The story choosing for you
You can’t choose differently until you can see the story choosing for you. That sentence is the shortest way I know to describe what this research is about.
By Paige Williams — applied researcher and strategist developing a Narrative Intelligence framework.
Storytelling is not the problem
Most conversations about narrative in organizations are conversations about storytelling: how to frame a pitch, land a message, move an audience. Useful work, and not what this research is about.
The narratives that matter most in consequential decisions are rarely the ones being told out loud. They are the interpretations already running—the assumptions about what kind of situation this is, what kind of person I am in it, and what a reasonable person would do next.
What recognition actually does
In the framework I am developing, the first capacity is SEE—recognition. Its essential function is awareness: noticing that an interpretation is present at all, and that it is an interpretation rather than the situation itself.
People often describe the effect of recognition as space. Space is real, but it is a consequence. The function is awareness; the felt sense of room to move follows from it.
Why this matters for decisions
A narrative that goes unnoticed does not present itself as one option among several. It presents itself as the facts. That is why smart teams can analyze a decision rigorously and still arrive somewhere narrow: the analysis was thorough, but the frame was never examined.
The practical question I keep returning to is not whether a story is true. It is whether it is visible enough to be examined—and what becomes possible for a leader once it is.
A narrative that goes unnoticed does not present itself as one option among several. It presents itself as the facts.
Continue
More research notes.
Human Judgment
Separating fact from interpretation
Discernment is not skepticism. It is the discipline of knowing which part of the account is evidence.
AI + Rapid Change
Human judgment in the age of AI
When access to information accelerates faster than our ability to interpret it, the scarce capacity is discernment.