Catalyst

Why is it that some professionals with similar education, intelligence, and hard work flourish, while others with the same ingredients stall? Chandramouli Venkatesan, in his book Catalyst, argues that success—both in work and in life—does not happen automatically. Much like a chemical reaction that needs a catalyst to speed it up, your career and personal development also require catalysts: conscious actions, learning models, and value systems that transform potential into sustained success.

Venkatesan, a veteran corporate leader with decades of experience in global organizations like Asian Paints, Cadbury, and Pidilite, draws from his own journey and a learning module he called “Tee Off with Mouli.” In it, he coaches professionals to ‘soar high and long,’ not by working harder, but by catalysing the right reactions in their work and personal lives. His central contention is simple yet profound: having the ingredients of success—education, talent, EQ, and a job—is not enough; you must trigger the reactions that convert those ingredients into enduring results.

The Science of Success

Venkatesan begins with the metaphor of a catalyst from his background as a chemical engineer. In chemistry, substances like enzymes or catalytic converters accelerate reactions that would otherwise happen too slowly—or not at all. In life, catalysts are deliberate behaviors that accelerate growth and achievement. Many professionals, he observes, assume career growth will occur naturally over time. They equate time spent working with experience, promotions with progress, and productivity with busy-ness. But, he argues, none of these occur spontaneously. They need to be catalysed through focused reflection, learning, and self-initiated growth.

The book’s major sections reflect this framework: (I) driving real individual growth, (II) managing your career intelligently, and (III) using your life and values as catalysts that feed sustainable success. Its structure mirrors a career journey—from learning and productivity to leadership and legacy.

From Ingredients to Reactions

For Venkatesan, the formula for career growth is: Career growth = Real individual growth ± Environmental aspects. While markets, bosses, and economic conditions (environmental aspects) can help or hinder temporarily, their influence balances out over a forty-year career. What ultimately determines long-term growth is real individual growth—how much you improve your skills, judgment, influence, and communication over time. You get what you deserve: focus on deserving more, not getting more.

Drawing inspiration from sports (a recurring theme throughout the book), he compares your career to a cricket player aiming for captaincy. Obsessing about being captain breeds anxiety; focusing on playing each ball well increases your odds of achieving that goal. Just as Lord Krishna taught in the Bhagavad Gita, focus on the karma (deed), not the phala (result). Real growth is about mastering the deed—learning, productivity, and purpose—rather than worrying about external milestones like title and pay.

The Four Catalysts of Growth

Venkatesan identifies four areas where catalysts make the biggest impact:

• Experience as a Catalyst: Time spent at work is not the same as experience gained. What transforms time into learning is reflection and review (his TMRR model).
• Productivity as a Catalyst: Even capable people fail because they don’t scale their personal productivity as complexity increases. Productivity must be managed deliberately.
• Career Decisions as Catalysts: Success in the second half of your career depends on the foundations you build in the first half. Thoughtful choices around depth, mentors, and timing are critical.
• Life and Values as Catalysts: Ultimately, your life outside work—your values, hobbies, and purpose—determines how powerfully you perform at work. Life fuels leadership.

The Larger Mission

What separates Catalyst from generic career advice is its holistic worldview. Career growth, for Venkatesan, is not an end in itself—it’s part of a moral and social mission. He believes in choosing a personal area where your efforts yield the highest return on social investment. For him, sharing his insights with professionals multiplies impact: successful, values-driven individuals build better workplaces, companies, and ultimately, societies. This philosophy recalls Stephen Covey’s belief in being ‘principle-centered’ and Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’—aligning success with purpose.

Why This Matters

Venkatesan’s ideas challenge the illusion that time, talent, and position alone ensure success. He provides an empowering alternative: take ownership of catalysing your growth every day. If you feel stalled in your job or unsure why your progress doesn’t reflect your potential, Catalyst offers a practical and ethical roadmap. It urges you to measure success by how much you grow—not just how far you climb.

“Many people have the ingredients for success, but they mistakenly assume that just because they exist, success will follow. Unfortunately, it needs a catalyst.”

Ultimately, Catalyst is a call to intentional living. It’s about designing the reactions that convert your knowledge, experience, and values into exponential growth—for yourself, your teams, and your world.

One of Venkatesan’s most insightful provocations is that time spent at work does not equal experience. You may spend ten years in a role and still not grow, while someone else acquires transformative experience in five. The difference lies not in the job, but in the mindset—the catalyst that converts time into learning.

From Time to Learning: The TMRR Model

Venkatesan introduces the TMRR model: Target, Measure, Review, Reflect. It’s a disciplined approach to ensure every hour of work contributes to your growth. First, set a target for every activity—not just annual goals but micro-goals. Then measure your actual results, review why outcomes differ, and reflect by asking, “What could I have done better?”

This fourth element—reflection—is what transforms routine into experience. Without it, you’re just ‘walking’ through your career like a person who doesn’t improve at walking after childhood. Only reflection strengthens the inner algorithm—the pattern-recognition software that enables better decisions in the future.

Building Habits and Anchors

Venkatesan warns that good intentions fade without habits. Just knowing reflection is vital won’t make you do it. His advice: anchor reflection to a daily ritual, the way brushing your teeth is anchored to waking up. He personally uses his car ride home as his reflection time, reviewing lessons from each workday. You can use a lunch break, commute, or evening routine. The key is persistence until reflection becomes automatic.

This echoes James Clear’s principle from Atomic Habits: link new habits to existing triggers and repeat them until identity takes over. Over time, you’re no longer someone who tries to learn—you simply are a learner.

“Half the time people spend at work, they do not actually learn—they are walking or sleeping at work.”

Turning Reflection into a Competitive Advantage

When you make reflection habitual, you turn every action into a learning cycle. Think of Olympic walker athletes—what distinguishes them is how they review performance and train accordingly. Likewise, in corporate life, reflection transforms normal experiences into ‘software upgrades’ for your decision-making ability. This practice creates exponential learning; over a decade, the reflective professional’s algorithm far outpaces the unreflective one. The latter merely ages; the former evolves.

If you start today—setting micro-targets, tracking results, asking “What could I have done better?”—you’ll find that powerful learning compounds quietly beneath your daily grind. Over time, TMRR doesn’t just enhance your resume; it rewires your mind.

Even with reflection built into your routine, not all projects create equal growth. Venkatesan introduces another powerful idea: identify and maximize learning cycles—the projects or initiatives that become inflection points for your development.

The Stage and the Performance

He draws a striking analogy: the learning cycle is your stage, and TMRR is your performance. A major company transformation, a new product launch, or a turnaround project gives you a large stage for impact. But unless you deliver a strong performance—through reflection, broad engagement, and intensity—you won’t extract its full value. Small projects can teach you only small lessons; big cycles offer exponential learning if you seize them fully.

How Successful People Maximize Learning

• They seek big learning cycles. Successful professionals actively look for ambitious projects early in their careers—often volunteering for them.
• They intensify engagement. They prioritize these projects, giving them their full stamina and creativity.
• They broaden their lens. Instead of restricting themselves to their functional silos, they understand the project holistically—like engaging in both marketing and supply chain when leading a product launch.
• They aim for thought leadership. They don’t just execute tasks—they contribute ideas that shape strategy. Acting beyond positional authority builds senior-level readiness.

These behaviors, Venkatesan notes, distinguish “career catalysts” from passive performers. For instance, one brand manager in his team who led a three-year brand reinvention turned that cycle into a career-defining experience, eventually becoming a global leader. Others, in similar roles, left less trace because they didn’t maximize the learning cycle’s offering.

“You can’t always wait for major learning cycles to come to you—sometimes you must create them.”

The practical takeaway? Don’t just do your job—design it into a learning cycle. Treat every meaningful initiative as both contribution and classroom. When opportunity doesn’t knock, build your own door.

Real growth isn’t just about being capable—it’s about being productive. Many talented people plateau because their productivity doesn’t scale with their career. Venkatesan argues that success stems from pairing a strong experience algorithm with high personal productivity.

Two Catalysts for Productivity

He builds on Stephen Covey’s timeless idea from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: focus on your circle of influence and ignore your circle of concern. Spending time on factors you can’t influence drains energy and disrupts focus. Productivity is as much about energy management as time management. Avoiding negativity—even for thirty minutes—prevents lost vitality for the whole day. Instead, channel effort toward areas where you can personally create value.

The second method is the rocks first approach, inspired by the classic jar story. Each month, list your priorities (the rocks) and allocate 85% of your time to them before addressing the smaller tasks (the sand). Fill your calendar with your rocks; that’s how you ensure your time aligns with what truly matters. The rest can be delegated or de-prioritized.

“Too much of your time is spent managing the sand.”

Mastering Energy and Focus

Venkatesan notes that frustration is the symptom of poor productivity. Each time you feel you’re working hard but not advancing, reassess your circle of concern and calendar of rocks. Are you worrying about uncontrollable variables? Are you saying yes to sand tasks? The fix is to realign—cut the concerns, delegate the sand, and commit to rocks that drive learning and impact.

The ultimate goal isn’t working longer but achieving more with the same twenty-four hours—the one resource shared equally between a watchman and a chairman. True productivity comes when you intentionally invest your hours in difference-making work and sustain your energy by minimizing negativity.

According to Venkatesan, most professionals succeed in the first half of their careers—but only a few win in the second. And yet, true success is determined by that second half. A forty-year career, he says, is a marathon, not a sprint. Winning early is common; finishing strong is rare.

Why the Second Half Matters More

He observes that the performance gap between equally talented people widens dramatically after midcareer. The reasons lie in the nature of organizations: pyramids narrow as you rise; competition intensifies; and direct supervision decreases. Earlier, bosses and systems compensate for gaps. Later, you’re on your own. Moreover, senior roles demand new, broader skills—transitioning from functional expertise to strategic leadership—which many haven’t prepared for.

Hence, he urges professionals to treat the first half of their careers as the catalyst half—the foundation upon which the second half’s legacy is built.

The Three Barriers to Long-Term Success

• Inability to delay gratification: Like an artist leaving apprenticeship too early, many abandon learning experiences for premature recognition.
• The rat race mentality: Comparing yourself to peers leads to short-sighted choices that feel winning today but weaken your foundation tomorrow.
• Lack of career guidance: Few have frameworks or mentors to explain how to build enduring careers; most decisions are made in isolation.

Careers aren’t about who runs fastest initially but who builds deeper endurance. Much like a building requires a strong foundation before rising high, your early years demand more construction underground—invisible preparation for visible future success.

“Foundation-building in the first half is the catalyst for success in the second half.”

Venkatesan’s message echoes insights from Jim Collins’s Good to Great: sustainable greatness comes from disciplined foundations, not flash wins. To win when it truly matters, build deliberately when nobody’s watching.

Venkatesan observes a humbling truth: your success isn’t just a result of your own efforts—it’s heavily catalysed by others, especially your bosses and mentors during formative years. Great bosses build your internal learning systems; they don’t just demand results.

Good Boss vs. Nice Boss

A good boss, he stresses, isn’t necessarily a ‘nice’ or indulgent one. They challenge you, push you beyond comfort, and force reflection. They embed TMRR into your behavior by asking probing questions like “What could you have done better?” Venkatesan recalls his own transformative bosses, Bharat Puri and Anand Kripalu, who stretched him intellectually while enabling psychological safety—a combination he calls catalytic leadership.

How to Increase Your Odds of Good Bosses

• Be a good subordinate: Great bosses are drawn to great subordinates who deliver, learn, and take initiative.
• Choose companies that value development: Work in organizations where managers are evaluated for growing people, not just profits.
• Hold onto good bosses: If you find one who genuinely builds your algorithm, try to work with them longer.

Equally important are mentors—senior, trusted guides outside your reporting line. They see your career from a higher altitude and help you make long-term decisions when short-term pressures cloud judgment. A mentor, he says, must be senior, know you personally, and have no conflict of interest.

“Mentors help you take decisions good for your 40-year career—not your next 4 months.”

In the volatile, unpredictable “VUCA” world of careers, such catalysts are lifelines. They reinforce that while self-reliance matters, growth is ultimately a team sport.

The final and perhaps most powerful catalyst in Venkatesan’s framework is values. Beyond skill and productivity, it’s your integrity and humility that determine leadership impact. He reframes values not as moral constraints but as performance multipliers.

The VML Equation

He introduces the VML Equation: Leadership = (Position + Content) × Values. Position offers authority, and content (your ideas and strategies) offers credibility. But values multiply impact by building trust and followership. Even a small drop in integrity weakens leadership exponentially, while high values magnify influence.

The Twin Hs: Honesty and Humility

Honesty means doing what’s right even when others do wrong—what he calls pristine honesty. Most people, he argues, practice ‘majority honesty’: acting ethically only when others do. True leaders have the courage to uphold integrity despite opposition.

Humility keeps success from turning into arrogance. Venkatesan’s moving story of being born with a severe leg deformity reminds him daily that his life and success exist thanks to others—his family’s courage and a doctor’s skill. That memory grounds him amid success. For leaders, humility fosters connection and authenticity, turning followers into believers.

“Great success requires great change; great change requires great leadership; and great leadership requires great values.”

Catalysing Your Own Values

Like learning or productivity, values don’t improve automatically. You must consciously work on them by reflecting daily, setting small behavioral goals, and practising them repeatedly until they embed in your character. Over time, values not only make you a better person but a transformative leader who leaves a legacy.

In an age of rapid change, skills open doors—but values keep them open. Integrity and humility are the ultimate catalysts that turn competence into enduring influence.