Stepping Up with Purpose:
Ash Smith on Leading the Future of Consulting
What will success look like for you in this new role? For me, success will be about laying the groundwork for the next 25 years of HSA’s consulting practice. I want to help shape a future where HSA and it’s Accredited Practitioner Network are recognised as the go-to partners in Australia for specialist Culture, Team, and Leadership Development services. That means taking our rich history of data driven decisions and many proven examples of successful performance change outcomes and make us even easier to work with, relevant to today’s rapidly evolving environment and more cost effective.
How do you plan to balance leading the consulting team while staying connected to clients and the work on the ground? Our consulting team already works incredibly closely, and everyone is highly experienced senior people – they don’t need day-to-day management. My role will be more about helping us build a clear, shared strategy and aligning our efforts with the short, medium and long-term goals in mind. That collaborative foundation means I’ll still have the space to stay hands-on with the client that helps showcase our work. Staying connected is important – it keeps our strategy grounded in real-world insights and helps me support the team in a more meaningful way.
What aspects of the current consulting approach do you hope to evolve or strengthen? One key area I’d like to strengthen is how we position and communicate who we are in the market. There’s a perception that HSA is primarily a diagnostics business, but we’re a long-standing, deeply experienced consulting organisation with a strong track record in driving meaningful performance change.
I want to make sure we’re clearly telling that story – showcasing the depth and breadth of our consulting work, the impact we’ve had across organisations, and the value we bring in culture, team, and leadership development. We have an incredible service and product offering, and we should be proudly communicating that to both existing and potential clients that grows our slice of the organisational development pie for all the stakeholders in our network. If we win, so do our Accredited Practitioners.
How do you want your team to experience your leadership? I want the team to experience my leadership as authentic and respectful – not perfect, but always open for feedback to be better.
I believe in creating a culture where people are genuine with each other, hold themselves to high standards, and support one another. It’s about practicing what we preach – modelling the behaviours and values we help our clients build.
Who will you need to collaborate with most to be effective in this role, and how will you build those relationships? A key focus will be collaborating closely with our internal marketing team and our broader network of accredited consultants. To grow the consulting side of the business, we need to strengthen our brand and consistently share stories of the impact we’re making with clients.
By showcasing real examples of success, we can reinforce the value of our work and help expand opportunities – not just for our core team, but across our entire network. as I have said before, it’s about growing the overall pie so that everyone can benefit. I’ll focus on building these relationships through regular communication, shared opportunities, and a genuine commitment to collaboration.
Which of our diagnostics or signature solutions do you see as under-utilised, and how might we increase their impact with clients? Leadership and Management Impact, without question. It’s an outstanding product – a powerful and practical system for leadership development and growth. I believe it has huge potential to become the go-to leadership development program in Australia, particularly for organisations that want to shape how their leaders influence culture and sustainable organisational performance. We already do so much in this space, but I really feel we can so much more.
Where do you think there is potential to integrate our Signature Solutions more effectively into broader organisational change programs? Our Signature Solutions are part of a powerful system of change – and the real impact comes when clients engage with that full system over time. The opportunity lies in helping organisations see the value of integrating Culture, Teams, and Leadership development as interconnected parts of a broader change journey, rather than as isolated initiatives.
Sustainable change doesn’t come from one-off interventions. It comes from working across the organisational system – aligning culture, leadership behaviours, and team dynamics in a consistent and intentional way. Our role is to guide clients through that journey, showing how each part of the system builds on the other to drive lasting impact.
What innovations or enhancements to our current offerings would excite you most to lead? What excites me most is the opportunity to enhance how clients interpret and act on the insights from our tools. We already help them uncover powerful data – now I want to focus on making that data even more user-friendly, practical, and immediately actionable.
It’s not just about helping clients understand what the results mean; it’s about partnering with them to apply those insights in meaningful ways. I’d love to lead innovations that bridge that gap – making it easier for clients to turn insights into action and using our expertise to support them through implementation, not just diagnosis.