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Strategic clarity before transformation

When services grow over time, it can become difficult to see where friction, duplication or missed opportunities are emerging. Teams feel stretched, participant and customer experiences become inconsistent, and leaders know something needs to shift; but it's not always clear where to start. SHiFT Catalyst is a focused strategic engagement designed to help organisations pause, reflect and gain clarity before committing to larger transformation work.

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Cata Bonavia facilitating a SHiFT Catalyst session with clients

Sound familiar?

You've done the work. So why does growth still feel like it's breaking you?

You've done the work; the CRM rollout, the brand refresh, the leadership offsite, the new intake process. Still it feels like growth is breaking you.

The board is asking for growth, the team is stretched, the marketing person is doing three jobs. Participants and families are noticing the gaps before leadership does; staff are leaving for organisations that seem to have it more together, even when your mission is stronger.

It's not that what you've done is wrong; it's that the pieces sit alongside each other instead of connecting. Those solutions weren't designed for your reality.

A coherent experience is what turns purpose into retention, referrals, and reputation. Designing that is what we do here.

What it is

A focused strategic engagement

Through stakeholder conversations, service and experience review, and collaborative sense-making, we uncover what's working, where challenges exist, and where the greatest opportunities for impact may be.

This engagement creates the insight, alignment and strategic direction needed to move forward with confidence.

You bring the complexity of your real environment. I bring the design lens, the sector depth, and the SHiFT methodology. Together, in one focused working session, we map what's actually happening, design what should be, and close with a plan your team can act on.

Is this right for you?

Who this was built for

This is for you if…

✓

You're in disability services, aged care, health, women's wellbeing, or community services

✓

You understand the importance of a coherent service ecosystem and experience to attract and retain great people

✓

Your team is under 200 staff with $7M+ revenue and budget for strategic design

This is not for you if…

✗

You're looking for a templated process map or a brand refresh

✗

You want a consultant to just tell you what to do without collaboration

✗

Your organisation has a negative impact in your community

The process

The architecture behind

Catalyst is a focused strategic engagement built like an iceberg. Most of the value exists beneath the surface; in the thinking, preparation, synthesis and strategic alignment that happens before and after the working session itself.

This is not simply a workshop or facilitation session.

1–3 weeks prior

Before the session

— Review of existing service, customer or employee experience materials
— Strategic preparation tailored to your organisation, context and priorities
— Pre-session reflection form completed by your team
— Leadership conversations with the CEO and key stakeholders
— Facilitation and engagement design shaped around your organisational realities

The working session

Half-day strategic intensive

— Map the experience as it currently exists across teams, systems and services
— Identify friction, duplication and missed opportunities
— Explore participant, customer and staff experience realities
— Prioritise where focused change will create the greatest impact
— Design one key experience, journey or opportunity area together
— Build practical next steps aligned with your operational realities and capacity

2–4 weeks following

After the session

— Delivery of strategic artefacts and working documents
— Refinement and synthesis of insights and recommendations
— Practical roadmap and prioritisation guidance
— Follow-up strategic check-in session to support momentum and next steps

Deliverables

What you walk away with

Catalyst is designed to create practical clarity, not theoretical strategy. Every engagement produces a tailored set of strategic artefacts designed to support decision-making, alignment and action beyond the session itself.

Service or Experience Journey Map

A clear visualisation of the participant, customer or staff experience as it currently exists; including friction points, gaps and opportunities.

Strategic Opportunity Areas

Prioritised opportunities for improvement, innovation or operational alignment across services, systems or experiences.

Experience or Service Concept

A collaboratively designed future-state experience, interaction or service opportunity shaped around real organisational constraints and goals.

90-Day Roadmap

A practical Now / Next / Later implementation pathway with priorities, momentum actions and ownership recommendations.

Strategic Reflection and Follow-up

A facilitated check-in session following delivery to support alignment, momentum and next-step decision-making.

AI Opportunity Mapping (where relevant)

Exploration of opportunities for ethical and human-centred use of AI to reduce friction, support teams or strengthen service delivery.

The methodology underneath

Think Then AI

In purpose-led sectors, AI shouldn't replace the people doing good. It should multiply their capacity to do it. Think Then AI is the methodology that runs underneath every decision in the engagement.

Think.

Understand the people, the process, and the purpose before any technology touches them. Map what's actually working. Find what's almost working but not quite landing.

Then.

Design the experience deliberately; build coherence between marketing, intake, delivery, and renewal. Make your values visible at every touchpoint.

AI.

Choose where AI amplifies your team and where it doesn't belong. Ethical, human-first, inside your real-world constraints.

Cata Bonavia, Founder, SHiFT with Purpose

Why me

From Strategy to Making it Happen

Hi, I'm Catalina; an Argentine-born industrial designer and service strategist based in Melbourne. In 2014, fresh out of university, I took a job at a start-up creating housing solutions for low-income families in Argentina. I spent months visiting families, learning about their motivations, needs and ways of thinking. The outcome was a bathroom that can be built in eight hours with no prior knowledge or trade skills. But what changed me wasn't the solution; it was the process to get there.

After that I built my career at the intersection of human experience and systems change; building the Employee Experience team at RMIT and changing how HR approached their projects, co-designing a new business permits process across more than ten councils in Victoria, and redesigning an industry-leading supported employee experience with and for people with intellectual disabilities.

I founded SHiFT with Purpose because I kept watching the same pattern repeat: purpose-led organisations with good people and real intent, whose participant, client and employee experiences were being held back by systems and structures that were never designed for them.

I work with everyone from the shop floor to the board room and beyond. I am directly and deeply involved in every engagement; from the first conversation to the final handover. Continuity of thinking is part of the design.

Moving countries teaches you to read unfamiliar environments quickly. To notice what others have stopped seeing. To ask the question the room has decided is too obvious, or too uncomfortable. That's the lens every engagement starts with.

What clients say

“We were looking for a unicorn, and we found her. We needed someone who could do it all, and I honestly didn’t think they existed. We interviewed service designers and a few larger creative agencies, but SHiFT With Purpose was the only one that took the time to understand us and didn’t propose a cookie-cutter approach. For us it is critical that our participants feel heard and engaged, and Catalina’s approach exceeded our expectations. I never have to worry about anything; she’s the dream.”

Sarah Exton

Chief Experience Officer, Waverley Social Enterprises

Pricing

The investment

Typically $5,000–15,000 + GST

Depending on scope and organisational complexity.

The investment includes:

—Tailored strategic preparation
—Leadership and stakeholder engagement
—Facilitated working sessions
—Strategic synthesis and recommendations
—Practical implementation guidance and follow-up support

Many organisations find the engagement helps reduce operational friction, strengthen alignment and accelerate decision-making across teams and services.

Consider the real cost of the current experience…

One participant who disengages in the first 30 days

One staff member who leaves because the systems make meaningful work harder than it should be

One referral partner who stops sending people your way

None of these show up as a line item. But they compound. Most clients find the Catalyst repays itself within months.

Questions you might be sitting with

Answered honestly

Most organisations are already investing significant time responding to operational friction, rework, misalignment and competing priorities. Catalyst creates a structured space to step out of reactive mode and identify where focused changes will create the greatest impact.

The cost of service friction is rarely visible on a spreadsheet. Participant disengagement, staff burnout, duplicated effort and inconsistent experiences compound over time. Catalyst is designed to help organisations identify where strategic improvements can create meaningful operational and human impact.

Large corporates have entire CX departments, and still fail to implement. You don't have a strategic team that can work with your ops team to make things happen; which is precisely why you need someone who can do this work alongside you. The organisations serving the most complex and vulnerable communities are usually the ones with the least resources to design experience properly.

Not every challenge requires immediate transformation. Often the first step is creating visibility, alignment and prioritisation. Recommendations are always shaped around your organisation's real constraints, capacity and environment.

That's the most common thing I hear; and exactly the opposite of what my clients say about working with me. Most consulting produces reports, not implementation. The work here is co-designed with your team and stays alongside you to implement. There is no blue-sky thinking that can't be implemented; the changes hold because your people built them with me, and we designed them with you and for you.

So am I. Any exploration of AI is approached carefully, ethically and in service of people; not as a replacement for them. The goal is never automation for its own sake, but identifying where technology may thoughtfully reduce friction or support teams.

Regulated and resource-constrained environments are often where this work creates the greatest value. Every recommendation is designed within the realities of funding models, workforce limitations, operational pressures and compliance requirements.

The next step

The first step is a conversation. Book a discovery call to explore what's happening within your organisation, what challenges or opportunities are emerging, and whether Catalyst is the right fit for where you are right now.

If it is, we'll discuss what a tailored engagement could look like. If it's not, I'll point you in the right direction.