Breaking the Possibility Ceiling, Rethinking Public Sector Reform

by Sesil Verdzadze and Nonso Jideofor

By Governance for Public Goods and Services

September 10^th, 2026

by Sesil Verdzadze, Project Manager , Public Administation and Service Delivery Governance for Public Goods and Services (GPGS), UNDP and Nonso Jideofor, Public Sector Innovation & Digitalization Expert, UNDP

In today’s world, governments are faced with multiple, interconnected challenges, often with very limited resources to address them. In this realm, Ethiopia is not an exception. With more than 2.5 million civil servants across the country, the Government of Ethiopia is reimagining how public administration can work more effectively. Its comprehensive seven-pillar Civil Service and Public Administration Reform Agenda largely builds on reshaping the Ethiopian civil service, making it more capable, knowledge-driven and evidence-based, with the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) of Ethiopia championing this work.

Against this backdrop, we at UNDP’s Governance for Public Good Service (GPGS) Global Team engage with governments globally to identify the entry points for public sector transformation and strengthen institutional capacities through a range of tested tools and solutions, including the comprehensive 3i Organizational Diagnostic Tool, institutional assessments, public service re-engineering and Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), among others.

LOOKING BEYOND THE VISIBLE BARRIERS

As part of this broader effort, UNDP, in collaboration with the FCSC and the World Bank, has applied PDIA with Ministries, Departments and Agencies across Ethiopia’s public sector. Drawing on these efforts, we share insights into the “invisible walls” that could be blocking public sector reform efforts, and what it might take to break through them.

Why does this approach matter? Problems are inevitable, and how institutions grapple with them is one of the most grounded ways they build capability. This logic sits at the heart of the PDIA methodology, developed through the Building State Capability work associated with Harvard Kennedy School. It starts from a blunt observation: many institutions become very good at performing motion without movement. They hold meetings, develop plans and produce reports, yet their capability to solve real problems does not always improve.

Over time, they fine-tune form at the expense of function, asking too much, too soon and too often of systems that may not yet have the capability to deliver. These efforts can be mistaken for capability. The development sector has also become very good at supporting change and capturing results inside closed project systems. That should be acknowledged for its catalytic effect. But the harder question remains: who stewards and drives the change when the project architecture is gone?

This is where problem-driven work matters, and the significant value added by PDIA approach shine through. When teams identify and own problems, deconstruct root causes, test local solutions, and use evidence to seek buy-in and resourcing, they are not just solving a problem. They are building the institutional capability to keep solving problems.

"What I liked most was the practical and problem-solving approach of PDIA, especially how it encourages identifying real institutional problems, analyzing root causes, and testing small practical solutions through learning and adaptation. Its focus on the organization digging out their real problem and finding out the best solution by themselves."

— Department Head, Ethiopia Water and Technology Institute

RETHINKING HOW REFORM HAPPENS

However, building this capability does not happen simply just because teams open up to the PDIA approach. Embracing PDIA is only the beginning. It can also mean unlearning long-entrenched ways (mindsets) about how problems are understood, decisions are made and ways of working are chosen on the journey towards public sector reform.

Earlier this year, under the leadership of the Federal Civil Service Commission of Ethiopia, the UNDP’s Governance for Public Goods and Services Global Team, in partnership with the World Bank, engaged key public sector reform stakeholders in Ethiopia around this approach. These included the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor and Skills, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Water and Energy, and the Ethiopia Water Technology Institute.

Across these engagements with the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), a few mindsets stood out as particular powerful determinants of the status quo:

Problem Blindness: The inability or unwillingness to think beyond the usual suspects: budget, skills, authority, and infrastructure. These may be real constraints, but they can also become default explanations that stop deeper diagnosis. When institutions repeatedly confront the same unresolved issues, repeatedly, fatigue can reinforce these assumptions and make it harder to look beyond them.
Frontline Underestimation: The blanket belief that frontline workers are “not capable,” “not paid enough,” or “won’t care.” Once this belief takes hold, expectations are kept low, performance is rarely stress-tested, and doing the bare minimum becomes normalised.
Possibility Ceiling: The imaginary ceiling that limits change to things that have already been tried, exhausted, and declared impossible. Options are censored before they are understood or tested, especially incremental and process-level changes.
Procedure Lock-in: The tendency of compliance to extinguish problem-solving. When the set procedure does not address a problem, the assumption becomes that the problem is not meant to be solved. This mindset is reinforced by what the system rewards and punishes. Over time, taking initiative can begin to feel risky.

Breaking the Possibility Ceiling, Rethinking Public Sector Reform

"This is different from every other workshop I’ve attended and the facilitation was great. It was insightful to identify priority challenges and issues using the fishbone. I could feel the struggle myself and with the team, I believe there is something in the approach for changing the outcomes of our work."

— Team Manager, Ethiopia Ministry of Water and Energy

BUILDING CAPABILITY THAT LASTS

While these limiting perspectives were visible at the beginning of the engagement, we observed them gradually shift from session to session, creating more room for deeper exploration, imagination and the identification of the most relevant local solutions to address these problems. As a result, actionable reform implementation entry points were identified, enabling the ministries and international partners to advance the reform agenda more effectively.

"We learned a lot in terms of identifying the core problems before providing solutions. What’s impressed me is that we have to work first on the short-term solutions that we can do within our reach, and then we can also work for the long-term solutions that could be involving other stakeholders and decision makers."

— Advisory, Ministry of Education, Ethiopia

Breaking the possibility ceiling begins when institutions stop asking only what they lack and start asking what they can learn, test, and change with what they already have. Ethiopia’s experience shows that public sector reform is not a single blueprint or project, but a sustained practice of confronting real problems, empowering those closest to them, and adapting through evidence and experience. By embedding this way of working across the civil service, reform can move beyond compliance and temporary interventions to build institutions capable of continuously solving problems and delivering better public services long after external support has ended.

"While we have a lot of recognition around what needs to be done, how it can be done, how it can be achieved; the challenges that you’ll face in trying to achieve these is really what this approach impacts."

— Senior Public Sector and Governance Specialist, World Bank

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