His consulting has focused on strategy, change management, organisational development, people and their performance. He has consulted extensively in the telecommunications, information technology, banking, insurance, manufacturing and professional services industries as well as with Federal and State Government Authorities.

Prior to his consulting career, Don majored in business at Victoria and Auckland Universities in New Zealand. With an earlier background in marketing, and then corporate strategy, Don subsequently ran major management consultancy businesses in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia between 1985 and 1993. He has consulted widely in areas involving people, strategy and high performance.

Don’s leadership consulting focus is directed at the actual leadership issues senior managers deal with on the job. Through Harris Smith’s overseas associates, he sources leadership approaches, tools and techniques which are state-of-the-art on a world wide basis. He then helps his clients apply these to deliver both corporate high performance and personal satisfaction and accomplishment. On the organisational level, Don works with senior management in leadership of change areas, such as post acquisition integration, implementing strategic change, and achieving higher productivity through performance management. He also has confidential leadership coaching relationships with board directors, managing directors and senior executives of some of Australia's largest and prominent organisations.

Paul Barton, Senior Consultant

Paul has seventeen years of consulting experience covering both the government and private sectors. He works on assignments for both Harris Smith in an organisational development and coaching capacity and for MACAW Consulting – a sister company operating in the business and marketing strategy market. He has extensive experience in developing and running workshops, which he applies for both companies.

Prior to joining Harris Smith three years ago, Paul completed a contract as the Director of Marketing for the SAS Institute, the Australian division of the world’s largest privately owned business software company. He was asked to do this having just finished an organisational development consulting project for SAS, which realigned the structure of the organisation to support their new business strategy. As the Director responsible for Organisational Development Consulting for Morgan & Banks, Wellington, he established and grew this business from 2 staff up to a team of 12 from 1991 to 1998 when the NZ business was sold to the publicly listed Morgan & Banks (M&B) Australia. This business unit was established to bring together and grow the assessment, consulting, training and development, and outplacement activities of M&B.

Paul has a Bachelor of Commerce degree, in which he majored in both Economics and Marketing. He holds accreditations for workshop facilitation in leadership, organisation development and behaviour change from US organisations such as the Vitality Alliance (formerly know as the Praxis Institute), Integrity Systems and Ken Blanchard.