What if is not a comfortable question. It sounds idealistic, even naive. Most organisations, institutions, and even individuals are wired for optimisation. Make it faster. Make it cheaper. Make it more efficient. But sometimes, the most crucial step in reinvention isn’t iteration. It’s interruption.
What if is the question that begins that process.
It doesn’t arrive as a strategy. It rarely shows up in meetings with an agenda. It usually starts somewhere quieter—in the discomfort of watching something that no longer fits or the peaceful sense that we’re solving for the wrong outcome. It’s not always welcomed. What if slows things down. It introduces doubt. It refuses to accept the inherited framing. And that’s precisely what makes it powerful.
We’ve been taught to prize clarity. But clarity without questioning becomes rigidity. Systems that look seamless on the surface can be quietly crumbling underneath. I’ve seen it in boardrooms and policy rooms, in education systems and hiring models. We ask how to scale, how to attract, and how to optimise. But we rarely stop to ask: what if we’re measuring the wrong thing?
That single question opens the door to reinvention.
A different kind of clarity
When we rebranded our company from Emerging Europe to Reinvantage, it wasn’t because the old name had failed. It had served us for years. However, it had also begun to constrain us—to limit the kinds of conversations we could lead and the transformations we could support. The shift began not with a marketing discussion, but with a simple internal question: What if the label that once served us is now holding us back?
That question made space for a different kind of clarity. One rooted not in where we came from but in what we were becoming.
And that’s what what if does. It doesn’t discard the past. It invites us to rethink its role in our future.
What if the real value we offer isn’t what we’ve been selling?
What if the systems we work within are no longer designed for the problems we face?
What if the assumptions that shaped our success are now quietly working against us?
The question we can’t ignore
We like to think reinvention starts with vision. But in my experience, it begins with a question we can’t ignore.
The challenge, of course, is that what if is hard to quantify. It doesn’t fit neatly into KPIs. It can’t always be justified in a pitch deck. But leaders who ignore it end up reactive, not relevant. Organisations that sideline it end up solving yesterday’s problems. Individuals who silence it often wake up years later, wondering why they feel so far from who they were meant to become.
In times of disruption, the safest path isn’t always the clearest one. It’s often the one where someone dares to ask: what if there’s another way?
So the next time something doesn’t quite sit right—whether in your product, your process, or your path—pause before you patch it.
Ask a better question.
Because what if isn’t where things end. It’s where true reinvention begins.
Photo: Dreamstime.
