About
Mark Buchan MSc
Author of The Hidden Gap.
Mark works at the intersection of organisational culture, behavioural dynamics, leadership psychology, and complex systems thinking.
Through years spent inside transformation programmes, leadership environments, and coaching conversations, he observed the same recurring pattern across industries: the growing gap between what institutions say they value and what they actually reward.
The Hidden Gap is the name Mark gives to this pattern. He provides a framework for understanding it – and for those ready, a way to begin changing it.
The work
The work behind The Hidden Gap
Over many years of working with leaders, teams and organisations, the same pattern kept appearing: people talk about values as if they are clear, shared and lived — while behaviour tells a more complicated story.
That tension became the foundation for what I now call The Hidden Gap — and for the wider challenge I describe as the Human Alignment Problem.
My work is about helping people make that gap visible, understand what keeps it in place, and respond to it with greater honesty, intention and alignment.
This is not about changing people. It is about changing what drives behaviour.
It sits at the intersection of values, behaviour, conflict, communication, collaboration and change. It is the work I have been doing for more than twenty years — and the book I needed to write.
"Behaviour is not the problem to be fixed.
It is the evidence of the values currently at work."
— The Hidden Gap
The Purpose of the Hidden Gap
Sometimes the gap shows up as conflict. Sometimes as stalled change, mixed messages, cynicism or energy drain. Sometimes it shows up in a quieter way — as the nagging sense that something is not adding up but nobody can quite name it.
The aim is not to fix behaviour at the surface, but to understand what is driving it underneath. This enables leaders to create the conditions for alignment to become possible. That is why we do the work.
Whether it happens in a one-to-one coaching conversation, a leadership team workshop, a two-week organisational diagnostic, or through a book that gives someone language for what they have been sensing for some time.
That is how we do the work.
Three ways to go further
Read the book
Explore the core ideas behind The Hidden Gap and join the list for the first chapter and launch updates.
Work with me
The Human Alignment Diagnostic, coaching, workshops and facilitated conversations for leaders ready for the honest conversation.
Free diagnostic
Take the free four-minute Hidden Gap Diagnostic. Locate where your values actually sit using the Values Integrity Model.