Mr. Pompeo has shown a similar eagerness to express his views in public forums, making clear his skepticism of the Obama administration’s deal to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons program, playing down talk of Russian interference in the election last year, and talking at length about the need to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, even if that means using military force.

Those issues all came up in Mr. Pompeo’s appearances this week. But his focus was on talking about how he has reshaped the C.I.A. In an appearance on Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, Mr. Pompeo boasted that he had pared back bureaucracy at the agency, reducing the decisions that had to be personally approved by the director “by 40 percent.”

The United States’ list of rivals and enemies is long — it includes global powers as well as international criminal networks — and “we need to have a bias toward being as nimble as our adversaries,” Mr. Pompeo said.

He made his point with an anecdote: “I was sitting in a very long meeting with some very senior officials and I was asked, ‘Boy, if we did X, what would our adversaries do?’” Mr. Pompeo recounted. “And I responded by saying, ‘They sure as heck won’t have a meeting like this.’”

The audience laughed. “That’s exactly what happened in the meeting, too,” he said.

The changes he has made at the C.I.A. have resulted in substantive achievements, though few could be discussed publicly, Mr. Pompeo said. He did offer one example, saying that the C.I.A.’s work had helped stop the flow of supplies vital to North Korea. But he provided no other details.

Mr. Pompeo has given only a handful of speeches and interviews since taking over the C.I.A. Most of his appearances have been at forums familiar to neoconservatives, where he tends to find receptive audiences and his assertions about the inner workings of the Trump administration are rarely challenged.

The audience’s questions on Tuesday focused largely on North Korea, Iran and the other issues that tend to occupy the Washington national security establishment, including the fight against the Islamic State. Mr. Pompeo’s assertions about the president’s handling of the daily intelligence briefings went unchallenged, even though they run counter to accounts from other administration insiders. There was no talk about whether the president’s Twitter messages, such as calling North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un, “Little Rocket Man,” affected the C.I.A.