What we do
Maximise Consulting is a boutique management consultancy, established by Max Edwards in 2008 to help leaders and teams liberate the passion, wisdom and commitment of people to change performance.
You have a pressing need to focus and accelerate growth, minimise risk, while containing costs. Our contribution is in accessing insight, and mobilising people for action and accountability.
We facilitate strategic conversations that enable shared, purposeful and viable futures.
We help shape fit-for-purpose organisations, inspired workplaces, and meaningful work.
We develop adaptive leaders who mobilise people to take on tough challenges and thrive.
We also bring deep insight on organisation and team dynamics, to help you navigate the uncertain and ambiguous territory of organisational change with confidence. We work side by side and transfer our learning to you.
Whether it’s getting to the heart of people and performance issues, planning for significant organisational change, building the change agenda, facilitating leadership alignment or simply providing a sounding board, it’s our goal to help you connect the dots and navigate the journey.
Approach
We are deeply curious about your unique proposition, market dynamics, organisational history and performance requirements.
Supported by a network of alliances with complementary specialist expertise, we build customised solutions. We do not apply “one-size-fits-all” or product-driven solutions.
Define & Discover. We start by working with you to define clear objectives and scope of work. By gaining multiple stakeholder perspectives we strive to understand your business context, what’s working, and the critical issues and opportunities.
Design. Far from prescriptive, together we create a customised high level-design that is tested with key stakeholders. Detailed design is then agreed and finalised.
Deliver. Delivery typically incorporates facilitated working sessions, information sharing and commitment to action. We believe that participative co-design enables your managers and staff to access shared insight and alignment, greater ownership, and energy to deliver sustainable business impact.
We facilitate conversations that deepen understanding and translate insights into inspired action and impact.
Enable. Successful implementation is more than a one-off event. We work with you to find ways to sustain momentum and help you achieve your desired outcomes.
Evaluate. Depending on project cope, success measures are tracked before, during and after the work to evaluate our impact.
People
Max Edwards
Managing Director
As founding Director of Maximise, Max partners with senior business leaders and their people to grow leadership talent, execute strategic change and improve business results. Over 25 years, Max has worked across the Asia-Pacific and Europe, helping senior leaders make sense of complex people and performance challenges that lead to more effective decisions, improved accountability and better business outcomes.
Prior to establishing Maximise, Max held senior consulting roles with Mercer’s Human Capital division, and Insurance Australia Group’s corporate organisation effectiveness team.
Max has deep expertise is in strategic change. His consulting work has included post-merger integration, organisation design, strategic planning, values alignment, human resource strategy, culture renewal, executive coaching and team development. Max designs and facilitates leadership development programs emphasising discovery learning, behaviour change, and on-the-job application.
Laura Nord-Thomson
Director
As Director, Laura works closely with senior business leaders, teams and individuals to maximise performance through the development, design and implementation of high impact talent solutions across the employee lifecycle. Laura has led the design of an enterprise talent management strategy for Telstra, and business case for an e-talent executive sourcing solution for UK professional services firm.
Laura has over 25 years’ experience working in the Asia-Pacific and United Kingdom, in leading global management consulting firms, Randstad, Hudson Global Resources, and Penna UK. Laura has also worked in industry at Melbourne Business School, Telstra, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Olympus, and Royal North Shore Hospital.
Laura has consulted, designed and delivered solutions in talent management, leadership development, executive coaching, and career management. Laura has in-depth understanding of job design, competencies and talent success factors across a broad range of industries, functions, and job levels. She also helps clients on sales strategy, salesforce effectiveness, practice management.
Purpose and values
Our purpose is to help organisations, leaders, and their teams to perform, succeed, and grow. We believe that people change performance.
We are committed in all our interactions to:
INTEGRITY: respect | honesty | reliability
PARTNERSHIP: relationships | collaboration | synergy
GROWTH: curiosity | learning | impact
Why Maximise?
Partnership
We work collaboratively to jointly create and implement customised solutions that deliver on your unique context and desired outcomes. We’re flexible and easy to work with, and we value relationships.
Expertise
We bring depth of experience and know-how from a solid base of credible, contemporary thought leadership, with access to a network of global practitioners. We work with you to design customised solutions that deliver targeted results.
Methods
We use practical, innovative and proven methods drawn from a range of evolving fields including: strategy and governance, organisation development, change management, social science, behavioural psychology, group dynamics, and human resource management.
Shared insight
We listen deeply and take a systemic view of your organisation and its unique context to help you join the dots, access the genius of your people, and engage ownership for action.
Learning transfer
We’re passionate about sharing useful ideas and tools that work. Learning transfer is a key measure of our success. We continually invest in our own learning to develop yours.
Value and impact
We operate with low overheads to provide cost effective solutions that get results on complex people, performance and strategic change challenges. Our team are experienced practitioners who have worked in industry, and in global consultancies to deliver high quality you can afford.