Our recent theoretical and experimental characterisations of novel Pd N-heterocyclic carbene catalysts showed a clear relation between low-energy normal mode energies and catalytic activity. Here we propose to generalise these findings by characterising a new class of Ni and Pd catalysts, differing only in the identity of the central transition metal, yet display a large difference in catalytic activity. The experimental results will be compared with DFT calculations undertaken on these systems. Low-energy normal modes will be characterised for both the solid catalyst and an amorphous solvent-catalyst matrix, for two differing ligand classes. The experiment will corroborate that the detailed characterisation of low-energy normal modes is requisite to quantitative characterisation of the differences in activity for homogeneous catalyst systems.