Who I am

Translating and working between strategy and operations is my thing, so think of me as like a personal trainer and coach for closing the gap between reality and vision. 

Life is too short to be stuck in organisations where we can't add value, or feel like we're always in the losing team - I love growing people and improving how we work. 

After 18+ years working as an internal and external coach specialising in all sorts of leadership, management, service delivery and performance, ICT change, and improvement roles the journey travelled hasn't always gone to plan.

I'm an improver by nature, and my energy comes from sharing how to optimise performance so organisations can fully enable, and realise people's value. After all, work makes up a very large chuck of our life so we need to make it worth our effort - why settle for average when you could feel awesome.

The psychological and practical game to shift thinking, change behaviour, and get results can be tough. I was even crazy enough to compete in two bodybuilding competitions just so I could say that I get transformation at the molecular level!

With an extensive public sector background in complex, large-scale organisations, and private industry experience, I understand the clarity, systemised approach, and disciplined effort needed for reform and sustainable high-performance.

As an Air Force veteran, I'm also passionate about helping private companies create veteran-ready cultures that benefit everyone.

Everything we do is based on trust. It's risky, contextual, emotional, and essential for leveraging our skills and growing further. For myself, and the people I work with we don't always have it when we need it, and certainly not in all areas of our life.

We often struggle to trust ourselves, and/or others to make significant changes, even with a clear vision and strongs reason for it.

On the corporate side, I've experienced ridiculous amounts of time, money, and sanity wasted on disconnected and unsustainable 'solutions'. I've also suffered from the overuse of external experts to implement and improve things with limited success. As a previous public servant, and after experiencing client pain and frustration as a consultant, I wrote a Government Transformation Whitepaper as a practical and evidence-based approach for achieving better outcomes at scale.

The primary reason so many improvement plans fail is that 'transformation is internal', it can’t be outsourced, led, or managed by anyone other than you and your teams. 

Another big reason for failure is a lack of dedicated resourcing and skills. I've seen many clients fail because they are overwhelmed by expectations, don't trust the changes to be made, or don't feel set up for success.

Seeing and feeling the pain of distrust due to massive gaps between big picture strategies and operational realities, I wrote Trust as a practical guide to bring people together. 

I'm passionate about starting with one thing, and building confidence by enhancing what people can do now.

I am not a consulting company. When you engage me, you get me as a partner. My approach is to develop and grow the people you have now. 

Together we'll build trust through co-design, skills transfer, and business improvement.

Everyone is responsible for organisational culture. To ensure multi-disciplined teams work in-sync, I developed the Trust for Transformation Model, an evidence-based, systemised and easy-to-adopt approach for all disciplines to own their contribution as part of one team.

Working as partners we'll optimise leadership, business intelligence, and practices for sustainable high-performance.

If you're prepared to partner up on the work, I'm here for your journey. As a team we will:

1. Obtain unfiltered intelligence to address root causes of issues
2. Work with the operational challenges, pace, and pressures
3. Provide employees with the opportunity, skills, and support to be successful
4. Save money by realising, and growing the value of what you have
5. Co-create solutions that make sense
6. Implement practical outcome-driven approaches for success
7. Deliver in ways that are calm, sustainable, and continuously improving.

I don't have a cookie-cutter offer. It's better to create a flexible and bespoke approach based on your challenges, the problems to be solved, and the outcomes to be achieved.

Foundational services are on the programs page, but if you've read this far, a conversation about what you need and when would be easier and better for both of us. 

Message me on LinkedIn, or via melanie@melaniemarshall.com.au to arrange a complimentary Culture Accelerator consult on what you want to achieve.