →