GovLeaders Advisory

Public sector consulting

For the problems your org chart can’t solve.

Fractional command staff and government & public affairs, plus promotional examinations, policy and procedure, organizational assessment, and crisis communications. For agencies, districts, local governments, and the firms that serve them. Built on a career spent doing this work, and teaching it.

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Jonathan Zitzmann, Principal of GovLeaders Advisory

Jonathan Zitzmann, MS, MPA, CPM

Principal

The problem

The work that never leaves your desk.

Every agency has the same stack. These items don't move because there is no one to give them to. That is the entire job.

  1. The policy manual last revised under a different chief.
  2. The promotional process everyone complains about and no one will redesign.
  3. The reorganization that has been coming for three years.
  4. The morale problem you can name privately and cannot say out loud.
  5. The statement you will have to make tomorrow morning.
  1. The meeting where your engineers and their command staff are not speaking the same language.
  2. The board relationship that gets harder every meeting.
  3. The agency you cannot get a real meeting with.
  4. The initiative that needs friends before it needs votes.

The other chair

The door that will not open.

Every firm that sells to government knows this stack too. The work is good, the team is real, and the door is heavy. That is the other half of the job.

Who this is for

Public organizations of every size and shape, and the firms that serve them.

  • Law enforcement agencies
  • Cities
  • Special purpose districts
  • Counties
  • Water & utility districts
  • Public safety entities
  • Emergency services districts
  • School district public safety
  • Engineering firms
  • Consulting firms
  • And others

I have led in a small rural city, in the largest and most diverse county in Texas, and in one of the fastest-growing suburban counties in the country. I have also governed from the board side of the table. Small or large, rural, suburban, urban, or all of the above: the problems rhyme, and the work translates.

And increasingly, the other side of the table: engineering firms, developers, technology vendors, and professional practices that sell to government and need someone who speaks both languages. I have spent a career on the buying side of those conversations. I know what your pitch sounds like from that chair.

Engagements

Scoped to the problem, not to a package.

Work is priced per engagement, held on retainer, or defined by contract. The practice runs virtually by design: the counsel, the meetings, and the work product all come to you, which keeps your calendar intact and keeps travel off your invoice. It also means the work starts now, not when schedules and flights line up.

Government & Public Affairs

The introduction, the translation, the buy-in

Private firms that work with government spend real money learning how government actually decides. If you sell engineering, technology, development, or professional services into the public sector, I serve as the bridge: identifying the right officials, making the introduction warm instead of cold, translating your proposal into the terms a sheriff, a commissioners court, or a district board actually evaluates, and staying at the table through the procurement process while a relationship matures into a contract.

On the public affairs side: strategic communications for government-aligned initiatives. Bond program communications, coalition building, community education, and the groundwork that determines whether an initiative has support before it needs it. If you know this work, you know what those words mean.

For firms serving government. I also take contracted subject matter expert and consulting engagements with larger consulting and accounting practices serving public sector clients. Your client, your paper, my expertise. Subcontract and independent contractor arrangements both work.

Organizational Assessment

Structure, staffing, and climate

Span-of-control and staffing analysis. Organizational structure review, including division and unit design and the naming conventions that signal how an agency thinks about itself. Mission, vision, and core values written to be used, not framed. Organizational goals and performance measures that a governing body will accept and a workforce will recognize as fair.

Climate and morale assessment, conducted by someone external, because the honest answer to "how is it really going" is one your people will not put in writing to you. Participant confidentiality is emphasized, practiced, and protected throughout; without it, no survey tells the truth.

Training assessment. Evaluation of your current training programs and the skills and capabilities of existing staff, followed by customized online training, self-paced or instructor-led, built to close the gaps that matter most.

Promotional Examinations

Exams that survive a challenge

Custom written promotional examinations, developed and administered virtually and independently. Items built on academic sources, practitioner sources, or both, plus your own policies and procedures, so the exam tests the job your people actually do.

  • Source material your way: use the books and materials you designate, choose from options I present, or have me select sources against needs identified during intake.
  • Independent virtual administration, removing the perception of favoritism that follows any exam graded inside the building.
  • Appeals handled: challenges to item validity, sourcing, accuracy, or scoring are reviewed independently, with findings presented to your decision-maker.

This is where agencies get sued. A promotional exam is a selection instrument, and a passed-over candidate's attorney will attack its validity. My assessment background is not incidental to this offering. It is the offering.

Add-ons: custom study guides · self-paced online exam preparation course · instructor-led online exam preparation course. Civil service: agencies under Chapter 143 carry statutory requirements for source material, notice, scoring, and appeals, all identified before any work begins, not after.

Board & Executive Relations

The relationship that shapes everything else

The one between the executive and the governing body. When it strains, in either direction, I work as a facilitator and bridge-builder. For the chief or administrator navigating a difficult board, or for the board navigating a difficult department head, I diagnose what broke and build the path back to a working relationship.

I know what a board hears when a consultant talks, because I have been the board. And I know what an executive needs from one, because I have been the executive.

Crisis Communications

The statement, the sequence, the press

Crisis communication planning, message development, spokesperson preparation, and response protocols built while things are calm. When something breaks, steady counsel through it: the statement, the sequence, the governing body, the press, and your own people, who are reading the coverage too.

The plan you build in peacetime is the one you get to use. The one you improvise at 2 a.m. is the one that ends up in the after-action report.

Policy & Procedure

Manuals written for your agency

Review, rewrite, and modernization of policy and procedure, built around how your agency actually operates rather than adapted from a national template with your name dropped in.

Implementation is part of the work. New policy has to be taught, not emailed: rollout instruction for existing personnel, onboarding for new hires, supplemental training for probationary employees and trainees, and targeted training following corrective action.

  • A permanent online repository your employees can access, always holding the current version of every policy.
  • Date-stamped archives, so you can prove exactly what a policy said on any given day.
  • Recurring policy training bulletins, on the cadence you choose.

Optional add-on: independent legal review. Either through outside counsel I retain, or through your own city or county attorney working directly with me. The second route costs you less and keeps your lawyers inside the process, where they belong.

Fractional Command Staff

The flagship engagement of this practice: executive command staff experience at a fraction of the cost of an executive hire. A senior public sector executive on call, by the month, for whatever lands on your desk. Available for standing strategic counsel, for taking on a demanding project and leading it through every phase, or for anything in between. Retained with a defined scope and transparent tracking; terms are set at intake, around how your organization actually operates.

Counsel

  • The decision you want stress-tested before you make it.
  • The briefing or presentation that has to be exactly right.
  • The problem you are not yet ready to raise with the people above you, or the people below you. No problem too small, no question off limits.

Execution

  • Standing up a department, a unit, or a division. A jail expansion, a salary schedule, a technology rollout.
  • Depending on scope, I manage and execute directly, or I manage your team's execution: benchmarks, milestones, progress, results.

“I don’t need to be on your org chart to contribute.”

Approach

Some problems cannot be solved by someone who works for you.

Internal staff carry history, allegiances, and a stake in the outcome. That is not a character flaw. It is the structure of the job. It also means the person best positioned to tell you the hard thing is the person least able to afford telling it.

Outside counsel exists to close that gap. Someone with no position to protect, who will say the thing plainly, put a name on the recommendation, and hand you a work product you can take to a governing body. And someone who holds what you share in confidence, from the first conversation forward.

The gap runs both directions. Firms that sell to government are often one introduction and one honest translation away from a real conversation, and government buyers are drowning in pitches written by people who have never sat in their chair. I work that seam from both sides, on engagement terms that fit the client: agency, district, or firm.

Most of this work is mine to do, and I do it. When a project genuinely needs more hands, or a specialty I do not hold, I bring in people under contract and stay accountable for the result. Any addition like that is scoped and priced with you before it happens, so nothing shows up on an invoice you did not agree to.

I have run daily operations for large public organizations, and I have sat on the governing side of the table as an elected director. I have hired consultants, and I have watched them spend six weeks learning what your people already know. That is not the engagement I sell.

Confidentiality

What you tell me stays with me.

Confidentiality begins the moment you reach out: the inquiry form, the first phone call, the first email. It does not end when the engagement does. What you share while exploring whether to hire me is treated with the same discretion as what you share after you have. In perpetuity, not for a term.

A mutual confidentiality agreement is available on request, executed before you tell me anything of substance. Many clients want the conversation protected before it starts. That is a reasonable ask, and the answer is yes.

The same discretion runs on the private side. Pursuit strategy, teaming conversations, pricing, and the early groundwork of a public initiative are competitively sensitive, and initiatives of every kind are won quietly before they are won publicly. Who I am working with, what we are building, and when it becomes public is your call, not mine.

One honest caveat: your organization may be subject to the Texas Public Information Act, and I will never pretend otherwise. What I control is my side of the table, and my side of the table does not talk.

About

Jonathan Zitzmann

My career has been spent inside public organizations, at every scale they come in. I began in a small, rural municipal police department, where I rose to assistant chief of police, the kind of agency where the budget is tight, the staff is lean, and everyone does three jobs. I have served as chief deputy, the second-in-command and chief operating executive, of a large sheriff's office in one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. And I have spent much of my career with one of the largest constable's offices in the United States, in the largest and most diverse county in Texas, where I have commanded a division of more than one hundred personnel and helped manage a large contract policing program. Along the way I have solved complex problems, facilitated challenging relationships, improved systems and processes, and managed organizations with more than a thousand employees and operating budgets over $120 million.

Small and rural. Massive and diverse. Fast-growing and suburban. The scale changes; the problems rhyme.

I have also served in elected office on the governing side of the table, as a director of a municipal utility district and as a commissioner of an emergency services district that funds and governs one of the largest combination fire departments in Texas. I know what a board hears when a consultant talks, because I have been the board.

The other half of my background is instruction and assessment. I am an experienced instructor and faculty member at multiple universities. At the graduate level I teach Human Resources for the Public Sector, Strategic Planning, and Crisis Communications within a Master of Public Administration program. At the undergraduate level my courses include police personnel management, critical incident decision management, public safety leadership and administration, the administration of criminal justice agencies, and both Texas and American government, among others. I have been contracted by the American Council on Education as a National Evaluator and Subject Matter Expert, reviewing workforce training programs for college credit recommendations, and by Prometric as a Subject Matter Expert, developing and assessing national examination content for active-duty military personnel, veterans, and adult learners.

The consulting itself is not new. Alongside these roles I have provided contracted consulting and subject matter expertise to private firms, national credentialing organizations, universities and educational providers, and nonprofit organizations. GovLeaders Advisory brings that work under one name.

What this practice sells is the combination: an operator's experience, a board member's perspective, and an educator's discipline. Firms hire it to understand government. Governments hire it to solve what the org chart cannot. Either way, the learning curve is already paid for.

Contact

Start a conversation.

Tell me what is stuck, or which door will not open. If I am the right person for it, I will tell you how I would approach it and what it costs. If I am not, I will tell you that too, and usually who is.

Engagements run virtually by design, which means the service area is wherever you are, and the meeting fits your calendar instead of a windshield. Counsel does not need a chair in your building to be in your corner.

After you reach out, intake is your choice: a short guided questionnaire that helps match your situation to the right engagement, or a call or video conversation if you would rather just talk it through.

Inquiries
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