The Catalyst is not the smartest person in the room. Their job is to make the room smarter.
GenThink Certified Catalyst™
Rather than certify people as practitioners or thought leaders, we certify them for the effect they can have on an organization. A Catalyst does not walk in with the answer. They create the conditions in which different answers become possible, grounded in behavioral science: working from evidence about how people actually think and decide, holding purpose and understanding above speed and efficiency, and connecting what a room discovers back to outcomes the business can measure.
How candidates are assessed
Candidacy is assessed by observed practice rather than by attendance. Completing The GenThink Intensive is the prerequisite that makes candidacy possible; it is not the credential itself.
- 01Convene a genuinely mixed room, and keep it mixed once the comfortable voices start to dominate.
- 02Help people surface and challenge the inherited assumptions a group cannot see on its own.
- 03Hold productive disagreement, and make space for wild ideas and cross disciplinary thinking, without rushing toward consensus.
- 04Ask the questions that initially feel uncomfortable or impractical, and keep the room with them long enough for the discomfort to be useful.
- 05Translate the strongest thinking into productive experimentation, rather than into a recommendation.
The path
Complete a GenThink Intensive cohort, then enter candidacy: facilitate observed sessions, work through a review of your practice with our facilitators, and submit a record of a room you convened in your own context. Cohorts for candidacy are small, and we take people when they are ready rather than on a fixed calendar.
What comes with it
Certification is the beginning of a working relationship rather than the end of a course. Catalysts receive five one to one coaching sessions with GenThink Labs facilitators, shaped around the rooms they are actually convening and the resistance they are actually meeting.
They also join the GenThink network of certified catalysts, a deliberately small and invitation only community with private groups, closed door gatherings and events held for practitioners rather than audiences. Catalysts are invited to author thought leadership for GenThink Labs, publishing their own field notes and arguments under the lab, and they are the first to see the newest thinking, frameworks, and diagnostics while the work is still forming.
A complimentary year of access to the GenThink Labs methodology library is included, with the evolving frameworks, tools, and diagnostics that support the inquiry, continuing on a subscription basis thereafter.
Getting in touch
Write to us at info@genthinklabs.com if you would like to talk through candidacy, or start with a cohort.