The Une, Weekly #6 — The Owner

Hi there, welcome to The Une, Weekly #6. Last time we looked at the role of human messiness in the values — action gap. This week we take a systems perspective: cognitive dissonance in organisations, why there’s no clear owner of the gap, and what to do about it.

Systemic Cognitive Dissonance
An organisation can hold a value and violate it at the same time, and feel no contradiction. When a person does that, we call it cognitive dissonance.

It's how we deal with the discomfort of holding a belief and a behaviour that don't fit. Feeling that discomfort is the point. It's a signal that pushes us to close the gap by bending the belief, or changing the act.

But what does this look like in an organisation?

The value lives in the strategy deck. The behaviour in the procurement spreadsheet.

One team writes the sustainability commitment. A different team, in a different room, on a different incentive, makes the sourcing decision that contradicts it.

No single person holds both at once. So no single person feels the dissonance.

The discomfort has been engineered out.

Organisational Dissociation
On one side of the building, a brand team defines mission, vision and values on a golden circle, a pyramid, some other geometric shape.

On the other, an HR director briefs a consultant on a culture programme — redefining the core values and "activating" them.

Same company. Same values, supposedly. Two rooms.

One shaping how the organisation expresses itself outward. The other how it behaves within. Neither holding the whole.

In psychology, there's a name for splitting apart things that should be integrated.

Dissociation. It's a (protective) split: what you know, what you feel, what you do, kept in separate compartments so you can keep functioning under tension you couldn't otherwise bear.

It seems organisations do this structurally. The values and the systems that contradict them are kept apart. Different functions, different reports, different rooms. So they never have to be reconciled.

No one owns this gap.
But the problem is everyone's.

<Everyone’s> Problem
The talent problem
People join for the values you advertised and meet the values you actually live. A gap means disengagement, attrition and churn. The people who care most about meaning leave first. HR owns the issue.

The reputation problem
The gap is invisible until a decision contradicts a stated value in public. There goes the credibility. PR department, your turn.

The culture problem
In the gap between stated values and rewarded behaviour grows cynicism. People stop raising issues and stop bringing their best thinking. HR again? Every manager?

The communication problem
We hope we just need to tell the story better. But we cannot message our way into integrity. Still, the communication department is expected to keep trying.

The ESG problem
ESG doesn’t direct. It reports. Often on the consequences of misalignment. And works hard to tidy up after. They own the metrics. But not the decisions. Now they’re burned out.

The AI problem
AI doesn't understand values, it executes the logic that is already in the system. It scales the incoherence. Is it the IT department?

The financial problem
In the end, every problem above is a financial one. But it can take a while before it shows up as such. Here’s some data the CFO won’t like:

The Costs
Gallup's 2025 global workplace data puts engagement at just 21% worldwide, with the drop in 2024 alone costing the world economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity.

When McKinsey asked why people actually quit, the top three answers were all about worth: not feeling valued by the organisation (54%), not by their manager (52%), and not feeling a sense of belonging (51%). Replacement costs between half and two times their annual salary. (Gallup)

Edelman finds that being able to trust a brand "to do what is right" is now a top purchase consideration, named by 81% of consumers. Roughly two-thirds say they'll buy or boycott a brand based on the stands it takes.

In one KPMG UK study, 54% of consumers said they'd stop buying from a company found to have greenwashed, and 38% said they'd stop investing in it.

The costs might be hiding in different rooms.
But they don't disappear.

The Reunification
The values–action split is structural. So the repair has to be structural too.

The opposite of dissociation is association. In our case, this means reuniting what was pulled apart — values and value creation.

That's what Value Design does. It brings values into the decision itself, as a shared logic, present the moment a choice is made.

No more value in one room and behaviour in another. The value and the act, held in the same mind.

Now the gap finally has an owner. Not a department. Not marketing, HR, brand, CSR, operations, or finance. Everyone. Each person, at each decision, carrying the value as they make the call.

The problem that belonged to no one, becomes the ownership that belongs to everyone.

Move as one. For the benefit of all. — Laurens & Jorn 👋 hello@une.eco