In business, there are the costs you can track on a spreadsheet, and there are hidden ones that do damage in the shadows. At the top of that hidden list is incongruence, the gap between what a company says it is and what its actions, budgets, and priorities show it to be.
It’s like the Penrose triangle, the impossible object in the visual metaphor. Look at any part in isolation, and it seems to make sense. The marketing team’s brilliant new campaign about being a “people-first” company sounds great. The finance department’s plan to freeze wages and cut the training budget might look prudent on a spreadsheet. But when you view them together, you realize the structure cannot hold, or at the very least, needs thought and nuance to weave together.
This incongruence has a real cost. When a company publicly celebrates its commitment to world-class engineering, but its budget reveals a hiring freeze on senior developers and aging, inadequate equipment, it creates cynicism among its most valuable employees. When leaders preach the importance of customer service while simultaneously slashing the support team and implementing systems that make it harder for customers to get help, it creates confusion and frustration that leads directly to churn.
This gap between narrative and reality is where value is destroyed. It burns trust with employees who see the gap between words and actions. It damages credibility with customers, who experience the disconnect firsthand. And it signals a lack of strategic clarity to investors. The energy wasted managing these internal contradictions is immense. As a financial leader, one role is to be a steward of congruence, holding up a mirror and asking: “Does our allocation of capital, time, and attention, truly reflect the values we claim to hold and align with our strategy?” Closing that gap is not an academic exercise; it’s a financial imperative.
As a Fractional CFO and Executive Coach, I help leaders achieve congruence, ensuring their budget reflects their strategy and their actions reflect their values. If you see incongruence in your organization, or know a leader struggling with it, I’m available for a confidential discussion on how to restore alignment.