Most transitions from public service into the private sector don’t fail because of a lack of skill or experience.

They fail because experience is presented using signals that make sense in one system and are misread in another.

The issue is not capability.
It’s translation.

Two systems, two ways of assigning value

In one system, credibility is built through stewardship: mandate, process, institutional memory, and advisory reach. Authority is distributed, risk is shared, and decisions are often justified as much as they are made.

In the other, credibility is built through outcomes: value created, risk carried, decisions taken under uncertainty, and consequences managed over time.

Neither system is better. But they evaluate people differently.

Problems arise when experience optimized for one system is presented unchanged to the other.

How value is assessed outside the institution

When organizations assess potential hires, they are rarely asking whether someone is accomplished. That’s usually evident.

They are asking three quieter questions:

• What changes if this person is here?
• How do they exercise judgment when information is incomplete and pressure is real?
• Is this someone who is here to build, or to explore?

Those questions can be answered long before an interview, based on how experience is framed.

Where strong experience is often misread

Several patterns come up repeatedly.

Scope substituted for ownership.
Large teams, significant budgets, national files; these are assumed at senior levels. What differentiates candidates is not scale, but where responsibility ultimately sat and what outcomes were personally owned.

Advisory language that blurs accountability.
Words like strategic, advisory, and support signal seniority in one context. In another, they can raise questions about distance from decision-making. Advice is plentiful. Judgment that carries consequence is not.

Complexity treated as a credential.
Complexity is the baseline, not the differentiator. What distinguishes people is their ability to clarify complexity for others, explain trade-offs, and act decisively. Labeling work as “highly complex” rarely strengthens the signal.

A simple reframing example

Consider the difference between these two descriptions of the same work:

“Provided strategic leadership and advice to senior officials on the development and implementation of a national policy initiative involving multiple departments, external stakeholders, and significant funding.”

And:

“Owned the design and delivery of a multi-department national initiative, aligning stakeholders, resolving tradeoffs, and delivering agreed outcomes within approved funding and timelines.”

Nothing substantive has changed.
Only the signal has.

The first emphasizes mandate and advisory posture.
The second emphasizes ownership, judgment, and outcome.

Judgment and culture are inferred, not declared

Culture and judgment are not assessed through values statements or adjectives. They are inferred from emphasis, omission, and framing.

One useful exercise is to look back at performance evaluations for feedback and patterns:

• When were you brought in?
• What kinds of problems were you trusted with?
• How did others describe your role when situations were deteriorating or politically sensitive?

Those patterns are far more useful than generic descriptors, and they should guide what is surfaced and what is left out.

There is no single “right” narrative

If you ask a hundred people what a CV or profile should look like, you’ll get a hundred answers. That’s not a failure of advice. It’s a signal.

Experience is not a record to be completed; it’s a narrative to be selected.

Different contexts reward different emphases. Selectivity is not omission — it’s judgment.

The real transition challenge

Moving between systems is rarely about learning new skills. It’s about learning how authority, judgment, and value are recognized, and then making them legible without apology.

The work doesn’t change.
The evaluation lens does.