Trust isn’t a luxury. Your Mission depends on it.
For Washington state’s public leaders who can’t afford the status quo of distrust
You’re communicating more than ever—and it’s exhausting. But the endless “storytelling” posts, emails, and community meetings aren’t building trust.
And when budgets get tight, a new tax is on the ballot, a tough decision needs public support, or a personnel issue becomes a story, you’ll feel the impact of distrust.
Trust is what protects you when things get hard. It’s also what makes your most ambitious goals possible. You can’t afford to wait on it.
The default communications playbook is all about more: more celebrations, more content, more transparency (whatever that means). These activities are good at making people like you, not trust you. It’s an unwinnable game.
We’ll teach you how to play a different game.
The Like-to-Trust Roadmap
If you’re communicating like there’s no tomorrow but trust is still low, it might because your communications program is designed for likability, not to build mutual trust.
The Like-to-Trust Roadmap is a customized multi-year (typically 1-3 years) plan that maps the incremental steps your organization needs to take to build the conditions for trust-building communication at every level.
It might mean shifting some communication responsibilities to create necessary bandwidth for your director. It might mean building the stakeholder relationships your organization will need before a major decision lands. It might mean a phased investment in staff or contract capacity.
Every Roadmap is different, because every organization’s starting point is different. What they share is a clear through-line: closing the gap between how you communicate today and how a high-trust organization communicates, one realistic step at a time.
We’ll deliver the Like-to-Trust Roadmap for your organization through a Foundation engagement.
Foundation
Foundation is a focused engagement typically completed in 60 to 90 days (flexible, but not recommended).
The engagement designed to do two things:
1. build the internal systems that make trust-building communication possible
2. shift the organizational culture so that excellent communication is how your institution operates, not a function one department manages alone
Here’s how it works…
The Framework
We start with alignment between you and your communications director. Together, we map where trust needs to be built, identify where your communications function is under-resourced or under-empowered, and build the tiered communication model that becomes your internal roadmap.
The Culture Shift
You and your communications director lead the rollout. We guide you through introducing the framework, facilitating learning with leaders and key communicators, and setting a new organizational standard for how your team communicates. We’re in the room as partners, not presenters.
The Handoff
The engagement closes with a working reference document your team owns: the tiered model, shared communication standards, and learning resources your team can use after you complete the engagement. At the end of our engagement, your leaders hold the framework.
What You Leave With (Deliverables)
At the end of a Foundation engagement, you will have:
Who this is for
Foundation is designed for Washington state’s public leaders who already know something has to change in order to build lasting trust, and are ready to do something about it.
It is not a communications audit. It is not a training workshop. It is a structured engagement that changes how your organization thinks about and practices communication, starting with the people at the top.
If you lead a school district, city, or public agency in Washington state, and you’re ready to move from “liked” to trusted, let’s talk.
Who We Are + What We Bring
Herringbone Strategies is a boutique public sector consulting firm working with local leaders—primarily city administrators and superintendents—in Washington State. We hold an unshakeable belief that our public institutions can rebuild lasting trust with the people they serve, and we believe that starts at the local level. We bring structural solutions to the structural problems that hold organizations back from being a trusted pillar in their hometown.
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 organization is optimized for likability, and the associated risks.
Our other co-founder has spent years as a journalist and TV news anchor. His work is in holding public leaders accountable, and translating complex institutional decisions into stories that general audiences can understand and evaluate. He has seen the ups and downs of organizations that communicate their way through their toughest moments, and the role trust plays in the process.