In your keynote at the CEF, you argued that many organizations fall into “firefighting” - constantly reacting to crises instead of preparing for the future. How can governments break out of this cycle and create space for strategic reinvention?

What I notice in the work of governments — and it is especially visible in the European Union — is that we often have a very 20th-century approach to budgeting. There is a budget for this year, and we allocate 100% of that budget to specific programming. Then by February or March, a crisis hits: COVID, Trump, terrorists, the war in Ukraine, or something else. And suddenly, we have to rebalance the entire budget. We have to cancel programs already in motion. We have to push finances into places we did not expect. And on and on and on.

A simple answer is to change the rules so that, for example, 20% of the budget is reserved for unexpected disruptions — which today are no longer a probability or even a possibility, but a guarantee. When we have reserves of capital and reserves of capacity, governments are expecting, prepared, and ready. We also need government-wide training in agility, reinvention, and the capacity to mobilize quickly, effectively, and in unison.

There are excellent tools and new management approaches. They need to be introduced and practiced, so that when the crisis hits, we are not scrambling to figure things out. We already have a natural response to the question: how do we mobilize around disruption?

That kind of capability can absolutely be built through the institutions that train public sector professionals. We also have to build greater cohesion across party lines and across administrations. One mistake we make in highly volatile environments is that we focus nonstop on change management, while the most successful systems pay just as much attention to continuity management.

What is continuity management?

It is understanding what the overarching priorities are that must continue no matter what — no matter how elections turn out, and no matter which party comes into leadership. There have to be strategic priorities that serve as a red thread for the whole society. And that requires a very nuanced political readiness — a high political culture, if you will. We need a much more sophisticated understanding that if we as a collective do not have cohesion, our ability to face disruption is very limited.

Recent data from OECD and World Bank shows that over 60% of public-sector reform efforts stall before delivering impact. Beyond coordination challenges, what execution habits and accountability mechanisms distinguish reforms that succeed from those that fade away?

One of the things that has been proven again and again is that success in all types of organizations — private, public, nonprofit — is heavily dependent on early engagement of stakeholders across functions and across levels of hierarchy. Traditionally, change is decided in small rooms by a small number of people, and then rolled out to the rest of the organization — whether that is a ministry, a department, or a cross-ministry effort. But the research is very conclusive. If we do not find a way to engage a greater percentage of our employee body in the decision-making before the reform is rolled out, we will face resistance, misunderstanding, miscommunication, lack of ownership — and very poor results.

We also have to create positive motivation and momentum around achieving new things. Traditionally, incentives are built around predictability, control, and stability — not around innovation, change, and reinvention. So we need to create reasons to be excellent at reinvention, through both tangible and intangible incentives. And we need to rely not only on extrinsic motivation, but also on intrinsic motivation. That becomes a huge boost in making sure change efforts actually take hold.

But the greatest issue is deeper than that.

The greatest issue is the paradigm we have lived in for well over 100 years — where stability was seen as good, and as the ultimate sign of professionalism. That is simply impossible in today’s volatility. So very often we do not change because we think: Why rock the boat? We still have time. Change is bad. We can weather the storm. We can wait it out. And every single piece of data suggests that stability, in the old sense, is not coming back. Governments need to recognize this by looking at the whole army of data points, research studies, and real-world evidence that now exists. If we do not reinvent regularly, we will suffer personally — and we will also damage the communities we serve.

As constant disruption reshapes the psychological contract at work and public administrations in Europe struggle with turnover, aging staff, and talent shortages, what new “deal” must governments offer public servants to keep them motivated to drive continuous reform in the age of metaruption?

This is all about honesty with ourselves. And I do not yet see many governments around the world that are ready to honestly say to themselves that the way we managed in the past is no longer possible. That includes traditional strategic planning. That includes traditional budgeting. That includes many of the things we have long taken for granted as the only possible approach. So the first element has to be dealing with denial. I have a term for that: Titanic Syndrome.

Titanic Syndrome is when an organization — or a whole community, or a government, or even a whole country — brings itself to self-destruction by assuming that we are too big to fail, too important to fail, too untouchable to fail. We assume that we are like Titanic: unsinkable. And we tend to believe that it is the icebergs — the external disruptions — that kill us: a new war, a new wave of inflation driven by outside forces, or some other external shock. But all the studies — including the study of the actual Titanic case — show that what really destroys us is internal: the lack of readiness to recognize the reality of oncoming disruption and adapt quickly. So first and foremost, this is a paradigm shift. And then everything else follows: the new rules of the game. Are there ready-made rules of the game? No. Every team will have to rewrite the rules for itself. But rewriting the rules starts with a very simple and honest process:

This is the data.
This is what is happening in the external environment.
This is what is happening in the economic environment.
This is what is happening in the geopolitical environment.
None of this will disappear tomorrow.
Constant disruption and change will only increase.

Now let us write a new rule book. Without that kind of ground-up work, public service employees will continue to suffer. Younger generations will continue to avoid these jobs. Older employees will continue to feel more burned out and more thinly spread. And the public will continue to criticize public institutions for lack of performance. So it becomes a lose-lose-lose all around.

It starts with accepting reality, dealing with denial, and then engaging your teams in writing the new rule book together. And yes, in many countries, public servants may still feel relatively comfortable and have not yet fully felt the urgency. Salaries are reasonable, benefits are stable, and there can be a sense that “if I do the minimum, I will still get paid no matter what.” That creates a different kind of danger: disengagement and complacency. That was also true in the United States, where I live, until very recently. And then suddenly, institutions and long-standing public programs that had seemed untouchable began to disappear or be dismantled almost overnight. Things people assumed would always be there were no longer guaranteed. That is why complacency is so dangerous.

I do not see any country in the next three to five years that will avoid some form of full-blown reform in how governance is done. Either you do it proactively, deliberately, and with your voice in it — or it will be done to you by geopolitical and economic reality. So if you want to pretend you are untouchable, it will only hurt more later. The new deal for public servants, then, is not simply more benefits or more slogans. It is honesty, shared reality, meaningful participation, and the chance to help write the new rules instead of being crushed by them.

CEF’s Director Jana Repanšek emphasizes that resilient, learning institutions are essential for maintaining public trust during times of uncertainty. In your view, how does continuous reinvention strengthen not only performance — but also credibility of public institutions?

I agree with Jana completely. Both of us have had the privilege of learning the concept of the learning organization from one of its great originators, the amazing Peter Senge, whose work — especially The Fifth Discipline — remains foundational. That book is all about systems thinking and the capacity of an organization to learn as a whole and continuously improve.

Reinvention is built on exactly that idea: continuous learning — but with a specific emphasis on learning how to renew and reinvent on a regular basis. For me, reinvention is one of the best ways to ensure both change and continuity. Unlike innovation, which often assumes that we start from scratch or throw everything out, reinvention recognizes that our history and our legacy cannot — and should not — simply be discarded.

Reinvention starts with a different question: What do we keep? Not: What do we throw away? And then: how do we strengthen what is already working, elevate it, and scale it — rather than assuming that progress requires demolition? That is especially important in the public sector. Public trust is deeply connected to continuity. People need to feel that institutions remember, that institutions build, that institutions honor what has already been done. Too often, a new administration comes in and throws out everything that came before it. That is deeply unproductive from a performance perspective — and deeply damaging from a trust perspective.

When you honor the best of what has been done, when you acknowledge that something may need to change not because it was foolish or wrong, but because the environment has changed, that creates a very different relationship with the public. It increases trust. It creates continuity. And it reduces fear among citizens who are already exhausted by constant change. So in that sense, continuous reinvention is not simply a performance mechanism. It is also a credibility mechanism. It helps institutions evolve without appearing chaotic, reactive, or disrespectful of their own history. And that matters enormously in times like these.

Governments must deliver green, digital, and fiscal reforms under tight political timelines. Why is internal cultural transformation just as important as policy reform — and how can leaders ensure institutions anticipate change and adapt fast enough?

Study after study shows that it is not the technical, technological, or expert-based element of change that usually fails us.

It is the human side.
It is resistance to change.
It is communication.

It is our capacity to organize, align, and make decisions in times of uncertainty.

That is exactly what reinvention teaches.

Reinvention is not about arriving with a ready-made answer. It is about having robust, science-based processes that help you and your teams discover the best possible answer together — with your team, with your stakeholders, with your constituencies — and then do that not once, but again and again, regularly and continuously. We often assume that what we need is the best idea. But today, best ideas are everywhere. Frankly, best ideas can now be generated nonstop by AI. Ideas have become a commodity. The issue is no longer the best idea. The issue is the execution of that idea. And execution is where everything human shows up: resistance, burnout, confusion, fear, poor communication, weak alignment, lack of ownership. If we do not invest in building a proactive and healthy relationship with change among public sector employees, then even the best idea will die in the hallways of tired resistance:

“I do not know how to do it.”
“I am not interested.”
“This is too much.”
“Let us wait.”

Most reforms fail not because the idea was bad, but because the execution was weak. And that is the essence of transformation and reinvention skills: not only generating change, but building the capacity to carry it through. In our model, we make this very clear: successful reinvention depends on three interlocked capabilities.

First, anticipating change.
This is foresight. This is scenario planning. This is the capacity to scan the landscape and understand where disruption is coming from.

Second, designing change.
This is participatory design. This is design thinking. This is innovation-driven problem solving. This is how we shape responses that fit the real context.

Third, implementing change.
This is execution. This is alignment. This is the discipline of translating insight and design into real, lived transformation.

All three matter. All three are essential. And all three need to be built before the reform begins — so that when the pressure comes, the institution operates like a well-oiled machine rather than a system full of friction. That is why internal cultural transformation is not secondary to policy reform. It is what makes policy reform possible.