Advice to the board
Illustrative example — fictional scenario
Fictional manufacturer · question: why is the internal quality standard not applied under time pressure?
Refinery
Consulting, evidenced.
Refinery refines three raw materials — management science, your organisation's data and the tacit knowledge of your people — into one traceable analysis.
The problem
Advice was always one person.
One mind, one calendar, one invoice. A good consultant knows the theory, reads the numbers and senses how people decide. The last of the three has never been measured — so the most important part of the advice rests on the judgement of one expert.
Tacit knowledge
Most of what your organisation knows is not written down.
Experience, rules of thumb, the way a team really handles an exception: it lives in people, not in systems. It leaves the building every evening, and for good when someone retires or moves on.
When every organisation has the same AI and the same public knowledge, this is what still sets yours apart. Refinery makes it explicit, and connects it to your data and to management science.
“We can know more than we can tell.”22.0%
of the EU population was aged 65 or over on 1 January 2025 — 2.9 points more than ten years earlier.
Source: Eurostat, Population structure and ageing (data extracted February 2026) (opens in a new tab)
~20%
of the working week of a knowledge worker goes to looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute, The social economy (2012) (opens in a new tab)
Refining
01
Raw material.
Knowledge in frameworks nobody reads, data in systems that never speak to each other, and tacit knowledge that exists only in people’s heads. Mixed together, and of little use.
02
Separate.
Science, data and tacit knowledge each go into their own layer, so every piece can be traced back to where it came from.
03
Connect.
Every concept is linked to your documents and figures, and to the tacit knowledge of the people who do the work.
04
One answer.
The layers converge into one analysis. Each conclusion still points to a model, a document or a recorded decision.
Illustration — how the three layers become one answer
Traceable
Every sentence points to its source.
Advice from Refinery reads like advice. The difference: select any sentence and you see what it rests on.
Source
- 1Document
Quality manual, §4.2 Batch release
“A batch that does not meet the internal standard is held until it has been re-run or released in writing by the quality manager.”
- 2Tacit knowledge · recorded decision
Decision trace · shift lead · situation “Friday shipment”
Decision: ship on Friday and inform the customer. Reasoning: “The relationship with this customer outweighs our internal standard in this case.” Boundary: “If the deviation had been outside the legal tolerance.”
- 3Model
Argyris & Schön (1974) — espoused theory and theory-in-use
The theory people give to explain what they do often differs from the theory that actually governs what they do. The second can only be read from behaviour.
- 4Model
Schein — levels of organisational culture
Stated values change behaviour only when they match the underlying assumptions people act on. Where they do not, the assumptions win.
Where it fits
Questions on the board’s table.
Refinery works best on one concrete question where what is written down and what people actually do may differ.
Our safety procedures are in order on paper. Why do incidents keep happening in the same places?
What Refinery measures
Where written procedure and decisions under time pressure diverge, and in which teams.
We are merging two departments. Where will the two ways of working clash?
What Refinery measures
How both groups decide in the same situations, and which terms mean different things to each.
We are introducing a new policy. Will our managers apply it the way we intend?
What Refinery measures
How managers weigh the policy against targets and customers before it goes live.
We want to move decisions closer to the work. Which teams are ready for that?
What Refinery measures
Where teams already decide within the intended boundaries, and where they escalate or improvise.
Illustrative examples — not client cases
Decision simulator
Ninety seconds. One decision. See what we measure.
Face a realistic situation, choose among options that are all defensible, and explain why. You get your own decision trace at the end — the same artefact an engagement is built on.
Try it nowFictional scenario. Nothing is sent or stored.
How it works
- 01
Frame the question.
One concrete decision or issue on your board's table.
- 02
Load the knowledge.
Relevant theory and your own documents, in a knowledge base of your own.
- 03
Map the organisation.
Figures, processes and structure, connected to the theory.
- 04
Capture tacit knowledge.
Your people work through realistic situations in the decision simulator; experienced people are interviewed.
- 05
Analysis and advice.
Every conclusion traceable to its source — a model, a document or a recorded decision.
What you receive
Decision traces
Per person and situation: the decision, the reasoning, and the conditions under which they would have decided otherwise. Exported as a document.
Source-grounded analysis
Analysis on your own knowledge base in which every statement links back to the passage it is based on.
In development
Divergence view
The same situation, several people: where the group converges, where it splits, and which terms mean different things to different people.
In development
Decision profile × value system
Decision patterns set against the value system of the organisation — why the same instrument works in one culture and fails in another.
Why “Refinery”
Crude oil is worthless until someone refines it.
Every organisation sits on raw material — knowledge nobody reads, data in systems that don't talk to each other, and the tacit knowledge of its people. Refinery separates all three and refines them into one answer.
The name, the film and our principlesStart with one question.
Tell us which decision is on your table. We'll tell you, in one conversation, whether Refinery can evidence it.