Sustainability has never been more visible in the corporate world. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality are now part of risk registers, annual reports, and investor conversations. Yet despite this unprecedented awareness, the pace of real-world change remains painfully slow. We sat down with Patrick to discuss his new whitepaper, The knowing–doing delusion, as well as the psychological and cultural forces that sustain inaction, and what true leadership looks like in the sustainability era.
Patrick, why did now seem like the right time to write The knowing–doing delusion?
Over the past decade, I’ve watched organisations accumulate ever more knowledge about the sustainability crisis through climate risk assessments and detailed disclosure requirements requiring enormous amounts of sustainability related data while continuing to operate business models that remain largely unchanged.
It struck me that the problem was no longer one of awareness. We’ve passed that threshold. The deeper question is why alignment between what we know and what we do has proved so elusive. This whitepaper was my way of exploring that paradox. My aim was not to assign blame or offer easy solutions, but to understand the organisational and psychological forces that make change so difficult.
In the whitepaper, you use the phrase “institutional schizophrenia.” Can you share what you mean by that?
Institutional schizophrenia is the coexistence of two conflicting realities inside the same organisation. On one level, companies communicate progressive narratives about sustainability. They insert it in vision statements, speeches, and investor presentations. But on another level, their operational decisions continue to be driven by short-term financial logics.
Different parts of the same business operate on entirely different assumptions, one guided by planetary limits and the other by quarterly returns. This split isn’t usually about hypocrisy. It’s about organisational design. Companies often integrate sustainability only within boundaries that do not threaten core revenue drivers. The result is a fragmented reality, where sustainability is present in narrative but absent in the decisions that matter most.
Leadership today is not about raising awareness or publishing more commitments. It is about alignment between what we know and what we do. That requires embedding sustainability into business models, capital flows, governance systems and incentive structures.
Beyond organisational design, you talk about psychological dynamics. What role do you believe they play?
Human psychology explains a lot of what we see. Take moral licensing, for example. That is the tendency to celebrate small positive actions as justification for avoiding bigger changes. Installing solar panels on headquarters or reducing packaging can be worthwhile, but when they substitute for deeper transformation, they become part of the problem.
Then there is temporal discounting. That is the way we naturally prioritise short-term benefits over long-term risks. In corporate settings, this bias is reinforced by quarterly reporting cycles and investor expectations, which makes it difficult to act on risks that will only fully manifest decades ahead.
And perhaps most insidious is normalcy bias, the belief that tomorrow will resemble today. Even as data shows escalating disruption, many organisations unconsciously assume continuity and plan as if the future will simply be a slightly cleaner version of the present. Together, these biases create inertia that keeps organisations locked into familiar patterns.
You also introduce the concept of “institutionalised cognitive dissonance.” How is this different from what individuals experience?
Cognitive dissonance at the individual level is the discomfort of holding two contradictory beliefs. Institutionalised cognitive dissonance, on the other hand, is built into structures and workflows. It happens when organisations publicly acknowledge climate and nature risks in reports and strategies but fail to integrate those risks into capital allocation or product development. It’s not usually intentional deception.
More often it arises from fragmentation with sustainability teams operating in isolation from finance or operations and from cultural norms that reward continuity over disruption. Over time, this duality becomes normalised. It gets rationalised as pragmatism or complexity, but the long-term effect is corrosive. It undermines trust and creates an environment where credible ambition is sacrificed for comfortable continuity.
If this diagnosis is correct, what does genuine leadership look like?
Leadership today is not about raising awareness or publishing more commitments. It is about alignment between what we know and what we do. That requires embedding sustainability into business models, capital flows, governance systems and incentive structures. It means accepting trade-offs, confronting growth assumptions and facing internal resistance head-on. Real leadership is uncomfortable because it challenges inherited logics. It requires the courage to move from optics to substance, from performance to principle. And it is this transition that Ramboll Management Consulting helps clients navigate, as they strive to become true leaders in sustainability.
Finally, what message do you hope readers and leaders take from your whitepaper?
The age of awareness is behind us. We know what the risks are. We know the consequences of inaction. The challenge now is alignment. The purpose of the whitepaper is not to offer tidy solutions but to name the forces, biases, and narratives that potentially hold us back. Only by recognising them can we start to dismantle them. Ultimately, sustainability is not a narrative to be performed but a principle to be lived. That is the leadership test of our time.
Want to know more?
Patrick Moloney
Global Director, Sustainability Consulting & ESG
+45 51 61 66 46