Public agencies face changing societal needs and new tasks. Even so, prior research has largely ignored how these organizations reorient their operation. This ethnography examines a defense agency that reoriented its task from being internationally focused toward a domestic presence during 2014-2017. Data include extensive fieldwork and documentation. Using the extended case method, I adopt the strategic planning concept and conceptualize it as two types of learning activities: exploitation and exploration. The empirical analysis reveals how experts learning and value creation with community stakeholders in planning of the new public agency task unfolds jointly with identity reinforcement. Through this richer explanation of organizational learning in strategic planning, the study contributes to a better understanding of how and why bureaucratic expertise act entrepreneurially.