Open Road Consulting

Open Road Consulting supports individuals and teams to improve workplace culture, performance and to meet the needs of clients and stakeholders.

Our work includes supporting people to grow their business, improve culture, and respond effectively to conflict and complaints. Success of organisations hinges on human beings engaged in effective conversations, building relationships and in articulating and fulfilling commitments. Our focus is on improving communication, relationships and mindsets – the human dimensions that enable success and that enrich workplace experiences and wellbeing.

Established in 2007, we have developed an excellent reputation with leaders, teams, professionals and boards in professional services, corporate, government and the community sectors. Our diverse experience means we have exposure to different ways of doing things and can offer fresh perspectives.

We pride ourselves on listening to what most matters to people, having a positive approach and working collaboratively to achieve sustained success.

Our clients face challenges that are complex, often unprecedented, and that can take an emotional toll. The Open Road is a place where you can see possibilities, commit to a direction and navigate through obstacles with clarity and confidence.

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Open Road Services.

Our services are summarised below.

Business Development Coaching

Coaching, facilitation and education programs for professionals who need to generate business and build client relationships. This includes having a compelling offering, having higher quality and more frequent business development conversations, leading an engaged team, and building resilience and confidence.

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Business Development Coaching

Leadership Coaching

Supporting leaders to be highly effective and capable leaders. Our work includes partnering with clients to build their capability and confidence in areas including building a strong workplace culture, influencing outcomes, getting things done within and across teams, coaching and developing staff, navigating stakeholder relationships, responding to conflict, and improving resilience and confidence.

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Leadership Coaching

Navigating Success: A Leadership Team Odyssey

Helping leadership teams to clarify and implement their strategy and desired culture and deliver results.

We provide a process that supports leadership teams to get clear about what matters for them, their people and their clients and stakeholders. Our process enables leadership teams to generate clarity and alignment about their goals and priorities, and be more effective and cohesive in how they work with each-other, their clients and teams.

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Navigating Success: A Leadership Team Odyssey

Conflict Resolution and Mediation

We offer a range of services to support managers, teams and individuals who are dealing with conflict situations and need support with managing the conflict. This includes:

workplace mediation;
facilitated conversations;
restorative practice; coaching; and
training and workshops for teams on minimising and managing conflict.

We also assist organisations to have appropriate complaints handling processes and for managers and staff to be highly skilled in dealing with conflict

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Mediation

Understanding Conflict and Responding to Complaints

Investigations

Conducting workplace investigations of complaints of harassment, bullying, discrimination and misconduct.

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Workplace Investigations

Workplace Culture Reviews

Workplace Culture Reviews can provide a snapshot of a workplace to enable organisations to better understand what is needed to strengthen and support teams and improve the workplace culture. We gather in-depth qualitative information through a combination of surveys and interviews, and provide recommendations that can lead to improvements across a range of areas that impact workplace culture and performance.

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Team Health Check

All of our work is guided by our purpose and values.

Our purpose is to support our clients to interact in ways that helps people thrive and positively impact others.

Our values are:

Positive impact – we only work with clients where together we can make a positive difference. We also take a positive approach so that our clients are motivated to implement the actions that we agree on.
Learning – we love what we do and are always learning and seeking to improve how we support our clients. We aim to foster learning and reflection with our clients.
Care – our lack of ego allows us to focus solely on the success and well being of our clients. We care about our clients in their organisational context and as people, which helps build trust and facilitates open conversations.
Courage – part of our job is to share new perspectives, and to do things that are out of our comfort zone. We encourage our clients to do the same.

Testimonials.

“I started meeting with Mark at a time when the two industries I principally serviced were at cyclical lows. Mark got me to focus on the strengths of my offering. That improved understanding became a competitive advantage. He helped me formulate plans to approach new clients and made me feel comfortable doing so. He also kept me honest about executing those plans. My whole focus changed over this period: from merely delivering work to developing well balanced client relationships. This made practice infinitely more enjoyable and satisfying. The impact on my practice was profound: new clients came increasingly easily and I had the confidence to ensure that optimal work practices were implemented and maintained. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Mark to anyone who is looking to get their practice out of a rut or who is looking to unlock the next level for their practice.”
— Tim Kyle, Director
“Jill is a great operator and I can highly recommend her services as a mediator and investigator in the workplace. She is diligent, professional and empathetic, and provides great insight, tools and advice to help resolve complex employee matters and grievances effectively.”
— Tim Forrester, former People and Culture Business Partner
“I recently completed a number of leadership coaching sessions with Jill, who came highly recommend to me and was absolutely wonderful, supportive and encouraging throughout the process. Jill’s knowledge and background meant she had a good understanding of the context in which I was working and she was able to help me identify my strengths, challenges, values and the skills I wanted to develop. She not only provided me with the tools and techniques I needed achieve my goals and improve my management style but helped me grow my confidence and competence for the benefit of my team and organisation.”
— Lisa Fowler, Managing Lawyer
“Jill was fantastic to work with. She was calm, insightful and balanced in her approach. She navigated through a very delicate and tricky situation for our business. I would highly recommend her for mediation roles.”
— Simon Knott, Principal
“I would definitely recommend Jill for workplace mediation. Jill's approach to mediation is kind and pragmatic. Her positive approach to conflict enabled the people involved to feel that there was real potential to move forward with their working relationship.”
— Tenille Saffin, HR Manager
“Mark has his own delivery style which disarms and cuts through, and then stays with you. He fosters a collaborative environment where lawyers are free to share, explore and learn, and own the outcomes. He has vast theoretical and practical knowledge and experience, but does not force this on you - he coaxes you in the direction of your own answers and solutions (backed by his knowledge and experience), applied to your very specific business situation, opportunity or challenge, which you are then of course responsible for implementing and delivering on. I could not recommend Mark highly enough to run workshops in professional services for business development, growth and client relationship and strategy.”
— Zac Kerr, Partner, Global Co-Head for Construction and Infrastructure
“Working with Mark and Open Road Consulting introduced me to frameworks for monitoring and assessing how I effectively lead and manage others, how I give and receive feedback and being more aware of the way I unconsciously influence others - both positively and negatively. These frameworks, structures and awareness have enabled a more deliberate and considered style of management and communication. This has resulted in improved outcomes for customers and stakeholders, richer conversations with staff and stakeholders and improved delegation to staff.”
— Dan Spillman, Manager, Analytics
“I learnt a lot from Mark, particularly around treating tasks as promises, preparing for meetings, prioritising and being a calmer, more focussed CEO. He is personable with a strong emotional intelligence. I highly recommend his service.”
— Patrick Donovan, CEO
“As a leadership coach, Mark’s ability to probe and guide, to challenge yet support through iterative conversations, application and reflection is undoubtedly one of his greatest assets. It has and is a powerful means of better understanding self and my connection to others, and harnessing tools that will serve me for a lifetime. The richness to the experience and partnership keeps me coming back for more.”
— Damien Bruno, CEO
“The reason I am a big supporter of Mark is that he drives towards and achieves tangible results with our partners. He develops the skills of the partners and works with them, holding them accountable for action – which inevitably improves their BD results. Mark is now regarded as part of the teams within which he interacts, and has accordingly become an integral component in our business development offering to the partnership. Where sensible, he also works with small groups of partners to coordinate approaches to client opportunities.”
— Paul Bonomy, Chief Marketing Officer
“Mark Raymond and his team worked with me and my team to improve our culture and build our leadership skills in order to continuously achieve organisational goals. The content was logical and practical and allowed us to have a common set of principles to work from. Our leaders have developed important skills that they are applying every day and are shared with other functional groups within the organisation I would recommend Mark Raymond and his team to any teams wanting to improve culture, leadership in a sustainable and practicable way.”
— George Barlas. Bulk Manager, Privigen Operations
“Mark Raymond has provided extremely valuable business development coaching to a number of our Directors. Mark primarily works with our Directors one-on-one to help them sharpen their BD goals and action plans, having regard to the Firm’s overall strategy. Mark also helped us design and facilitate a strategy day involving all Directors, which was highly successful. Mark’s approach is very practical. He is experienced, inspiring and user-friendly.”
— Tony Frost, Managing Director,
“ have no hesitation in rating Mark Raymond as an outstanding coach and facilitator. Mark combines his extensive knowledge of the value of an ontological approach to personal, team and leadership development, as well as business improvement, with a highly effective way of engaging people to discover significant new learning opportunities that they can immediately act on.”
— Alan Sieler, Director, Ontological Coaching Institute
“We have used Mark and have found him to be of great assistance to our management team. He has an excellent ability to identify the key issues and work through them as a group and as individuals.”
— Daryl Powell. Director
“As one of the largest building surveying companies in Australia, we place a great deal of importance in building a strong culture and supporting our people. Mark Raymond and Mark Molony worked with us to design and deliver a leadership skills program for our leaders. The program was really helpful for our leaders in developing a range of skills and in becoming more effective leaders, and for building stronger relationships with each other. The content was excellent, highly practical and aligned to our culture and values. I would highly recommend Mark and Mark.”
— Ida Lancuba, Manager of People and Culture