Structural Parallels, Part 4: Operational Immersion
This is the fourth in the Structural Parallels series, which explores the concept of identifying parallels across industries to accelerate transformation. Part 1 established the importance of recognizing these parallels. Part 2 demonstrated that adaptive systems follow universal three-phase patterns. Part 3 revealed how human cognitive biases scale into organizational architecture. This essay examines the epistemological requirements for transferring knowledge across domains—and why external advisory models fail to enable transformation.
The Advisory Structural Problem
The fact is, this dependency is not a flaw; it is the business model. The most profitable clients are not those who achieve transformation, but those who remain dependent.¹ Multiple analyses note that major firms earn the highest margins through long-tail engagements, repeat contracts, and "transformation support" work.
Critical examinations, such as those by David Craig², describe recurring dependency cycles as intentionally structured, designed to maximize margins through repeat business. Likewise, the model often documented for major firms, including McKinsey, focuses on embedding personnel to extract and document core organizational knowledge, which can then be used to perpetuate ongoing engagements.
External expertise is privileged over internal capability, creating systems optimized for dependence rather than transformation. What appears as strategic advisory actually extracts organizational intelligence, repackages it as deliverables, and sells it back as intellectual rent: payment for access to knowledge the organization already possesses but cannot synthesize.
The Synthesis Gap
Traditional consulting risk operating through extraction: interviewing staff, analyzing data, benchmarking, and delivering recommendations. Modern complexity demands contextual intelligence, not abstract frameworks. Data reveals what happens; immersed participation reveals why it happens.
A process map shows the official workflow. However, only sustained observation reveals the informal networks, workarounds, and unspoken rules that keep operations functional when official systems fail. This revelation of systemic failures through sustained participation is a key to understanding the actual dynamics of an organization.
The difference is epistemological (how we determine what counts as valid knowledge). As management scholar Henry Mintzberg observed, "Management is not a science. It's a practice, and practices are learned through experience." ³ What looks like progress on slides collapses under operational reality because contextual intelligence, not abstract data, determines implementation success.⁴
Organizations don't lack information. They lack synthesis.
Employees hold fragmented insights that never connect across silos. The knowledge exists; it remains invisible.
Dasein: Knowledge from Being-There
The philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that authentic understanding requires Dasein (literally 'being-there'): a form of knowledge that emerges from immersion rather than observation.⁵ You cannot truly understand a system by studying it from outside.
Understanding requires participating in its constraints, experiencing its tensions, and dwelling in its operational reality
Abstract recommendations fail because they ignore contextual constraints that the observer never encountered.
The reorganization that breaks trust networks
The process change that disrupts informal coordination
The software requiring five additional steps nobody has time for
The policy that conflicts with unstated cultural norms
As organizational theorist Karl Weick noted, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" ⁶ Meaning emerges from action, not sole observation.
Three-Phase Method: Immerse, Map & Identify
The solution lies in shifting from extraction to synthesis. This requires a disciplinary method:
Immerse: Spend sustained time within the system. Surface-level analysis misses tacit knowledge (unarticulated understanding embedded in daily practice).⁷
Frontline workers know which workarounds actually function
Middle managers know which approval processes get bypassed
Cross-functional staff know where handoffs consistently fail
Case: Contract Research Organization (CRO)
A 350-employee CRO suffered from systemic coordination failures across three critical areas, directly mirroring the structural shortcomings in Part 3:
Lead Generation Breakdown
Marketing deployed unfocused campaigns measuring activity (touches) rather than outcomes (conversions), a example of Present Bias discounting future impact.
Operational Silos
No formal handoff process between Business Development and Operations; client relationships fractured at transition points—the result of In-Group Bias scaled.
Knowledge Concentration Risk
Critical institutional knowledge trapped with individual employees; rapid growth outpaced documentation systems—a direct Centralization Bottleneck.
Personnel immersed themselves in the Business Development department for three months. Not interviewing from outside. Not observing from conference rooms. ⁸
Attended meetings spanning marketing, services, contracting, technical, and software initiatives
Documented informal decision patterns and key personnel dependencies
Maintained trust through sustained participation rather than external judgment
What Actually Emerged
The CRO had systemic mismatches hidden by siloed operations, and incentivized by misaligned KPI’s
Single-point knowledge risk: Data dictionary and infrastructure depended on one leader's tacit knowledge.
Siloed innovation: Operations, BD, and IT pursued separate AI initiatives.
Knowledge gaps: Senior leaders’ institutional memory never reached operational staff.
Infrastructure chaos: Enterprise data was scattered from a botched migration, and new software was deployed without consulting IT.
Map: from day one the integrated personnel moved to Map the constraints, dynamics, and failure modes that define how the system actually works. Systems reveal their actual structure when they break down. The mapping phase focused on:
Mapping personnel relationships and coordination points.
Surfacing all active and redundant initiatives and cross-departmental collaboration points.
Visualizing how the current system works and where it predictably fails.
Identifying process and workflow pain points.
Through synthesis, the integrated personnel combined operational data with their on-the-ground experience. Visualizing the RACI matrix, they exposed the organization's systemic "hot potato" approach to accountability. This visualization proved the disconnect between leadership design and functional process.
Identify: The final step was to identify domains that share structural characteristics, not surface similarities.
Structural Recognition: Identified that the CRO's need for high retention and seamless client projects structurally mirrored the high-touch service and coordination of the restaurant industry.
Pattern Transfer: Applied the storytelling framework to the client life cycle, treating all touchpoints (BD, Ops) as sequential chapters that must maintain a single, coherent client narrative to avoid fracturing the relationship.
Contextual Translation: Used to achieve Leadership Adoption. The resulting solutions were packaged into a consultative story or experience tailored to the leadership's preferred style, including the use of molecular and biological parallels and visualizations to highlight process problems. Solutions emerge from recognizing parallel architectures.⁹
Core Insight
The central finding of this process was the discovery of zero-cost recommendations. The organization did not need a new strategy, software platform, or training module, which would have incurred massive capital expense. It needed someone to slow down, immerse in the day-to-day, and observe without assumptions. That immersion surfaced the fundamental constraint: a structural misalignment between individual stress incentives and the company’s stated priorities. Once mapped, the pattern became clear. The issue was not effort or intent, but the absence of a structural mechanism to identify, articulate, and communicate the misalignment in a way leadership could act on. The most effective solutions were disciplinary and structural, requiring governance changes, not funding
Building Capacity Instead of Dependency
This is not a rejection of consulting, but a shift toward integrative practice. As complexity increases, organizations require adaptive capacity more than prescriptive frameworks. Developing that capacity, and ultimately reducing dependence on external advisors, becomes a strategic advantage rather than a threat.
In modern environments, the consultant’s role moves from delivering knowledge to catalyzing it. Most organizations do not lack expertise; they lack translation. The work is making implicit knowledge visible, connecting fragmented insights, and aligning them with operational reality. The value is not specialized technique. It is contextual awareness.
Until organizations value presence on equal footing with analysis, they will continue relying on external problem-solvers who address symptoms while overlooking the underlying structure. The real output is not recommendations but organizational sight: enabling teams to recognize their recurring patterns and inherited biases.
Tomorrows advisory models must acknowledge that genuine understanding arises only from dwelling within the system one seeks to change. The open question is whether consulting can embrace this philosophy or whether its economic incentives render that shift unattainable.
References
Alvesson, M., & Johansson, A. W. (2002). Professionalism and Politics in Management Consultancy Work. Organization, 9(4).
Craig, D. (2018). Rip-Off: The Scandalous Inside Story of the Management Consulting Money Machine. Icon Books.
Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers Not MBAs. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for Intuitive Expertise. Journal of Management and Psychology, 24(4).
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. Harper & Row.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Sage Publications.
Polanyi, M. (1966). The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press.
Schein, E. H. (1999). Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship. Addison-Wesley.
Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy. Cognitive Science, 7(2), 155-170.