This study examines how public organizations adapt as they face adversity. Prior research portrays rapid adaptation of public organizations as inhibited by bureaucracy, while overcoming such administrative intertia is presumed valuable but relatively little theorized. Our grounded case analysis reveals how new capacity for protecting a local community from foreign power unfolded reinforced by three actions by a public agency: empowering actors, balancing tensions, and learning from feedback. We trace these actions to temporal management structures, their different phases in a two-year process, and how this process resolved the social need but also rendered new public-private relationships. To explain this pattern, the concept “enacting value system” is developed and offers a counter-point to predominant views on public organizations ability to rapidly create new value.