Early in our research, my colleagues and I learned that there were two types of theories of action. One was the theory that individuals espoused and that comprised their beliefs, attitudes, and values. The second was their theory-in-use – the theory that they actually employed. We did not expect that individuals would customarily design and implement a theory-in-use that was significantly different from their espoused theory, nor did we expect them to be unaware of the inconsistency when the theories they espoused and used were different. Therefore, it was a major surprise – given our view of human beings as designing organisms – to find out that there are often fundamental, systematic mismatches between individuals’ espoused and in-use designs. It was also a bit baffling to find that individuals