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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 into a co-design project. Last year Susan Carter wrote a blog describing what ‘being ready’ looks like (click through to read Ready, Steady, Co-design) and…
It’s always a Leap of Faith: Reflections on a ‘successful’ deliberative process that never delivered
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 plan. Several years ago, we teamed up to work on a very challenging project to create a new planning strategy that identifies increased infill development…
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 that works for you and your needs. Community engagement is no easy job and mid-career engagement practitioners can come up against a variety of challenges…
Max: Hi Maddy. Great to have you as part of the team. Tell us a bit about your career thus far? Where have you studied and worked for instance? Maddy: I’ve had a lot of jobs! I studied a Bachelor of Arts at Melb Uni and spent my 20s working in retail, hospitality and nannying.…
There is so much being written about co-design, and talked about, and practiced. Sometimes the name is ‘taken in vain’ (to borrow a term from a book you may have heard about). One of the common questions asked is, ‘How do you know if this is the right kind of issue, problem or opportunity, suited…
I’ve been wanting to blog about how we can better scope and define projects for quite some time, especially for authentic co-design. Now we have a tool to move beyond the binary negotiable/non-negotiable approach in project development I couldn’t resist any longer. We all know it’s handy when engaging the community, to differentiate between project…
M: Hey Prue. Seems like you have been working with me for years, and you have, sort of. When did you start officially with me as a Max Hardy Consulting employee? P: After years of working with Max on projects here and there, I got to finally be accepted as a full employee of Max…
After 20 years I can safely say that Strategic Questioning is the most powerful tool I have employed for helping organisations to become more open to other ways of interacting with their communities. I’ve posted before about the wonderful contributions of Fran Peavey on the art of Strategic Questioning. Fran was committed to inspiring changemakers…
Thoughts about readiness to codesign No doubt you’ve heard the song (I admit my favourite version is Eva Cassidy’s). Readiness is something we are acutely aware of when organisations approach us to do codesign or a deliberative engagement process for a complex issue. In recent months I’ve been working with many Councils, mostly keen to…
An opportunity for those committed to authentic co-design. It is worth thinking about it – the question, how do we learn? Have you ever reflected on moments in your life when you have a major awakening? A time when ‘the penny dropped’ for you, or a time when you were so challenged about a particular…