Katalyst Works · Kris McLaren

How We Work

Diagnose. Design. Deliver.

Three steps, every time. A rhythm that finds the real problem, builds the right fix with you and your team, and stays until it actually sticks.

01 — DIAGNOSE

Find the real thing

Map your operations, follow the data, and find the root cause of the problem that's been keeping you up at night — the answers are usually already there, just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered.

02 — DESIGN

Build it with you and your team

Process and system improvements — including where AI or automation can responsibly do some of the heavy lifting — built around how your team actually works efficiently.

03 — DELIVER

Stay until it holds

We implement, make sure your team is trained, and measure the results together — until it's part of how your business runs, in your DNA.

What I Do

The work that gets results.

Get to the heart of the problem
Support culture change
Provide measurable results

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📊

Financial Diagnostic

A clear look at your numbers that surfaces the story they're already telling — margin patterns, cash flow gaps, the costs hiding in plain sight that nobody has connected yet.

⚙️

Operations Transformation

Map the real workflow — from the first touchpoint to the final invoice — and rebuild the parts creating friction, founder dependency, and preventable cost. Built with you and your team, not for them.

🤖

AI Readiness

Clean processes, reliable data, clear workflows — build that foundation first, and AI becomes a real advantage instead of chaos moving faster. Get it right, and AI does the administration and frees up your team so they can do their best work.

✨

Your Solution

Your team builds it, owns it, and runs it — guided and iterated until it actually works for them. Not handed down. Built with you and your team. Let them create the solution.

Proven Results

What changes when I show up.

Four stories. Different industries. Same pattern: find the real problem, build the right solution, make sure the team owns it when I leave.

Finance Transformation

Corporate · Multi-Entity Organization

The numbers were telling a story nobody could hear. The system was the excuse.

Unreliable reporting, a siloed accounting team, and underperforming collections eroding margin. Leadership couldn't make confident decisions because they couldn't trust what they were seeing.

Rebuilt the financial foundation from the inside — starting with the team's culture, because the people problem was upstream of the data problem. Redesigned collections end-to-end. Automated accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll. Built reporting that made the numbers trustworthy for the first time.

"Month-end close from 40 days to 6. AR write-offs reduced to near zero. Payroll and AP running without manual intervention. A team that went from siloed and defensive to collaborative and confident — because they built the new system themselves and owned every iteration of it."

Operations & Field Service

Manufacturing · Field Services

The plant said one thing. Engineering said another. The customer was saying something else entirely.

A recurring field problem that had already cost significant money to resolve once. When it started happening again, the easy answer was to write another cheque. Instead, we sent a team — walked the site, documented what the client was experiencing, and found the root cause was happening in the field, not in design or manufacturing.

On the next project we showed up before the work began and taught the crew how to do it right — and more importantly, how to see the difference themselves when something wasn't right.

"When independent inspectors came in, the client diagnosed the issues themselves — without us in the room. They had the knowledge. The calls went quiet. They didn't stop sending their work."

Finance, Admin & Operations

Not-for-Profit · Social Enterprise

The mission was strong. The infrastructure was breaking under the weight of growth.

A fast-growing organization doubling in size with a failing technology project at its centre — essential to the people they served. Outsourced IT that was unresponsive. No HR leadership. Every system at its limit.

Stepped into every gap. Rescued the technology project. Brought IT in-house. Took on HR leadership — with curiosity, not a job description. Held the operational foundation together while the mission kept growing.

"Scaled from 35 to 60 people without operational breakdown. The technology project that was on track to fail was saved and delivered. Promoted from Finance Manager to Director within six months — because results speak."

Culture & Trust

Manufacturing · Cross-Functional Finance

Finance's default answer was no. Nobody had ever built the muscle to say yes.

"We don't have that." "The system can't do that." Not because anyone was being difficult — because nobody had ever built the capability to say otherwise. Cross-functional teams stopped asking, and decisions kept getting made without the numbers that should have informed them.

Over time, finance stopped just doing the work and started fixing how the work got done — automating what could be automated, digitizing what could be digitized, and slowly rebuilding the habit of trust between finance and its counterparts across the business.

"We don't know that" turned into "can I get that?" across the business. The shift held long enough that it followed into an entirely new role — built once, trusted enough to repeat.

Who We Work With

The fire looks different everywhere. The signs it's burning look almost the same.

You already know which one of these is yours.

Reporting Constraints

Pressure to meet contractual, board, government, or compliance reporting standards — and falling short is already costing you: decisions made on incomplete information, credibility with your board or lender, and the compliance exposure that comes with it.

You've Already Tried to Fix This

A process got rebuilt, a system got bought, a consultant came through — and within a few months, it quietly slid back to how it was before you touched it, until "it's just the system" became the explanation everyone reached for again.

A Capable, Busy Team

Effort isn't translating into results the way it should. Everyone's working hard, and the business still isn't moving the way it could.

Data That Exists, But Isn't Trusted

The numbers are there. Nobody trusts them, has time to look at them, or knows how to act on what they're actually saying.

One Person Everything Runs Through

It used to be a strength. Now it's the bottleneck — and everyone, including that person, knows it.

A Cost You Can Feel But Can't Find

Slow collections, missed revenue, quality issues, or a process that exists only because that's how it's always been done.

Turn your firefighters into builders.

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AI & Operations

You can't put AI on top of chaos.

For a while, I thought the problem was AI readiness — clean data, clear process, the technical groundwork. It isn't. What actually stalls a business isn't the technology. It's the same pattern that's stalled every change before it: an identity built around how things already work, the fear that shows up the moment that identity's threatened, a try that fails and gets quietly retreated from, and the pressure that keeps building underneath it anyway. I call it the Fear of Competency Loop. Interrupt that, and AI stops being hard. Once you've taught the organization how to get out of that loop, AI becomes the next natural step.

AI learns patterns, not facts. It works the way our own brains do — recognizing patterns, filtering information, deciding what looks like the right answer. Which means it can be confident and completely wrong at the same time. Bias gets baked in invisibly, the same way it does in any of us. That's not a reason to fear AI. It's a reason to understand it before you build on top of it.

I'm not an AI expert. Nobody really is — it changes every week. What I am is someone who's spent a long career learning how businesses actually work, and that instinct turns out to translate directly into knowing how to make AI work, too.

But you have to be willing to go deep — into the scary part of the loop that got you stuck in the first place. Interrupt that, and AI doesn't need convincing. It just does its job.

About

Kris McLaren

Founder, Katalyst Works

Some people see problems. I see what's possible on the other side of them — even when nobody else in the room can see it yet.

I've spent a long, exciting career getting things done that other people said couldn't be done, in industries that don't forgive mistakes, with teams that needed someone to hold the vision until they could hold it themselves. Finance. Operations. Field service. Manufacturing. Not-for-profit. The industries are different. The work is always the same: find what's actually wrong, build what actually works, and make sure the people doing the work own the solution so completely they don't need me anymore.

This amazing career has given me this: I always work myself out of a job. So why do that for one company at a time? Why can't I just go play with all of them?

I'm based in Edmonton, Alberta — and I work with businesses wherever the work takes me.

Operations Finance Field Service Manufacturing Not-for-Profit AI Certification — Tacit Edge

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