The Une, Weekly #1 — Welcome

May 13, 2026

Hello, nice to find you here. We're Une. A Value Design Studio, here to make organisations move as one. Wait what? Our first newsletter is here to tell you more.

Laurens & Jorn

Une grew out of a question that has been alive in both of us, Laurens and Jorn, for years. With 20+ years of experience working with organisations on their reason for being, what they care about and how to bring that into the world, we kept noticing the same pattern.

Most people want to do the right thing. For their customers, their colleagues, the world they're part of. They aim to contribute meaningfully. To make a positive impact. But wanting to do the right thing and actually doing it consistently, at scale and under pressure, are two very different challenges.

What's going on

What’s going on

A 2020 study by MIT Sloan found zero correlation between an organisation's stated values and how their employees actually experience them. Zero. (To make it slightly worse, "Integrity" was the most often stated value 🙈).

This lack of coherence is costly. Gallup shows that only 1 in 5 people is truly engaged at work, and that the number one driver of engagement is simply knowing what is expected of you. Not perks. Clarity.

Meanwhile the world is changing faster than we can keep up with. Geopolitics, technology, climate, policy. Our reality keeps shifting. Somewhere in the middle of all that, we are expected to make sensible decisions. Not just for us, but for the world at large.

We try to find answers in more plans. More meetings. More keynotes. More strategy. But they're not bringing more clarity. Goals set in January are irrelevant by March. Everyone has the same deck but reads it differently. The gap between what we care about and what we do keeps widening.

Inside, people are searching for meaning and direction. Outside, the ground keeps shifting.

How do we get clarity on what's right? And how do we act on it?

Value Design

We believe this is about design. Stated values often fail for two reasons:

Values written as beliefs aren't actionable. "We believe in integrity." "We care about people." It is unclear what they actually mean in real life for decision making.
In practice, organisations end up valuing other things — speed, margin, short-term certainty — not because anyone explicitly chose these, but because those are the things the system rewards, especially when inner guidance is absent.

The result: decisions get filled in individually, in good faith, but inconsistently. And, without anyone choosing it deliberately, things drift apart.

That's why we're launching Une. A Value Design Studio making organisations move as one by uniting everyone and everything on what matters most, everyday.

Three moves to unity

Know what true value you add to the world
Not just commercially, but socially and ecologically too. Because whether we make it explicit or not, every organisation already has impact across all three. Instead of treating social and ecological value as ESG compliance or sustainability reporting we bring them to the heart of the organisation. Together with commercial value, they form an interconnected triad. So we can be deliberate in how the talent, expertise and knowlegde of the organisation create real value in the world, across all three dimensions.
Have a compass, not a map
A map assumes the terrain is known, that the territory is stable, and that the route can be planned in advance. So we need something else: a compass. When you can't predict the future, the most powerful thing an organisation can have is shared clarity on what it is fundamentally here to do — and the principles to navigate by when the context keeps changing.
Make values actionable for everyone
Values as abstract statements on a wall or as bullet points in a deck do not offer guidance in day-to-day work. People and teams will act when they understand — in a way they can feel — why it matters. When the work is connected to something meaningful, and that meaning is clear enough to act on.

This is the shift from values as beliefs to values as behaviour.

Value as belief:
We believe profit and purpose can coexist.

Value as behaviour:
Make commercial return the proof of social value, not the trade-off against it.

Value as belief:
We value diversity and inclusion.

Value as behaviour:
Fill every room with the voices that will live with the decision.

Value as belief:
We are committed to quality.

Value as behaviour:
Ship nothing you wouldn't put your name on in five years.

The difference: a value written as a belief describes what you stand for. A value written as a behaviour names a specific condition — something that can be used to choose between two real options, and rules out a choice when it falls short.

We call this: Value OS

The Value OS is an operating system for unified value creation. It makes your values work for you and the world at large. With a Value Compass that gives shared language to how value is created, and a Value Steward — an AI tool — that brings it into daily decisions.

Value OS

In the coming weeks we'll share more about how it works in practice, and how we're building Une as a steward-owned ecosystem — long-term value over short-term gain, all the way down.

Want to explore what this could mean for your organisation? We're here.

For talks, pilots, workshops, coffees and clarity.

For the benefit of all.

— Laurens & Jorn, co-founders of Une

Une · @De Groene Afslag · hello@une.eco · Linkedin

The Une, Weekly