Trans-contextual Organizing: Shifting Perceptions — with Nora Bateson

Podcast Notes

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, facilitator and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “how can we improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?”. Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, ‘An Ecology of Mind’, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson.

Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. Her book, ‘Small Arcs of Larger Circles’ is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity, and the core text of the Harvard University LILA program 2017–18. Her new book, ‘Warm Data’, will be released in 2020 by Triarchy Press.

Tune in to your conversation with Nora as we dive deeper into systemic accountability, “Warm Data” practices, and the power of context.

To find out more about Nora’s work:

• Website:https://norabateson.wordpress.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoraBateson
• Medium: https://norabateson.medium.com/
• WordPress: https://norabateson.wordpress.com/
• The International Bateson Institute: https://batesoninstitute.org/

Other references and mentions:

• Nora Bateson, Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns, 2016: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Small-Arcs-Larger-Circles-Patterns/dp/1909470961
• Organizations as Architectures for Complexity — with Joe Norman: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/organizations-as-architectures-for-complexity-with-joe-norman-5eebf5d1362e
• Joe Norman, “Generating wholes”: http://jwnorman.com/?p=4948
• Boundaryless Whitepaper, New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem Thinking — Designing Products and Organizations for a changing world, 2020: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/DOWNLOAD-NF
• Transition Network: https://transitionnetwork.org/
• Warm Data Lab: https://warmdatalab.net/
• Warm Data Podcast: https://www.warmdatapodcast.com/

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

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

Recorded on 12 March 2021.

Key Insights

1. Systemic accountability does away with the idea of discrete edges of an organization. Looking at organizing as a living system, whatever that aspect of it, Nora explains that it’s never only “that” [aspect], there is always more. She highlights that: “if we want to think about what an organization looks like, in a way that deals with complexity, it is something that is going to absorb and respond — and be sensitive in its response — to a completely different order of integrity, generosity, and accountability”. Right now, she claims, the way in which organizations are forming discrete edges around themselves protects them from shared integrity.

•  Listen to Nora talk about systemic accountability and shared integrity from min 08:10.

2. The journey towards more shared integrity happens in relationships. Nora points out that, although we have been trained to think that our accomplishments are our own, these assumptions and existing organizational concepts have also been produced in relationships. When you start to question them, you realize that nothing is purely “our own”. According to Nora, some of the questions to ask are: “what are you tending to? What are you taking care of? What are you nurturing and bringing vitality to?”

•  Listen to how we evolve in relationships from min 23:11.

3. Changing the structure of an organization is not going to generate any big changes. What we really need to delve into are questions related to culture, entanglement, perception, and epistemology. By changing our perception — for example, through Warm Data practices and trans-contextual understanding — we can generate attention to second-, third- and fourth-order relational processes, from which structures can really change. In the words of Nora: “you create the context where epistemologies and ways of perceiving shift, and then the structures change”.

•  Listen to the discussion around culture, entanglement, warm data and trans-contexutality from min 31:23 and onwards.

? Boundaryless Conversations Podcast is about exploring the future of organizing at scale by leveraging on technology, network effects, and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous.