Foundation
A focused engagement to set up your initiative with clarity, alignment, and stakeholder trust. Built for City Managers, Superintendents, and senior public sector leaders.
Foundation helps you get clear on your goals, strategy, and plan for communicating with stakeholders before you move forward with important initiatives.
We work with you to define: the decisions on the table, who is responsible for making them, the tradeoffs involved, and how stakeholders should be involved along the way.
So when you bring people in, or take something public, there is clarity, not confusion.
Foundation Engagement
A focused engagement to set up your initiative with clarity, alignment, and stakeholder trust.
Built for City Managers, Superintendents, and senior public sector leaders.
Foundation helps you get clear on your goals, strategy, and plan for communicating with stakeholders before you move forward with important initiatives.
We work with you to define: the decisions on the table, who is responsible for making them, the tradeoffs involved, and how stakeholders should be involved along the way.
So when you bring people in, or take something public, there is clarity, not confusion.
When Foundation Is the Right Fit
Foundation is designed for public sector leaders who want to ensure the right stakeholders are engaged at the right time, with the right questions, to inform real leadership decisions.
It is best when you are:
- launching a new initiative
- preparing to engage stakeholders
- or forming a committee or advisory group
How A Foundation Engagement Works
We start with your vision, not by gathering input.
We begin by building a shared understanding with you on the goals of your initiative, acknowledging the constraints, and taking stock of the decisions on the table.
The Phases of Foundation
Decision Clarity
We define a clear vision of what decisions need to be made, and the order in which to make them.
We work with you to surface what decisions are on the table, what options exist, and what tradeoffs need to be considered.
Engagement Design
We identify who should be involved, why they are involved, and what role they will play.
This includes determining impacted stakeholders, how their voice can influence decisions, and setting clear and fair expectations for all when inviting input.
Readiness + Rollout
We shape how the initiative is introduced and communicated.
You’ll be prepared to tell a transparent and direct story: how decisions were made, acknowledging tradeoffs, and making clear what stakeholders can expect as the organization moves forward.
What You Leave With (Deliverables)
At the end of Foundation, you will have:
Who We are + What We bring
Herringbone Strategies was founded by a small team who has spent their careers at the intersection of public institutions and public trust.
One of our co-founders brings experience as a Public Relations Director for a large WA state public school district. He’s been responsible for how major decisions were framed, communicated, and received by staff, families, and the broader community. We know what it looks like when an initiative is introduced without sufficient groundwork, and what it looks like when it isn’t.
The other has spent years as a television journalist, holding public leaders accountable, translating complex institutional decisions into stories that general audiences could understand and evaluate. That experience sharpened a particular skill: knowing exactly where a public narrative will be tested, and whether it will hold.
We think about how decisions will be received, not just how they are made. We’re constantly asking how decisions will be understood, what questions will be raised, and how we can better serve communities who are hungry to trust their public institutions.
Scope + Pricing
A focused engagement, not an open-ended process
Foundation is typically completed over 8–12 weeks, scoped based on the complexity of your initiative, the stakeholder environment, and what’s at stake. Most engagements fall in the range of $20,000–$45,000.
A Note on Fit
Foundation works best when there’s a real decision to be made. The leaders who will get the most from this engagement have a direction and a genuine desire to move forward well, not with a predetermined conclusion to validate, and not with a process so undefined that engagement design isn’t yet the right question.
Foundation is not designed for open-ended committees, undefined facilitation, or input-gathering without a clear decision structure. If you have a real decision in front of you and you want to make it well, this is where we start.