S2 Ep. 13 Nora Bateson – Trans-contextual Organizing: Shifting Perceptions

Today’s guest, Nora Bateson, is a unique thinker that as a company we’ve been following for a while now. From invisible assumptions, to entanglement and trans-contextual organising, this conversation explores what organizing in complexity truly means for organisations and the relationships taking place within and between them. 

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.

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our Medium publication: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/Podcast-S2E13-Nora-Bateson

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 www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast

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

Recorded on 12 March 2021.