Results
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collaboration

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Max Hardy Consulting is a small engagement consultancy specialising in deliberative engagement, facilitation, co-design, training and mentoring.

Our focus is on delivering engagement that is considered and authentic. Leveraging on the skills of founder, Max Hardy, who has over 20 years of experience, we help clients with their toughest and most complex projects to achieve positive results. 

‘If one were to ask me who was the best facilitator and facilitation trainer in the world, I would unequivocally answer “Max Hardy.”’


- Carol M Anderson, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

'Working with Max is a delight. Max’s facilitation, collaboration and problem solving style is respectful and calm, along with being both accessible and professional.'


- Jessie Keating, Moonee Valley City Council

'It has been an absolute pleasure to partner with and learn from the best in the business, and I continue to look for opportunities to work together. I would recommend Max for any project, and especially for complex topics in the strategic community and urban planning.'


- Anna Kelderman, Shape Urban

'Max’s great strength was helping council decision-makers understand their role in the engagement process and giving them confidence to try different techniques to get a better engagement outcome.'


- Lisa Rae, Laing O'Rourke

'An excellent coach, facilitator and trainer and can support the people in your organisation to build capacity and meet these challenges effectively.''


- Lindy Fentiman, Tog Consulting

'Max is a democracy enthusiast. He finds ways to enable, empower and encourage every voice to be heard and designs processes that foster the principle: every voice is worth hearing.'


- Moira Deslandes, Moira Deslandes Consulting

What we do

We work with people at all stages of their projects to understand their unique, and not so unique, challenges and to co-create new ways of responding to those challenges.

Design & delivery of community engagement

Co-design

Facilitation

Training and Mentoring

Advice

Evaluation

Who we are

Max Hardy

Max Hardy is one of Australia’s most sought after facilitators, and a foremost expert in co-design and deliberative process and has designed and facilitated over 40 deliberative panels since 1998. He regularly delivers workshops and master-classes on deliberative processes at conferences and for the professional development programs of the Municipal Association of Victoria, IAP2, Tamarack Institute and Collaboration... Read more

Prue Blake

Prue Blake is a community engagement and planning specialist with over ten years of experience designing and facilitating community engagement processes. Her experience includes delivering forums, pop-ups, interviews, workshops and deliberative engagement processes within both the private and public sector... Read more

Our clients and partners include local councils, government departments and agencies, health authorities and private companies.

Max-Hardy-Clients

Latest blog posts

Are your Co-design projects still waiting for the Green Light?

February 26, 2023

If you follow the work we do here at Authentic Co-design, you’ll know that one of the things we are passionate about is understanding and supporting organisational readiness before jumping…

It’s always a Leap of Faith: Reflections on a ‘successful’ deliberative process that never delivered

November 15, 2022

Max Hardy (Max Hardy Consulting) and Anna Kelderman (Shape Urban) Designing and facilitating deliberative engagement processes have been among our most satisfying professional experiences, though they don’t always come to…

Get Unstuck in Your Engagement Career – New Mentoring Opportunities Available.

October 20, 2022

I’ve built a career on knowing how to deal with complex problems and helping organisations get unstuck, skills that can also be incredibly valuable for helping you develop a career…

Our clients and partners include local councils, government departments and agencies, health authorities and private companies.

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