Field Note 20 of 22

A Pattern, Not a Person

“Reformers Only After Retirement.”

I keep meeting the same figure, in different rooms, wearing different names. Someone who spent two or three decades inside government, working within its constraints, delivering programmes, rising through its ranks. And then, once they'd retired, becoming remarkably candid, writing, speaking, advising, about exactly what needs to change.

The pattern repeats often enough that I've started calling it ROAR: Reformers Only After Retirement.

It isn't a criticism of any one person. If anything, it's the opposite, a tribute to how much institutional knowledge they'd actually accumulated, knowledge that had clearly been there all along, just never spoken aloud until the constraints of the role lifted.

What stays with me isn't the individuals. It's the question underneath the pattern: why does a system make it easier to become a reformer after leaving it than while still inside it?

Field Note 20