Frequently asked questions.

Macaulay Consulting works primarily with health, education and human services sector organisations. The first conversation is about understanding the work. Caroline will ask what you're working with: the context, the problem, what's been tried, who's involved and what a good outcome would look like. The aim is to understand whether this is the right kind of support for what you're facing, and if so, what shape an engagement might take.

These conversations usually run around thirty minutes. You'll leave with an honest read on whether Caroline can help, a rough sense of what an engagement could involve and no obligation either way. If it isn't the right fit, she'll tell you, and where possible point you towards someone who might be.

You're not alone. Co-design is one of the most over-used and least understood terms in the sector. At its strictest, co-design is a structured process of building something with the people most affected by it, where those people have genuine influence over what gets built. That makes it different from consultation (where you ask people for input but make the decisions yourself) and different again from user testing (where you build something and then check it works).

Whether co-design is the right approach depends on what you're trying to build, who needs to be involved and how much influence those participants will genuinely have over the outcome. Caroline can help you work out which approach actually fits.

This is one of the most common reasons leadership teams reach out, and the dynamic you're describing is usually more about facilitation than about the people in the room. When two or three voices dominate, it is generally because the structure of the conversation has left space for that to happen.

Well-designed facilitation creates conditions where the quieter voices contribute meaningfully, where dominant voices are channelled productively rather than suppressed and where the group genuinely moves rather than relitigating the same arguments. Caroline designs offsites around the decisions that need to be made, not around a generic agenda. You'd be involved in the design before the day, so the room you walk into is one you've helped shape.

The concern you've named, not wanting it to feel tokenistic, is the right one. It is also exactly what makes this work difficult to do well. Genuine youth engagement is not asking young people to react to something adults have already drafted. It is involving them in shaping the question, the conversation and the outcomes, in ways that account for the practical realities of how young people communicate, what makes them feel safe and what gives their contributions real weight.

You're right that the published case studies sit mostly in health and government, which reflects where Caroline spent the first part of her career. The methods themselves are sector-agnostic. Strategic planning, facilitation, co-design, evaluation and culture work all rely on understanding how people make decisions, how teams function under pressure and how organisations navigate complexity. Those dynamics don't change between a hospital and a private firm; what changes is the context, the language and the constraints, and that's part of what scoping is for.

Caroline already works with private sector clients, including Growlife Medical, and is actively broadening the practice in that direction. If the question is whether the work translates, it does. The honest test is whether the specific problem you're carrying is one her practice is built for, which is what the first conversation is for.

There's no price list on the site and that's deliberate, not deflection. Every engagement is scoped to what's actually needed, and the cost reflects the work involved: who is in the room, how long the engagement runs, how much pre- and post-work it requires, what gets delivered at the end. A half-day leadership offsite and a six-month strategic planning program sit at very different price points, and quoting either one without knowing your context wouldn't help you.

After the first conversation, if it looks like there's a fit, Caroline will send a written scoping document setting out the proposed approach, deliverables, timeline and fee. You'll have everything you need to decide before committing to anything. The conversation itself is no-obligation and at no cost.

Yes to both. Caroline is based in Meanjin (Brisbane) and works regularly with organisations across Queensland and interstate. Remote engagements are well-established practice where they fit the work. Strategic planning, evaluation and research, co-design synthesis and individual coaching all translate cleanly to remote or hybrid formats. Facilitation and team culture work generally benefit from in-person delivery, especially for higher-stakes sessions, though hybrid formats can be designed where travel is impractical.

Where travel is involved, costs are quoted transparently as part of the scoping document, so there are no surprises later. The first conversation is the right place to think through which format would actually serve the work you have in mind.