Welcome to my first e-newsletter

Hi all. Thanks for getting this far into the e-newsletter. I realise there is a lot of competition for you attention, so I aim to make this brief, informative and even a bit of fun. Fun is definitely what I had when recently working in Florence, Italy - see the pic!

I ran out of my creative juices though to come up with a decent name for the e-newsletter. Suggestions welcome and will be acknowledged. Anyway, here goes!

News

• NDIS Citizens' Jury - In February I will co-facilitating, with Danielle Annells, a Citizens' Jury to assess the progress of the 7 NDIS pilot areas across Australia. The result will be a scorecard, based on the experiences of people living with disability and their carers. An important process in partnership with the NDIA, PwDA, newDemocracy, and being filmed by Lara Damiani, ThinkFilms.

• U-lab - like thousands of others around the world I am doing Otto Scharman's 6-week U-lab course. Fortunately I have joined a brilliant group to work through the material, namely Brad Chenoweth and Sarah Gilligan from the Australian Centre for Dialogue, Onur Ekinci and Kylie Long from Peer Academy, David Hood from Doing Something Good, and Lina Wynn.

• Peer Academy - Between March and May I will be delivering two learning events through Peer Academy. Very excited about being part of this terrific disruptive peer-to-peer approach to learning. More news to come next time around!

• Capire - Exploring several opportunities with Amy Hubbard and Chris Robinson and excited to be working with them.

• Slime Mould - I had a terrific couple of days with the Collective Impact network for Australia. Momentum building and lots of learning from each other. We call it Slime Mould. Why Slime Mould? This blog explains it.

New Offerings

Coaching - I am now offering coaching services for executives, project managers and collaboration/engagement practitioners. These can be provided for a set period of time (3 months - 24 months).

Shadow consulting - As a result of several requests from other consultants I have decided to now offer a shadow consulting service to other consultants who are working on complex projects. I work behind the scenes to act as a sounding board, to offer advice for process design, and provide innovative ideas for facilitating workshops. This service is available to any consultant on planet Earth!

Two new Courses - Micaela Drieberg, from 3 Hills Consulting, and I are now offering two courses. One is for elected representatives (Micaela is an ex-Mayor and current Councillor) about how to provide contemporary leadership with regard to community engagement and collaboration. The other is about how to effectively work with and influence decision-makers, especially politicians. More details to be publicised soon but in the meantime contact me for further information.

Contact me if you'd like to discuss any of these new offerings, or any of the older ones as well!

Latest blogs

How to make certain you will waste your time and money doing community engagement.

Also known as, Max's Dirty Dozen!

This goes against the grain somewhat, being a fan of Appreciative Inquiry. But sometimes it just feels good to name some things that we know don’t work – and to state the ‘bleeding obvious’. The systems mantra is helpful to get us started, being that ‘our systems and approaches are perfectly designed for getting the results we are presently getting.’ …

Events

• Max is delivering a workshop on Appreciative Inquiry and community engagement for Engage2Act, Melbourne, 24^th February, 2015.

• Partnership Brokering Training coming to Brisbane in March for the first time.
Contact the fabulous Marcia Dwonczyk, Director, Creativma on marcia@creativma.com for more information. Great course!

• IAP2 Event, Melbourne, Breakfast with IAP2 Organisation of the Year, City of Melbourne
27th February.

Others resources to check out

Interesting articles and blogs. Check them out if you can. Really interesting!

Leadership Caffeine—Humility and the Effective Leader - Art Petty

8 Tips for Collaborative Leadership - Carol Kinsey Goman

Thought Bubbles: Sparkling Insights in to Community Engagement - Becky Hirst

A Shared Purpose Drives Collaboration - Vineet Nayar

Blogs and lots of other resources on BeCause - Nadine B Hack

Blogs at Articulous - by Amanda Newbery and her team.

Case Studies and Bibliography Activedemocracy - by Prof Lyn Carson

Collaboration for Impact - Kerry Graham and Dawn O'Neill

Tamarack Institute - Lyn Weaver and many others.

Bang the Table - Crispin Butteriss and team

National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation

IAP2 Australasia

Jeder Institute - About Asset Based Community Development.

Appreciative Inquiry Australia

Twyfords Blogs - from Vivien Twyford, Stuart Waters, John Dengate and co.

If I have not included your blog or website and think you should be included, let me know. I will refer to different sites and pages every newsletter. Promise!

If you can come up with an interesting name for my e-news then let make a suggestion here!

Feel free to pass on to others who may be interested in this e-newsletter (coming out no more than once per month).

You have been sent this email because we have had email contact over the past 15 years or so. Please unsubscribe if this information is of no use to you. Nothing worse than getting unwanted emails and e-newsletters.

To win a free hour's worth of coaching see if you can guess where this photo below was taken. Clue - it's not in Australia (Crispin Butteriss knows the answer so he is not allowed to compete, or tell anyone!)

Sign up to Max's e-newsletter here : http://www.maxhardy.com.au/sign-up-for-newsletter/

Contact Details:

Max Hardy
0418 217 261
max@maxhardy.com.au
www.maxhardy.com.au

Note of thanks:

I have really appreciated the assistance of the very highly skilled Nishi Bhavsar, who has helped me to put my website and e-newsletter together. If you need someone who is professional, skilful, reliable and affordable then you really should get in touch with her. You can contact her on 0450 272 141 or by email, nishi.bhavsar@gmail.com