A Guiding Narrative® is the internal story people tell themselves about how the world works and where they fit in it. It runs below conscious awareness, shaped by assumptions and beliefs no survey can reach directly. It’s the filter that decides how your brand is perceived, your messages are read, and your decisions are trusted or quietly resisted.
The Guiding Narrative® Method comes from 25 years of fieldwork, from inside the LAPD during a period of mandated cultural change to boardrooms across the country. It’s a proprietary framework for surfacing and validating the inner narratives that drive behavior, then translating them into brand strategy and communication that resonates where decisions actually get made.
Craig Honick is a narrative strategist and applied ethnographer with 25 years of experience helping organizations understand the stories their customers and employees live by. He’s the founder of The Good People Research Company and the creator of the Guiding Narrative® methodology.
His fieldwork spans some of the most consequential organizational change work of the past three decades, including three years embedded inside the LAPD during the post–Rodney King reform era, when he became the first social scientist with unfettered access to the department’s daily patrol division activities.
Craig currently serves as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at UVA’s Darden School of Business, where he advises students, faculty, and alumni building ventures under the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology.
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