Post-Formal Actors inside Organizations: from Deviants to Lifeboats - with Bonnitta Roy

Podcast Notes

Bonnitta Roy is a pioneer in education. She’s the founder of Alderlore Insight Center, the POP-UP School, and C-LABS. She teaches insight practices for individuals who are developing meta-cognitive skills, (ed: thinking about thinking) and hosts collective insight retreats for groups interested in breaking away from typical limiting patterns of thought. In addition, she also teaches a masters course in consciousness studies and trans-personal psychology at the Graduate Institute.

As an educator, Bonnitta Roy is focused on what she defines as Post Formal Actors: people who have strong intuition towards post formal thinking  without necessarily being sophisticated thinkers (yet) and who see formal rules as optional. According to Bonnitta this phenomenon occurs in different settings, for example  students who start to see their teachers don’t have educational authority. Without proper pedagogical support or guidance to become more sophisticated thinkers, however, post formal actors can be seen only as “deviants” rather than a resource.

On the other hand, because of their skills, post formal actors can give a new perspective and a new way to see and do things, embracing the challenges we  face. They can, as Bonnitta says “hedge against social collapse”. 

Key highlights from the conversation:

• Post formal actors (PFA): how this definition was born;
• The mismatch between skills we learn today in school and what we really need in life;
• PFA as  a positive force for the world and for organisations
• Tokenization of value and what it means for organizing 
• The importance of the stability in a  system
• Ontological design and modernity as “defuturing”

Recorded on 19 September 2022.

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast/