Helping you to unlock change

with communication
and collaboration that brings people to a common place.

Common Place Communication helps navigate change through unlocking better collaboration.

We believe sustainable change happens when the right people are involved at the right time. We can help you to unlock successful change through effective collaboration and strategic communication that includes stakeholders in decision-making. Our focus is on bringing people together and finding the alignments that will connect silos, engage stakeholders, and create a common understanding of your vision.

Our services

Common Place Communication is a boutique agency specialising in advice, strategy, facilitation and training to help organisations get the best change outcomes through collaboration. Common Place Communication works across various industries and in both the government and private sector to create effective outcomes.
We help leaders to understand and navigate the human side of change through effective change leadership advice, communication strategy and advising on the most effective types of change approaches, including Prosci and other change methodologies. We work to create alignment to a new vision or future through collaborating effectively with stakeholders.

We work with teams and leaders to ensure they know who their internal stakeholders are and how best to work with them. We help to facilitate better collaboration across silos and create aligned priorities. The Busting Silos online collaboration e-course offered by Common Place Communication through the Agile Change Leadership Institute is a collaboration training program designed for anyone who needs to create better outcomes by getting individuals and teams to collaborate with each other.

We have successfully assisted a wide range of organisational partners to work together to achieve common goals and outcomes. This includes with other organisations or with external audiences such as communities and customers. We have developed consultation, collaboration and co-design approaches to create shared understanding of new services and approaches.
Our years of experience in communication enable us to create and recommend communication strategies and tactics to improve information flows and ensure everyone knows what’s going on. We’ve worked with communication, change and engagement teams across a broad range of organisations. We’ve helped and coached comms leaders at all levels to succeed through challenging times.
We’ve developed engagement approaches for engaging with stakeholders, whether employees, external stakeholders, executive leadership, or the community. This includes community engagement for infrastructure projects, and employee engagement in change projects.

Silos in the workplace can be problematic. They can lead to duplication of work and inhibit the flow of knowledge across departments and teams. Working within a siloed environment can limit the quality of work produced across organisations, foster unnecessary conflicts, and hinder true innovative thinking. But in large organisations, silos can become difficult to avoid.

That’s where the Busting Silos online collaboration course comes in. The Busting Silos collaboration course is tailored for individuals who want to break down barriers and drive efficient teamwork. Whether you’re looking to play well with a wide range of personalities or enhance your ability to share and receive knowledge (minus the hurdles), this course has you covered.

Imagine a workspace where collaboration is effortless, miscommunication is a thing of the past, and the collective intelligence of diverse minds leads to better outcomes.

Busting Silos was developed by Melissa Dark and Dr Jen Frahm and forms part of the Agile Change Leadership Institute curriculum.

The content of Busting Silos covers:

• becoming more strategic, resilient, and effective in collaboration and communicating with others

• reducing rework and delays caused by poor relationships and misunderstandings

• reducing conflict

• working together with business partners to create collaborative outcomes.

• increasing satisfaction at work, particularly in roles with significant cross-functional dependencies

• improving change resilience and psychological safety

• bridging organisational divides

• improving your team’s reputation in the organisation

Busting Silos is a collaboration training program designed for anyone who needs to create better outcomes by getting individuals and teams to collaborate with each other.

It gives participants the skills to break down barriers and build better working relationships—both with other teams within your organisation and with external stakeholders.

About Melissa Dark

Founder and Director

Melissa has global experience in creating and leading change and communication strategies to engage stakeholders, leaders and employees in business and process change. She takes a consulting approach, helping teams to assess and analyse their situation, develop strategic, data-informed solutions, and coach and advise on execution.

Melissa Dark has been working in change, communication and collaboration for more than 25 years – more than 15 of those as an independent consultant. She began her career in PR, then moved into internal and change communication and organisation development, and most recently has been specialising in collaboration and integration efforts as part of strategic change and stakeholder engagement. 

She helps organisations identify the key people who need to be part of a change or project, works to analyse and understand their needs, and then develops and advises the best communication strategy and methods to reach and engage with them. She also looks at ways to break down silos within organisations to create better collaboration, change resilience and innovation. 

With Dr Jen Frahm, Melissa is the co-founder of Busting Silos, a training program to help leaders cross boundaries and build relationships both within and outside their organisation.

Melissa has a Master’s degree in Communication and is Prosci accredited, an Accredited Business Communicator and a Certified Agile Change Leader. She is currently based in Brisbane and works throughout Australia. Her previous career history includes working in senior communication roles in organisations such as VicRoads, Australia Post, ANZ, and Infosys, and consulting to a wide variety of government and private organisations. She also delivered the highly regarded Black Belt Internal Communication program across Australia, New Zealand and Asia for a number of years, teaching a generation of communication practitioners. She has extensive experience in infrastructure.

Qualifications:

Bachelor of Arts (Communication and Public Relations) – Deakin University
Master of Arts (Communication) – RMIT
Graduate Certificate, Psychology – James Cook University
Micro-credential, Applying Behavioural Science to Create Change – Monash University

Certifications:

Prosci
Certificate of Agile Change Leadership
Certified Scrum Master
Accredited Business Communicator

Memberships:

Member, Change Management Institute of Australia
Member, IAP2

Awards:

Winner, IABC International Gold Quill Award, 2017 (Queen’s Wharf Brisbane project)
Winner, IABC International Gold Quill Award, 2014
Winner, Shorty Award (social media) for Best Charity (Random Acts), 2013
Winner, 2001 Victorian Public Relations Institute of Australia Awards for Excellence, Employee/Member Communication 

Common Place Communication Vision

Our approach

Melissa called her company Common Place Communication because she’s passionate about creating common “places” for people and their ideas to meet, and to do so with simple and human “commonplace” approaches.

Outcomes we like to work towards:

We do this through:

Melissa is an active member of the communities she lives and works in. She has previously held positions on the Queensland Advisory Board for the Starlight Foundation and as a global communication advisor for international charity Random Acts. She is currently the Brisbane community coordinator for Orange Sky. Orange Sky’s focus on connecting people experiencing homelessness through laundry and shower services closely aligns with her belief in the power of connection.

Interested in finding out more?

Let us help you bring everyone to a common place.