There are two questions that I've been asked a few times recently.
The first question: What is the human alignment problem?
Leaders, change agents, coaches, managers, consultants and facilitators have spent decades trying to fix organisational dysfunction at the surface level.
They focus on improving communication, creating clearer processes, running yet another team building workshop, or implementing one more reorganisation.
But the root cause sits much deeper.
Most organisations declare values that they don't consistently live by. The gap between what gets said and what actually drives behaviour — in decisions, in culture, and in how people treat each other under pressure — is where most of the damage occurs.
I call this "The Hidden Gap". It is hidden because we are surprisingly good at not seeing what we don't want to see.
In over twenty years of working inside and with organisations, I've sat in rooms where everyone privately knew the truth — and nobody said it out loud. That silence is where the hidden gap lives.
But this is not only an organisational problem.
It scales from the individual, to the team, to the organisation, and ultimately to society itself.
The second question: Why does the human alignment problem matter?
It matters because right now we are racing toward AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), while our human systems remain fundamentally misaligned.
This is why Part 5 of my book is called "Aligned to What?"
Humanity cannot agree on which values matter most, which should take precedence, or how they should operate under pressure.
So how can we expect to align AI with human values when there is no alignment between humans on what those values are?
We have been sold two competing myths: that AI will save us, or that it will kill us.
IT won't. We will determine the outcome. AI will not magically solve our deepest human contradictions. But neither will it create them.
In short, you cannot automate your way out of a values problem. There are no shortcuts. There are no free lunches.
The work cannot be outsourced:
Not to a consultant.
Not to a framework.
Not to a machine.
We collectively need to do the work ourselves.
The Hidden Gap
My book — The Hidden Gap: Solving the Human Alignment Problem — is published on June 19th.
In it, I explore:
- ·why human systems drift into misalignment
- ·why organisational theatre emerges
- ·what it might take to close the gap between declared values and lived reality