Budgets are shrinking, the workforce is aging out, and expectations from residents continue to rise. Adding another system on top of how things already run won't solve any of that. We work with federal, state, and local agencies to rebuild how they operate and not just add to what's already there.
Government
Running government well comes down to improving how the work gets done.
Where we do our best work
Government challenges we know from the inside out.
Government agencies operate under pressures that don't exist in the private sector. Public accountability, constrained resources, and layered governance create conditions where even well-intended initiatives stall. We've worked alongside agencies long enough to understand what's driving those challenges and what it takes to address them.
COMMON CHALLENGES
1.
Leadership Development & Organizational Effectiveness
The leaders who keep government moving are rarely the ones at the top.
Appointed leaders come and go. The career staff and middle managers who understand how the work gets done are the ones who determine whether any initiative lands or stalls. Investing in their development, structure, and capability isn’t a soft priority. It’s how government organizations build the resilience to deliver through constant change.
How We Help
- Assess organizational alignment across leadership layers, decision rights, and operating norms to identify where execution breaks down
- Build development programs for the career staff and middle managers who provide continuity and drive momentum through leadership transitions
- Design leadership development approaches embedded in day-to-day work, not episodic training events
- Establish team structures and ways of working built for lean, resource-constrained environments
2.
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation fails when it’s treated as a technology project instead of an organizational one.
Enterprise system implementations in the public sector come with unique constraints. Regulatory requirements, procurement processes, budget limitations, and lean staffing models shape what’s possible and influence how quickly work can move. Systems may go live, but organizations often struggle to adopt, sustain, and evolve them as needs change.
How We Help
- Assess implementation readiness and step in to stabilize or reset implementations that are off track
- Build a technology strategy and modernization roadmap grounded in operational and budget realities
- Evaluate and select technology solutions that fit the constraints of public sector procurement
- Design program structures that reflect regulatory constraints, procurement realities, and limited resource environments
- Establish operating models and governance structures that support the system after go-live
3.
Organizational Change Management
Change in Government moves faster than most organizations can absorb.
Government agencies are rarely dealing with one change at a time. System implementations, reorganizations, policy shifts, and workforce transitions often happen simultaneously and under public scrutiny. Without deliberate attention to the human side of change, initiative fatigue sets in and adoption suffers. Getting people through change in this environment requires a more deliberate approach than most organizations have in place.
How We Help
- Assess organizational readiness across stakeholder groups before changes go live
- Build change management strategies tailored to the complexity and constraints of government environments
- Design targeted communication, engagement, and training approaches for specific stakeholder groups rather than a one-size-fits-all rollout
- Measure adoption and adjust when the approach isn’t landing the way it was intended
4.
Business Process Redesign
Agencies often know where the breakdowns are. What they lack is the room to fix them.
The friction shows up in slow workflows, duplicated effort, and workarounds that have been in place so long they’ve become part of how things work. Most agencies understand where these breakdowns exist. What’s harder is addressing them in environments with limited staffing, competing priorities, and no excess capacity. Improvement work has to happen alongside ongoing service delivery, which means it often stalls or gets deprioritized.
How We Help
- Assess operational workflows to identify where friction is coming from and what it’s costing
- Redesign processes with a focus on eliminating workarounds and aligning work to how teams operate in constrained environments
- Establish ownership, governance, and accountability structures to sustain improvements beyond initial implementation
- Prioritize improvement efforts based on mission impact, feasibility, and available capacity—not ideal-state design
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The Customer Service workshop provided to us by The Gunter Group was an engaging and interactive experience that set us in a great direction with our cultural goals. We sincerely appreciate the time they took before the presentation to understand our organization's specific needs, goals, and culture."– Leadership Program Advisor County Government Organization
Results that reflect the work behind them.
60+
Stakeholders engaged across departments to assess enterprise architecture maturity and define future state roadmaps
4+ Years
ERP initiative stabilized after extended implementation challenges
3
Leadership committees aligned through structured governance workshops
OUR IMPACT & PERSPECTIVES
Government Insights
Case Study
A department’s tangled backlog became a roadmap it could act on.
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Case Study
Uniting a newly assembled leadership team around a shared vision and values.
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Case Study
Replacing an outdated CRM with one system four functions could trust.
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Our Leaders
Meet the people leading this work.
Our government engagements are led by senior practitioners who understand how public sector organizations operate and what it actually takes to move complex work forward within them.
Stephen Bacon
Principal,
Strategy Practice Leader
Stephen leads The Gunter Group’s Strategy practice, partnering with senior executives and leadership teams to define their vision and chart a clear path forward. His work centers on three questions: Where are we going? Why is that the right direction? What will it take to get there?
With more than two decades of experience, Stephen helps leaders navigate complex decisions, build alignment, and turn strategic direction into action. He brings a facilitative approach to the work, helping leadership teams surface the conversations that matter and move forward with confidence.
Ashleigh Gunter
Founding Partner
Ashleigh brings more than 30 years of management consulting experience, helping organizations navigate complex change and deliver meaningful business outcomes. Her work has focused primarily on healthcare and government, where she has partnered with executive leaders to align strategy, people, and operations. As a founding partner of The Gunter Group, she is known for building trusted relationships, developing strong leaders, and helping organizations create lasting change. Her collaborative approach keeps people at the center of every transformation.
WORK WITH US
The constraints don’t go away. The work still has to move forward.
We help government leaders deliver complex initiatives without pretending the conditions are different than they are. Tell us what you're working through and we'll tell you where we can help.