Concept
Non-dominant narrative
Also: non-dominant narratives, counter-narrative, dominant narrative, minority narrative
A non-dominant narrative is an account of what is going on that some people share, but that differs from the official story and is rarely heard where decisions are made.
Every organisation has a dominant narrative: the story told in strategy decks, all-hands meetings and the annual report. "We are customer-centric." "The reorganisation went well." It isn't necessarily false. It's simply the version with the most voices behind it.
Alongside it run other stories: in the kitchen, in customer calls, in chat channels nobody from leadership reads. These are non-dominant narratives. Research on organisations also calls them counter-narratives.
Why the official story is late
The dominant narrative changes slowly, because many people have an interest in keeping it. Non-dominant narratives react faster to what is actually happening. When the culture shifts or customers start to leave, it usually shows up there first. An organisation that only hears its own official story learns about change last.
Making them visible without a fight
Asking people directly "what's the real story here?" rarely works. It puts them in opposition to the official line. It works better to collect many everyday micro-narratives, anonymously, and let people interpret them themselves, for example with SenseMaker. Then you can see which narratives exist side by side, how big each one is and where they contradict each other, without anyone having to pick a side in a meeting.
What to do with them
A non-dominant narrative is not automatically the truth. It is another perspective on the same system. Often the useful question is: what could we do so that there are more stories like this one, or fewer?